A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Both political parties boost that the majority of bills that grind through the legislative meat grinder each year, the vast majority are adopted on a bipartisan vote. Goodie for them. What they don’t tell you is the vast majority of those votes are on cat and dog bills that lack controversy and therefore the Republicans and Democrats can agree because there is nothing in the bills to disagree upon.

So when a truly bipartisan vote unfolds on an issue that does divide the two sides, folks in our town sit up and take notice because nowadays, in this foreboding political climate, it is something to behold.

The cantankerous question was how to treat the tip wages of thousands of hospitality workers in our economy. Some heavy hitters in organized labor were leaning hard on Senate Democrats to cough up a no vote on a plan that allowed tip workers to preserve the status quo for the time being while labor wanted to impose a new minimum wage on them that many workers felt would reduce their overall take-home pay.

For months, the two sides bickered back and forth until the showdown last week in the Senate. Keep in mind it takes 20 votes to pass a bill and there are exactly 20 Democrats in the Senate vs. 18 Republicans, meaning if all the Democrats hang together they can pass anything they want. But the “hanging” on this one went puff. Ten Democrats plunked a no vote in keeping with the labor pressure while eight of them, led by their West Michigan leader Sen. Winnie Brinks, voted yes.

Then 12 Republicans voted yes providing the 20 votes to create a truly bipartisan agreement and the earth moved since this rarely happens where the minority party provides the margin of victory with the majority of those in the majority party voting no.

Rising the profound question, can this type of cooperation that many citizens want, happen again perhaps on a revenue increase to fix the roads?

Turning to new polling data on the 2026 race for governor.

The uphill climb by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan to be the first person in state history to become governor without the support of either political party just got another jump start based on statewide polling data.

The first survey showed that just over 60% of voters in Michigan would consider voting for an independent candidate for governor.

Asked about that, Duggan burst out, “You can feel it out there. People want a change,” he jubilantly told a reporter.

As if that wasn’t enough the next survey from EPIC-MRA, it reveals in a mythical matchup with Democrat Jocelyn Benson and former GOP Gov.-candidate Dick Devos, they get 31% of the vote and Duggan 24%. But check this out, he beats both of them in vote-rich Wayne and Macomb Counties and he’s tied with Benson in Oakland. Plus — and here is the real kicker — he gets 31% of the independent vote, 21% of the GOP vote, and 23% of the Democratic vote.

If that trend continues, and that is a huger than huge “if,” he could lose the election but take enough votes away from whomever the Democratic candidate is to hand the victory over to the Republican candidate, pollster Bernie Porn asserts.

But here is the reality at this early read that takes some of the glow away from the mayor’s numbers.

First, most citizens are not paying attention and a big chunk have never heard of his honor the mayor.

Second, the Democrats who are madder than all-get-out over his defection from his lifelong membership in the party, have not yet launched a barrage of attack ads designed to erode whatever support he does have. If they pour millions of advertising dollars into that effort, and he can’t counter that, the popular wisdom is, he’ll be in trouble.

But he argues that the more they whack away at him, the stronger he will be with that segment of the electorate that is fed up with the politics of old where blasting the other guy is the go-to strategy to win.

He says he won’t play that game by getting into a nasty back and forth with his opponents and for the 40% of those unhappy with both parties, he thinks his positive change message will hit a nerve.

History in the making? The early signs hint at that, but as the song goes, the Democrats have “Only Just Begun” to plot their former “friend’s” political demise.

Finally, give the governor some credit for skillfully crafting a positive message to fix the roads that produced the exact headlines she wanted while avoiding the headlines she did not want.

“Governor Proposes $3 billion road fix plan,” most of the headlines screamed. And for most folks, they would be happy to read that which is what she wanted.

And even better for her those average folks stopped at the headline and did not dig deeper into how she proposes to do that. Answer? Read on.

To her credit she has openly acknowledged that fixing the roads will require some revenue increases; some call them tax hikes. But there were precious few details on how she would do it other than this.

The only specific tax hike she revealed in her “plan” was a 32% increase on the wholesale price of marijuana. Could that mean she has a new line to replace “fix the damn roads?”

“Smoke a joint and fix the roads.”

Probably not.

Anyway, she will eventually have to disclose her revenue increases but she was loathed to do that in detail in the first-day story. To borrow one of the gov’s fav terms, transparency, some would argue that was sorely lacking in her so-called plan.