This guy is an aerospace engineer by trade and has never run for
any political office but there was this brand new state senator acting
like he had done this forever and he was very good.
Say hello to Sen. Patrick Colbeck out of Canton who got into the
political game thanks to his cable-TV set.
One night he and the Mrs. were watching the TV-Guide channel and
up popped some offensive material. They figured if they could stumble
onto this kinda of trash, others could too.
Out went the cable subscription and in with Sky-Angel, a new
cable service with a Christian bent in that they censor all the
objectionable material.
Well that got him thinking: He needed to make a difference and
soon thereafter he and the Mrs. found themselves at their first rally
ever. He liked what the Tea Party stood for and the rest, as they say,
is history.
He ran in a five person GOP primary and beat the establishment
candidate and now finds himself deciding how to spend billions of your
tax dollars.
He also found himself on the Off the Record Public TV broadcast
and confessed that there was nothing in engineering school to prepare
him for this onslaught of questions from four capitol correspondents.
(See the broadcast at WKAR.org.)
They came at him every which way from Sunday and he gave a
stand-up performance answering each inquiry the best he could without
dancing around them. (He did tap dance a little on building a second
bridge between Detroit and Windsor, but that was it.)
He compared his career to being on the Dirty Jobs cable show as he
runs from one meeting to another trying to figure out how he can do
Lansing and remain true to his convictions. For example he's turned
down basketball tickets from lobbyists.
But his best answer was this one: Asked if the governor was a bit
naïve, Mr. New-Guy-On-The-Block blurted out, "If he's naïve, I'm
naïve." And he thought it was good to come at all this with a naïve
perspective with a fresh eye.
It was a great ad-lib and came from the heart and not some spin
misters playbook.
He's going to do just fine here.