While Michigan Party Chair Curtis Hertel takes aim at Mayor Duggan for his unwillingness to call out President Donald Trump, we’re thinking back to a time when bipartisanship was a staple for the Hertel brand.
In the above column, Speaker Curtis Hertel Sr., who died in 2016, highlighted legislative wins with bipartisan support, like the restoration of certain academic standards and bipartisan resolutions urging Congress to preserve Medicaid.
In 1997, Hertel won the House speakership after sharing it with the GOP in 1993-94 when the chamber was tied. Republicans it back the years before in 1995.
The Hertel’s are one of Michigan’s most prominent political families.
While the headline of his column championed his party’s work alongside Republicans, Hertel also used the newspaper to criticize them, saying the GOP largely ignored an agenda to help middle class families.
“Instead, Republicans proceeded with targeted tax relief to wealthy individuals, which cast doubt on their tax cut motives and cost them control of the House in 1996,” Hertel wrote.
Hertel Jr., his son, has also carried a bipartisan spirit throughout his career, but like his dad, doesn’t shy away from criticizing Republicans. As a candidate for Congress in 2024, Hertel appealed to moderate Republicans in his advertisements dubbing himself, just a “regular guy.”
“I like cutting taxes, working across the aisle, smoking meats, and getting real things done for people here in Mid-Michigan,” Hertel said in a campaign video.
Hertel Jr., who was 19 when his dad led the Michigan House, hasn’t been touting bipartisanship in the last few months as Duggan raises money from high profile Republicans and Democrats.
Some Democratic leaders say they believe Duggan will take more from Democratic voters.
Former House Speaker Joe Tate told reporters with Michigan Chronicle and BridgeDetroit at the Detroit Policy Conference Thursday said “it’s just reality” that Duggan to take more votes from Democrats.
“We’re in the middle of a healthcare crisis, the cuts that have happened, and the high cost of health care because of what President Trump did, giving tax cuts away for billionaires and cutting access to health care around this country,” Hertel said on a radio show earlier this month. “Our democracy is at threat, our own U.S. Senator was threatened with sedition charges for saying something that’s in the Constitution, and Mike [Duggan] has refused to stand up to President Trump over and over again.”
On Michigan’s Big Show with Michael Patrick Shiels Thursday morning, Hertel called out Mike Duggan for the toxic dirt scandal that’s yet to be resolved in Detroit, many that are now filled with harmful contaminants like lead and arsenic.
Duggan has not shied away from shooting back at the criticism, accusing Democrats of focusing too much on what they’re against, instead of what they are for.
“They hate Republicans, they hate Donald Trump, and now I’ve broadened their platform — they hate me too,” Duggan said Thursday at the Detroit Policy Conference.
Duggan says he left the party to run for governor as an independent because of the vitriol he’d receive from Republicans and the left wing of the Democratic party if he was elected as a Democrat.
There’s no consensus on addressing key issues dividing Lansing, where the type of bipartisan proposals being passed currently are bills to crack down on deceptive robocalls and phone scams.
After Republicans won back the House to end the Democratic legislative trifecta from 2022-24, when Democrats controlled all branches of government, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Democrats have agreed to side with Republicans on certain issues. However, even with the majority, getting every member on board was challenging for Democrats, who were unable to include certain legislative provisions or pass bills altogether on issues like abortion access or water affordability.
Duggan in a statement Thursday claimed Democrats couldn’t come to agreement on a number of issues: “The Democratic Party won a trifecta in 2022. And instead of working together to achieve longstanding Democratic priorities, they bickered and fought. I witnessed in Lansing first-hand the constant turmoil between the Far Left and moderate Democrats on a range of priorities—on rent control, on affordable housing, and yes, on transgender athletes. Some of those priorities were written into draft bills and some proposed bills were just discussed. But while the Democrats still may not be willing to admit it, the all-or-nothing, my-way-or-the-highway approach that some Far Left legislators took paralyzed the caucus and made it impossible to move forward on issues like education.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the Hertel’s. Curtis Hertel Sr. was the Michigan House Speaker in 1997. Curtis Hertel Jr. is the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party and a former Michigan state Senator.
