The proof will come in the tough budget decisions that are looming, but the new crop of Lansing legislators are starting the year with a cooperative tone.
“Bipartisanship. Everyone in Lansing is talking about it and everyone says they are ready to participate,” freshman Representative Gail Haines, R-Waterford, writes this week in the Oakland Press. “For the sake of our state’s future, I hope so… That means we cannot spend our time in Lansing protecting each party’s traditional special interests or sacred cows. We must not put a Band-Aid on the gaping wound of oru state budget. We cannot pretend to balance the budget, or do just enough to kick the problems down the road to the next group of legislators.”
Across the aisle, incoming freshman Representative Tim Bledsoe, D-Grosse Pointe, says he has a similar moderate policy platform to that of Republican Ed Gaffney whom he replaced.
And, down the hall, Republicans and Democrats alike are buzzing about a new “bipartisan caucus” they plan to form.
The Center for Michigan went far and wide during the 2008 campaign showing candidates polling data and other data indicating citizens wanted solutions, not partisanship. In the dawning of a new session, they’ve got the message. Now, it’s a matter of staying on that message in the heat of what will be a brutal budget process.
