DETROIT -- Michigan Democrats aren't subtle about it: They can't stand state Supreme Court Chief Justice Clifford Taylor.
They regard him as a narrow Republican partisan, a disgrace to the bench and have been campaigning desperately to defeat him when he runs for another eight-year term this November.
Democratic State Chair Mark Brewer regularly denounces Taylor in speeches and in e-mail blasts. During last month's get-together of policy makers on Mackinac Island, Brewer passed out little pill bottles with a skull and crossbones, labeled "Injustice Incorporated."
Actually, on closer inspection, it was a little Cliff Taylor head and crossbones. Inside there was no pills, but a little slip of paper informing one that Justice Taylor was against Michigan families. However, he was in favor of making "it easier for sexual predators, drunk drivers and terrorists to avoid responsibility for their crimes."
If it seems odd for a political party to be going after a judge like that, remember that Michigan has a very odd system. Nominees for the state supreme court are selected by the major political parties, not by any non-partisan nominating process.
Once they are on the court, they then get a terrific advantage whenever they run for re-election: The ballot identifies them as "justice of the Michigan Supreme Court." People normally re-elect judges; that makes them virtually unbeatable. In fact, only one Supreme Court jurist has been defeated in modern history.
Yet given the full-bore attack the Dems have been waging on Justice Taylor and his record, you'd naturally assume they must have recruited a major heavy hitter to challenge him.
Q) So who is their candidate?
A) A mystery.
Thirteen days ago I happened to be at a Detroit dinner where Brewer was once again denouncing Taylor. "Do you have a candidate to run against him?" I asked.
"Yes, and we will announce who it is next week," he said. So I waited eight days, and then called Liz Kerr, the state Democratic Party spokesperson. I asked her the same question -- did they have a candidate for the state supreme court.
"Yes, and we're not saying who it is," she said.
Give the Democrats some credit; the idea of a stealth candidate is somewhat intriguing. If you could get away with that, it might help focus attention on the opposition's faults, without having to reveal your own weaknesses. Unfortunately, it isn't legal under Michigan law.
At some point, they will have to reveal who their candidate is.
"I don't know why they aren't saying," said Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics and a longtime Lansing insider.
"Maybe they don't really have one yet, or all the factions in the party aren't sold on the one they want," he said. The most likely candidate is thought to be Marietta Robinson, a highly regarded Detroit attorney who ran against Taylor in 2000. That was the year Democrats spent millions in an effort to unseat three sitting Republican justices.
The incumbents, thanks in large part to their ballot designation, all won easily. Taylor won by half a million votes that time, even though it was a Democratic year elsewhere in Michigan.
So the odds are heavily against any challenger, which may be giving Robinson (and any other potential candidates) pause before pulling the rip cord and jumping into the fray.
What nobody seems to be asking, however, is whether this is all working for the people of Michigan. The state has one of the least collegial, most ideologically polarized high courts in the nation.
As it stands now, Michigan Supreme Court judges are essentially chosen by Republican or Democratic party bureaucrats. Is that really the best way justice can ultimately be served?
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One of the classy and too-little pioneers of sensible modern feminism in Michigan was Elly Peterson, a Republican who was both the first woman to win a major party nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan and the first woman to chair the statewide GOP.
She ran a hopeless senate race with dignity and class in 1964 against the unbeatable Phil Hart, and ran well ahead of Barry Goldwater, her party's presidential nominee.
Later, she helped rebuild the state GOP after that debacle. In an age when there were Republican feminists, she fought hard for the Equal Rights Amendment. She died Monday in her retirement home in Colorado, four days after her 94th birthday.
Last January, she sent me a cheery note teasing me about something. I had also asked a friend of hers what she thought about the modern Republican Party. Her answer was that she had just written a sizable contribution check. To Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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