Why would any person in his or her right mind, get up at 5 a.m., drive from the west side of the state to Ann Arbor and then spend the rest of the day meeting with political power brokers all over the map?

        Well if that person was GOP Congressman Pete Hoekstra, you would do it because you want to be governor.  And he does, but he's not talking about it just yet.

        Last year when Hoekstra was running for his 18^th year in the U.S. Congress from Holland, he was not anxious about talking about his future plans for governor.  But he was already getting up at five and tramping all over the state to lay the groundwork.

         He did not want his local voters to know because they might not cotton to him running for one office, while secretly running for another.

         That never became and issue and Mr. Hoekstra was safely reelected.  Now watch him closely, because in the next few months he will reportedly "come out" and announce that he will not run for Congress again. He will say that enough is enough and besides he is tired of sleeping on a couch in his office in D.C.  It will be the first visible step that he's in the contest.

         Admittedly, he is not a household word, but there's plenty of time to buy that with commercials.  Dick DeVos launched his quest for gov with about 20% name I.D. and millions of dollars later, everyone knew who he was.

         Hoekstra is an affable chap who helped to keep the Teamsters Union afloat during the union's darkest hour.  As a result he is close to Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. and Hoekstra is sort of banking on the union being in his corner when he runs.

   0     Hoekstra will have lots of company in the GOP primary for the nomination but he goes into the thing with one trait the others will have to prove they have,  i.e. the fire in their gut to get up at 5 a.m. and drive all over the state to campaign.

       

     

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