Mark Brewer Shows Up in Unusual Places and Behaves Oddly

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MARK BREWER ARCHIVE - A HISTORY OF LINKAGES AND DIRTY TRICKS

Democratic Chairman "Spying" on Republicans? Democratic Chairman, Mark Brewer, sitting on the steps of the Mackinac Grand Hotel on the weekend of September 24, 2005 drinking from a bottle of water provided by the Dick DeVos campaign for Governor at the Michigan Republican bi-annual Leadership Conference. Photo by Michigan Republican Party. The sticker on the bottle is a DeVos sticker that volunteers adhered to free bottles of water provided to participants. Although collecting information on the opposing party is certainly a part of politics, the better part of discretion suggests that a person as high-ranking as State Chair of the Party would send a subordinate. Or has Brewer just changed sides?

October 27, 2005
by Chetly Zarko

Two recent events demonstrate that Michigan's Democratic Chairman, Mark Brewer, has a habit of showing up in surprising places and acting in some pretty unseemly ways, and that the process for certifying citizen-led initiatives should be reformed.

In August 2004, without a pending challenge by opponents, Democrats Doyle O'Connor and Dorothy Jones refused to certify a petition by the "Defense of Marriage" petitioners (to define marriage as one-man and one-woman). O'Connor and Jones' alleged grounds for not certifying were that they personally believed the language was misleading and unconstitutional (a decision that the Court of Appeals said was in the domain of courts, not canvassers, and that the canvassers were wrong anyway).

The Board of Canvassers', is a body Constitutionally-charged with counting votes and certifying petitions in what is supposed to be a bi-partisan way. Whether or not one agrees with controversial proposals should be irrelevant to the process. By law, the Board of Canvassers is composed of two Democrats and two Republicans and requires at least one member of each party to approve any motion for an action to take effect. The intent of this requirement was to ensure bi-partisianship but in recent years the effect has been to give either party an effective veto over any action if both members of the Board from that Party choose not to or refuse to act.

At the time in August 2004, Lansing political news services (Gongwer, MIRS) reported in print that Michigan Democratic Party Chairman, Mark Brewer, was present at that meeting, and at a critical moment hand-signaled to Canvasser O'Connor who then adjourned. Brewer was seen in the hallway meeting quasi-privately with O'Connor, and then, minutes later a motion was called to vote on the matter and both Democrats refused to certify. Hopelessly deadlocked, they adjourned the meeting and the Defense of Marriage petitioners were left with no choice but to sue the Board of Canvassers' in Appeals Court. They won and the court ordered the petition certified and placed on the 2004 ballot. The voters eventually approved that amendment.

Fast forward to July 2005.

On July 19, 2005, the Canvassers' met to determine the sufficiency of roughly 505,000 signatures submitted (with only 317,000 needed) by the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative to place a proposal on the ballot in 2006. The amendment would end race and gender preferences in college admissions and government programs. Whether or not you agree with the proposal, most people can understand that if the process is abused to delay and hinder a group you disagree with it is likely that the same abuse could prevent an issue you agree with later from appearing on the ballot. Simply put - if enough people sign a petition, they have a right to have their question posed to the people of Michigan in a vote.

Knowing Brewer's previous proclivity for interfering with the democratic process, and concerned by the agressive nature of certain other MCRI opponents (a group calling itself "By any means necessary" (BAMN), self-avowed "Trotskeyites" with a history of thuggish tactics also reported on in the Wall Street Journal here), I brought along a camera for posterity.

It seemed preposterous that a Democratic Party official would be giving orders to public officials appointed to execute and interpret election law. Indeed, the Open Meetings Act of Michigan seemingly requires that all decision-making deliberations of such bodies be held in public - the Board of Canvassers being no exception. Sure enough, history repeated itself with Brewer acting in BAMN form, and here on this video (WARNING: 2.9MB file - requires Windows Media Player) Democrat Doyle Connor is seen asking for a five minute recess and mutters something about the hallway. Chairman Katherine DeGrow grants the recess. As the recess began, I shut the camera off. I then panned around in the public meeting room, where, in the open aisleway, a mere few feet from my seat, O'Connor and Mark Brewer are talking. The camera is flipped back on, and as I zoom in to gather detail, Brewer swings his hand agressively at the camera (a fraction of an inch from contact and knocking it loose) and yelling "Put that camera away ." I responded to Brewer calmly, asserting that we were in a public space and that the public had a right to videotape in it. Brewer realized that he was close to crossing a line - so he quickly retreated into a deep corner of the hallway. A few seconds later their conversation in the hallway is captured, with the other remaining Democratic Canvasser, Paul Mitchell (who replaced Dorothy Jones after the Republicans "failed" to reconfirm her nomination in February) now present as well. Although not a majority sufficient to pass a motion, the two Canvassers in that meeting probably violated the "constructive quorum" provisions of OMA because they constituted a sub-quorum group capable of preventing action. What did Brewer say? An average citizen was restricted to a two-minute speech - "on the record" - before the Board. Why should anyone else get special input into the process? Are we talking about the integrity of the election process? Again, what did Brewer actually say? Could it be relevant to the process?

Of course, MCRI opposition accused it of damaging the integrity of the process by allegedly collecting signatures in a "deceptive" way (by giving signers an opinion the opposition group disagreed with). Integrity in the election process is also something Democrats have taken recent issue with in other cases (Bush v. Gore, and others) at both the national and state level. Integrity in that process would seem to exclude Party leadership from dictating how a vote should occur - or certainly, at minimum, require that such influence be "on-the record", as seemingly required by the Open Meetings Act (NOTE: an open meetings legal challenge would be moot since it wouldn't change the decision of the individuals and they could merely reaffirm the action anyway).

Personal integrity certainly demands more of Mark Brewer than physically assaulting citizens with cameras a public political events - and maybe an understanding of the First Amendment. Although an assault charge was a seductive possibility in my mind, the physical outcome was so trivial that I dismissed quickly the possibility of filing a complaint. Still, Brewer's behavior is unseemly - and I have decided it is only fitting that those who know him well and not so well have the opportunity to see his behavior now. About an hour after the taping, Brewer made a point to tell me off camera that he felt I was an "<expletive-deleted>hole" for shooting the video. Maybe so - but in the last two months of deciding whether to use the video, I've talked to a fair number of respectable Democrats and after showing it to them, everyone of them who saw the video had their own Mark Brewer personal horror story to tell. Though none were surprised, they were apalled at the way they and the Party were being represented. When combined with the more recent photograph of Brewer (sidebar) spying at the Michigan Republican Leadership Conference, they were shocked at his continuing lack of discretion. There are respectable members of both parties, including the Democrats (and disrespectable Republicans, just to be fair), and this kind of behavior does them all a disservice.

Michigan State Senator Alan Cropsey, a former Canvasser himself, is considering proposing legislation that would abolish the Board completely and assign the duties to professional staff at the Secretary of State or narrow the ability of the Board to engage in such obstruction.