KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Gubernatorial candidate Bill Schuette and his running mate Lisa Posthumus Lyons made a campaign stop in Kalamazoo Tuesday morning to deliver one simple message to voters.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re not going backwards,” Schuette said during a rally at Ziegler Motorsports. “We are going forward.”
Lyons and Schuette, who currently serves as the state’s attorney general, was on a four-day multi-city campaign tour throughout the state of Michigan. They toured Ziegler's on Sprinkle Road, looking at the motor bikes while shaking dozens of hands.
“I’m really excited to be here in KZ,” said Lyons during an interview. “I’m excited to be wherever we’re going because that’s what this election was about.”
Schuette said the tour began with a convention on Saturday in Lansing. The following day they went to church in Oakland County and got ice cream in Saginaw. They overnighted in Midland so he could spend a little time with his family. Then Tuesday morning it was off to Calhoun County.
“We were at a place in Battle Creek today that builds parts for the Ram Truck and the Ram Truck production is being moved from Mexico to Michigan,” he said. “When was the last time you heard about jobs coming to Michigan from Mexico.”
It’s a topic he talked about with the crowd at Ziegler. He said it’s a part of his “paycheck agenda” plan that he'll implement should he become governor.
“Our agenda is about cutting taxes instead of raising taxes and we want to lower auto insurance rates and give Michigan families a big pay raise,” Schuette said. “That’s what people want. They want results and they want more money in their pocketbook instead of bigger government.”
Not all who were at Ziegler’s were there in support of Schuette. The Michigan Democrats stood with signs about Schuette’s healthcare plan, that they said would strip 680,000 people of affordable healthcare. The group’s chair Brandon Dillon said that the his plan is outdated.
“He has no plans to fix the roads,” Dillon said in a phone interview. “He has no plan to lower auto insurance rates as opposed to Gretchen Whitmer who has details plans to make sure that we’re expanding access to healthcare and providing clean drinking water to people.”
The group, including Eriks Army, a local activist organization seeking justice for an unsolved murder case, were asked to leave the premise, they said. As for Schuette and Lyons, they said their focus is on getting their message out to as many people as possible between now and November.
“We don’t think people are going to elect Bill Schuette as their next governor, [or] me as their next Lt. govenor, just because we’re Republicans,” Lyons said. “We think they’re going to elect us because we have the agenda that’s going to move Michigan forward, that’s going to impact them and that’s from Kalamazoo to Kalkaska.”
