Fighting Prop 2?
GRAND RAPIDS MAYOR George Heartwell is thinking of legally challenging the anti-affirmative action Proposition 2 that passed by a 58-42 margin. Though I don’t know off the top of my head what the numbers in Grand Rapids were, that 16-point statewide spread is a pretty large gap to ignore.
UPDATE: A reader kindly emails this to MichiBlogger:
According to
http://www.electionmagic.com/results/mi/K41results/K4100113029.htmThe numbers for Kent County were 141378 vs 93499 or 60-40 which is better than State-wide.
Grand Rapids on the other hand was 29465 vs 34458 or 46-54 with 53% turnout and only 96% of those voting on the Proposition.
Precinct-wise the lowest support was 5%-95% and the highest support was 66%-34%, both in the 1st Ward.
Oddly enough the precinct with the 5-95 only had 28% turnout while the precinct with 66-34 had 73% turnout.
The lowest precinct turnout was 19.5% while the highest was 81%, again both were in the 1st Ward.
I nearly wrote that I suspected Grand Rapids, being in the western part of the state, likely supported the proposition even more strongly than the state as a whole, but I thought better of it. It looks like I was right to think again.
UPDATE 2: Whoa. I totally misread the email. I thought it PASSED 54-46 in GR. It didn’t. It FAILED 46-54 as the reader wrote. Call me confused. In Wyoming, where I live, Prop 2 passed handily.
The fact that it didn’t in GR obviously makes the move by the city’s mayor a plausible one. I was not sure why he’d make that move in the face of such solid support for the prop in his constituency. The answer, of course, is that his constituency doesn’t support it at all. The Mayor should feel free to challenge away.
Not that I particularly agree with him.
And many thanks to the reader who sent this in (and then corrected me). Great stuff!