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The uphill climb for Dr. Hines

Would you get on a bus, travel to seven Michigan cities with a dozen or so of your close friend, take loaded questions from the news media and hope that you don’t get caught in a snow storm?

You wouldn’t but Dr. Jim Hines would.

You see he wants to trade the title Dr. for governor.

“I’m setting the thing that love aside to actually reach out to the people of Michigan,” he explains when a correspondent asked, Why bother?”

After delivering babies for 36 years, he’s “shifting” to delivering an outsider’s message to those Michigan residents in hopes of defying the odds and find himself where Mr. Outsider, Gov. Rick Snyder, finds himself right now.

Non-career politicians appear to be en vogue these days where experience doesn’t count for squat. Ask Hillary Clinton, and Dr. Hines fits the mold to a tea. He gladly reveals during his Lansing stopover and his first encounter with the news hounds in the capitol press corps, that he has no insider connections unless you consider delivering two kids and one vasectomy for a current state lawmaker a connection.

He’s like Donald Trump in that regard but there the comparison stops.

Dr. Hines has a sort of “aw shucks” demeanor that some might call a comforting bed side manner juxtaposed to Mr. Trump’s sometimes bombastic approach.

Mr. Trump could self-fund. It’s safe to say the $141,000 of his own money to date will not boost the Hines’s name ID, which is about as low as an earth worm at this read.

Yet there he was grinding it out taking questions, pausing for some of the tough ones and then moving onto the next stop.

“What’s your stance on the death penalty?

“Michigan doesn’t have one,” he began and when pressed for his position, he said, “I don’t think so.”

Abortion?

“I love life. I’m very much pro-life.”

How would you have voted on the Grand Bargain to pull Detroit out of bankruptcy?

“I don’t know,” he begin after pausing after fielding a question he was getting for the first time. “There has to be accountability,” he went on but still remained on the fence. “That’s a hard one.”

The next one was a little easier but quite revealing.

Dating back to the 1970s when a man named Milliken resided in the governor’s seat, he coined a phrase as he and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young went about their mission to save Detroit.

“As Detroit goes, so goes the state,” Gov. Milliken suggested and virtually every governor there after, including this one, has glommed onto the phrase to link the future of the state to is largest city.

Do you adhere to that phrase Dr. Hines?

“No, I don’t,” he did not miss a beat. “I don’t think” it is the most important city certainly not anymore important than his home town of Saginaw or other cities. “Every voice is critically important,” he concludes.

Most folks would never consider giving up what they love in order to dive into public service so what was the “a-ha” moment for this would-be governor?

It came while he attended a spring 2015 convention in Philadelphia where he apparently was brushing up on his Thomas Jefferson history and he came to this passage, “The greatest threat to America would be when the best qualified people would refuse to run.” He says he knew then he would have to “get off the sidelines” and get into the game.

So he’s on the field now hoping that magic will strike again propelling him, like Mr. Snyder, into the state’s top job.

As he was ready to leave he was asked, ‘are the media the bad guys?”

The intent was to see if there was a Trump-like vinegar response inside the good doctor.

Nope.

“Let’s see how you report this,” he said with a grin.

Fair enough.

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