McCotter’s Exit to Cost Michigan Plenty

Michigan will have to hold a special election at a cost of about $650,000 because of Republican Thaddeus McCotter’s sudden resignation from Congress July 6, according to the Detroit News.

In making the announcement Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley called it “unfortunate” that the state would have to go to such lengths to fill the remaining few weeks of McCotter’s 2012 term.

As it turns out, the News reported, the special election will actually be held on Nov. 6, the same day of the general election, which will decide who will take over McCotter’s seat beginning in January 2013. The winner of the special election would end up serving less than two months, unless he or she happens to be same candidate who also wins the general election.

Elections officials worry that the two elections on the same day could be confusing for voters. Betsy McRae, deputy clerk for Redford Township, told the News that she doesn’t understand why McCotter couldn’t finish out his term.

“I don't get why he did it,” she said. “Why couldn’t he stick it out? Why couldn’t he continue representing?”

McCotter, who briefly sought his party’s presidential nomination last year, failed to meet the qualifying deadline for the Aug. 7 primary this year after his signature petition was called into question as possibly fruadulent. He denied any wrondoing, but an investigation was started.

McCotter was also stung by a recent report in the Detroit News that he had pitched “a tawdry TV pilot,” as the newspaper called it, he wrote after his brief flirtation with presidential politics.

In his resignation statement last Friday, McCotter suggested that all had taken a toll.

“Today I have resigned from the office of United States Representative for Michigan’s 11th Congressional District,” he said. “After nearly 26 years in elected office, this past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family. As this harmony is required to serve, its absence requires I leave.”