charlie.crumm@oakpress.com; @crummc
Mike Bishop for governor?
Speculation on the social media platform Facebook is that the former Michigan Senate majority leader from Rochester might challenge Michigan's Republican Gov. Rick Snyder in a primary next year.
Ron Dwyer, a Troy insurance agent and member of the 11th Congressional District Republican Committee, even floated his own informal poll Friday, asking who Republicans would prefer.
For the record, the majority of comments favored the sitting governor, who has upset some Republicans for his positions that the state should accept federal money to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and for wanting fees and taxes to raise $1 billion for road improvements.
Snyder, it turns out, can breathe easy.
Bishop, an attorney who spent four years in the Michigan House and eight in the Senate before being term-limited out, says he's heard there are rumors out there.
But the 46-year-old says they don't come from him and he's not interested in taking on Snyder in a Republican primary.
"I'm not running for governor," Bishop said via a voicemail message late Friday evening. "I'm in the private sector now and out of the loop."
Bishop's last foray into politics was last year when he unsuccessfully tried to unseat Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper in a race overshadowed by President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, and a year when Democratic Party turnout was 8 percent higher than Republican turnout.
Snyder, likely to seek a second four-year term as governor, is likely to face Democrat Mark Schauer in 2014, assuming neither has a challenger from their own parties next summer.
Contact Charles Crumm at 248-745-4649, charlie.crumm@oakpress.com or follow him on Twitter @crummc and on Facebook. More information is at oaklandmichiganpolitics.blogspot.com.
