Election day 2014 is coming up.  The Democratic party has some remarkably good candidates. Paul Clements and Mark Totten are two.  Clements is running for US Congress in the 6th district.  Totten is running for Michigan Attorney General.

Here’s a letter I sent to the Kalamazoo Gazette several days ago (published on-line at M-Live) about the first contest:

To the Editor–Citizens of southwest Michigan have the opportunity to improve the world this fall.  All they have to do is vote for Paul Clements. It ‘s time to take the anti-environment bat out of Fred Upton‘s hands. 

Fred’s record is bad enough on other issues, but it is outstandingly grim on environmental and especially energy matters.  As examples, he voted Yes on opening the outer continental shelf to oil drilling and No on prohibiting oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Yes on barring the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, and No on cutting government subsidies for corporate oil and gas exploration. So the Upton record goes, all down the line, on the wrong side all the way. 

Turn out November 7 and vote for the good guy, Paul Clements.

Mark Totten‘s opponent is the current attorney general,  Bill Schuette, elected in 2010.  A highlight of the early part of  Schuette‘s political career is that  he was chosen by President G. W. Bush as his personal representative to Australian-American Friendship Week in Australia.

The Detroit Free Press today (October 30) endorsed Mark Totten  in glowing terms (see http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/editorials/2014/10/30/attorney-general-endorsement-michigan-totten).  The article provides a good run-down of Schuette‘s failing performance in the past four years.  He has, says the Free Press, “used his office primarily to promote conservative causes and sabotage federal initiatives that he opposes”–such as EPA clean air programs.

Totten is a Kalamazoo native, has a law degree and a Ph.D. in ethics from Yale and teaches at the Michigan State University law school. Early in the campaign, he was  endorsed by former governor William Milliken, probably Michigan’s best governor, at least within living memory.  Also endorsing Totten is Frank J. Kelley, who may have been Michigan’s best attorney general and certainly was its longest-serving one, for 37 years.  (Kelley holds the record as youngest attorney general of the state and 37 years later, the oldest.)  Kelley was a Democrat and Milliken a Republican, though Milliken’s strong environmental credentials might disqualify him from  today’s  Republican party.

Both Paul Clements and Mark Totten are remarkably capable. Michigan will be  lucky to have them serve.