It is a time-honored tradition in Michigan campaigns.  That does not mean it's a good one.

     You can set your watch by this:  Whenever an outstate republican is running for the legislature, someway, somehow,  Detroit will be used to win votes.  Pictures of former Mayor Coleman Young would routinely show up in those GOP TV ads and not in a positive light.

     In case you missed it over the years, there is a strong anti-Detroit sentiment everywhere north of 8 mile;  just ask the state's newest state senator Mike Nofs would should have known better.

     He is the latest practitioner to exploit Motown.  The ad he ran against his democratic opponent noted that Rep. Marty Griffin voted to fund Cobo Hall and continue the "corruption in Detroit."

     The ad was at best misleading. Is there corruption in Detroit?  Think Kwame Kilpatrick, however the Cobo deal had nothing to do with corruption and Nof's new boss in the senate told him so.

      Sen. Mike Bishop tells Nofs, "It is not the source of corruption.  It is actually a bright light in Detroit now that we can all rally behind."

       Nofs was unmoved and said, had he been there he would have voted against Bishop's bill noting that the two would not always agree on everything.

       "I would not have voted for it because it took money away from Jackson and Calhoun Counties for the next 15 to 20 years," Nofs explains in his own aw-shucks provincial manner.

        Detroit Senator Tupac Hunter was not amused with the Nof's anti-Detroit commercial.  "It was unnecessary; it was divisive and it was out of the old GOP play book…It is not the way to start" your senate career.

       That may be true, but Nofs won with 61% of the vote and in the end elections are not about doing what is right, but all about winning.  Too bad.