County Candidates Match Issues & Experience

County Candidates Match Issues & Experience

Partly because progressive margins in Ann Arbor's 14th and 15th county districts are so comfortable, commission races here have become me-too games in recent years.

  But although Democrat and HRP positions appear to blur and merge, real differences persist in the approach the two parties bring to politics.

   Both parties say shifting of budget priorities to social services is their primary goal, but Democratic candidates tend to stress incremental change and their experience in county government. HRP candidates emphasize the thoroughness of their party's commitment to fundamental change.

  In the 15th HRP's Marty Wegbreit is running against Democrat Cathy McClary, with no contest from the Republicans.

   In the 14th HRP's Diane Hall is squaring off against Democratic incumbent Kathy Fojtik, with the Republican's Ron Strauss running a low-level campaign, which doesn't mention the party he's running on.         Democrat McClary is stressing experience gained working for the present 1 5th District Commissioner, Liz Taylor. Wegbreit is one year older than McClary, who is twenty-two, studied political science at MIT and is presently on leave from the University. He has been living in Ann Arbor since last fall, while McClary came here as a runaway in 1966.

   Wegbreit and Hall are campaigning on a turn-the-place-upside-down HRP platform with special emphasis on the new county jail which they don't want built as planned, as well as a broad reordering of county priorities, mostly at the expense of the sheriffs department.   

    Among HRP proposals are a half million dollar cut in the $2.5 million sheriffs budget to fund a county-wide system of child care; an all-woman rape investigation unit outside the sheriff's jurisdiction; an alcohol detoxification center separate from the jail; and a system of community based rehabilitation instead of a new jail.       

     McClary says she is resigned to the new jail. mostly because building a new one is supposed to be cheaper than rennovating the old one, which has been condemned. However, she says she wants to see a smaller facility coupled with a program of community-based rehabilitation.

    In her literature, McClary is emphasizing the need for a comprehensive antirape program, an aggressive outreach effort to bring people information about their food stamp rights, and safeguarding of juvenile rights.   

   In the 15th Democrat Fojtik is running on a record of modest but hard won accomplishment on a commission dominated by centrist and conservative elements. During her two years Fojtik concentrated on health matters, supporting a free venereal disease clinic in Ypsi and the first medical care facility in jail.       In the next two years Fojtik says she wilt work to establish neighborhood health care enters, decriminalize addiction so it can be treated as a health problem and institute a compensation fund for crime victims.

   Fojtik points to a 40% increase in the health department's budget as evidence that substantial reordering of priorities has taken place, but according to an HRP analysis the percentage of the budget actually apportioned to health and welfare has declined by three and one percent, respectively.

   Hall, who identifies herself as a radical feminist, accuses Fojtik for being more interested in the career aspirations of middle class women than in poor and working class women. She also says Fojtik has taken credit for a number of proposals which actually originated in the county bureaucracy. Hall has been active with the HRP since shortly after her arrival in 1970 in Ann Arbor. She now works at a halfway house for emotionally disturbed children.

   Also running for County Commissioner on the HRP ticket is Dave Nicholson in Ypsilanti's district 6, which covers most of the EMU campus. Nicholson is running on basically the same issues as the Ann Arbor candidates. This may be the only race in the November election where light turnout guarantees an HRP victory. Nicholson has a good chance of taking the seat, now held by a liberal Democrat not seeking reelection.

-David Stoll