Jan Peabody
LAPEER COUNTY — In the wake of Jan Peabody’s narrow defeat by Todd Courser last week in the primary election for the Republican nomination for the 82nd State House seat being vacated by term limited Kevin Daley, there’s been a buzz about the possibility of Peabody running as a write-in candidate in November.
While Peabody said she’s been urged by many people since the election to wage a write-in effort, she added, “No final decision has been made.”
Although three or four meetings by political-minded operatives were reportedly held over the weekend to discuss a write-in campaign and other strategies to block Courser, Peabody wasn’t at any of them.
“I was at my aunt’s birthday party all day Saturday,” she said. Before that Peabody said she took a couple of days to decompress and reflect following last Tuesday’s vote and was back at work as a medical nurse case manager for GENEX Services, LLC on Friday.
“There are a lot of things to consider,” she said, namely the logistics of running as a write-in candidate. “There would be a huge amount of education to be done,” she said.
Nominated candidates have a huge advantage in that voters simply need to see their name and connect the dots. Write-in candidates need to get people to remember their name and write it correctly in the right spot on the ballot.
“Write-ins aren’t very successful,” Lapeer County Tea Party Patriots Director Bob Murphy said.
In June the group endorsed Peabody, but Murphy noted Courser won. “Our endorsement was not unanimous, but was a majority and it was for Peabody,” he said. “It doesn’t do us any good to split the ticket.”
Murphy said the suggestion that Peabody continue running is “not coming from the Tea Party. I think what we’re seeing here is pretty ugly contest and a campaign open wounds on both sides. People say things and they’re not thinking clearly.”
Murphy noted that Peabody is still chairman of the Republican Party in Lapeer County and as such “her job is to get Republicans elected.”
Murphy said, “As a write-in, she’d be running against the legal winner,” adding, “I think that’s nonsense.”
The odds of mounting a successful writein campaign, however, are not entirely out of reach. Just ask Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.
Duggan, a former county official who led a turnaround at the Detroit Medical Center before returning to politics, got 46 percent of the vote in 2013 and went on to defeat former Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon.
Peabody went into last week’s primary election with the endorsement of nearly every political group in the county, including the Farm Bureau. Peabody, who began campaigning last August, lost her bid to be the party’s nominee by 351 votes and Courser’s 3,477 votes represented 37 percent of the GOP vote.
Jacob Hunsanger, who took 1,593 votes in the GOP race, said in the hours after the election that he could not support Courser. Sharna Smith gathered 1,239 votes and Lapeer County Clerk Theresa Spencer noted that some 1,200 voters didn’t pick anyone in the primary House race.
The Republican’s choice pleased Imlay City’s former mayor, Margaret Guerrero- DeLuca. Guerrero-DeLuca, who steamrolled her opponent for the Democrat slot on the House ticket by more than 4 to 1, said she’s confident that she will be able to add enough independent and moderate Republicans to her totals to win the seat in the fall. Following the Tea Party Patriots-sponsored candidate’s forum in June, said that several Tea Party members told her that while they were conservatives, she’s the more rational candidate.
While saying the Republican nominee is “no longer a shoe-in” in Lapeer County, Murphy warned a write-in campaign in Lapeer County “could throw the Republican Party in turmoil.”
“We’ve got to get behind the winner here,” Murphy said, noting local Tea Party members only agree with U.S. Rep Candace Miller 60 percent of the time. He said of Courser, “If we can work with him 80/20, I’m good with that.”
The Lapeer County Tea Party Patriots will hold a candidates debate at its Sept. 2 meeting at Maple Grove Church in Lapeer Township. He said he’s working to get Chief 40th Circuit Court Judge Nick O. Holowka to serve as moderator as he did in June.
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