Perhaps not completely disastrous

It's been a long time since a primary election in Michigan mattered as much as this one did, and the outcomes were pretty reasonable, all in all.

On the Governor's race, the two least objectionable candidates took their parties' nominations, Virg Bernero for the Dems and Rick Snyder for the GOP. What's more important than either of them winning is who lost, including the neanderthal Pete Hoekstra and our beloved State Attorney General, Mike Cox, neither of whom could find his way to the capital with both hands and a compass.

The materfamilias of the Kilpatricks, Carolyn Cheeks K., mother of Inmate #such-and-such, Kwame Kilpatrick, ex-mayor of Detroit, is out as well. She lost her primary race for another term as 13th district rep. Objectively, this is not necessarily a good thing -- generally, her service to the state seems to have been ok, but her lack of parenting skills apparently caught up with her. I've written elsewhere about what a great parenting state Michigan is.

Locally, there was a challenge to the entrenched Democratic establishment in Ann Arbor by a group of, um, other Democrats (belonging to the GOP is actually illegal in Ann Arbor, along with having a couch on your porch and keeping more than six chickens in your backyard.) The Other Democrats were a strange cabal of people whose main talking points were inaccurate or simply libelous statements about the current administration; they lost their shirts, ensuring us another several years of boring, slow, marginally-competent city government, instead of a diet of fascinating, agile, utterly-incompetent and childishly petulant city government, the latter being what Pat Lesko and friends seemed to offer.

In the State Senate run from round these parts, two progressive women were contesting the Democratic candidacy, and the one with the better web site won. Rebekah Warren did seem to have an edge over Pam Byrne on the sheer number of social issues she listed herself as supporting, and that seemed to be sufficient for a win.

So all in all, not a bad set of outcomes for a primary. One guy, running for something local, lost by a single vote. Haven't heard if he's going to do a recount or not. Looking forward to November.