Johnson spending big bucks to make you believe: your government for free

If it feels like you’ve seen a lot of Perry Johnson ads on TV lately, it’s because you have.

As of today, the super-rich Republican gubernatorial candidate has spent $12.1 million on broadcast, cable and streaming services to air his commercials from mid-January to April 7.

It’s a never-before-seen sum of money that’s only fully appreciated in context. 

Put Progress First, a Super PAC created to benefit Mike Duggan has spent $6.4 million. Duggan’s campaign has spent roughly another $1 million. 

Everyone else in the race – John James, Jocelyn Benson, Mike Cox, Aric Nesbitt, Tom Leonard, etc. — have spent a combined $1.4 million.

Remember those “Tough Nerd” Rick Snyder commercials back in 2010? He spent $6 million for the entire primary. 

Yes, billionaire Dick DeVos and his wife, Betsy, spent $35.5 million of their own money back in his unsuccessful 2006 bid to unseat Gov. Jennifer Granholm. At that time, it was the most a Republican gubernatorial candidate had ever spent from his personal fortune in the country.

Johnson is spending in that stratosphere, making him, instantly, a viable contender for the Republican nomination and to win in November.

But money only gets Johnson so far. If money was everything, we’d have had a Gov. Dick DeVos or a Gov. Shri Thanedar.

There’s a likability factor that’s evaded Johnson up to the point. DeVos didn’t have it. Thanedar had it, but he came off a little too goofy.

Snyder had his lovable self-deprecating “nerd” shtick that felt was so genuine that it connected.

Johnson isn’t humble, isn’t self-deprecating and definitely not lovable. According to him, he saved the U.S. auto industry. True or not, the arrogance is off-putting. If you’ve noticed, he’s dropped that line in favor of a new pitch.

Eliminate the income tax. It’s a great line this time of year. You see how much you pay to the Department of Treasury. Complain that the “damn” roads still aren’t fixed. Wouldn’t it be great just to get rid of it?

Same with the property tax. Who looks forward to writing that beefy check every six months?

Johnson is with you on that. Shave off a little waste, fraud and abuse. Tell state government to cut a percent off their budgets. Viola! 

Which gets to the real point of today’s column.

Can a political candidate spend enough money on an unrealistic gimmick and win?

Can the unrealistic become realistic if the message is repeated on your screen over and over and over again? 

It’s along the same lines of “if you tell a lie long enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Look, I’m not going to tell you eliminating Michigan’s income tax is fantasy, but I’m going to give you two numbers. 

According to the Department of Treasury, Michigan brought in $13 billion from the income tax last fiscal year.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s proposed General Fund Fiscal Year 2027 budget is $13.6 billion.

Michigan’s doesn’t have Florida’s massive tourism industry revenue. It doesn’t have Texas’s oil fields. It doesn’t have Tennessee’s sales tax, which is 9.75% in some places.

It brings in money primarily from a 4.25% sales tax and a 6% sales tax. The property tax pays for your local services and schools.

The General Fund pays for such things as the Michigan State Police, the Department of Corrections, the state’s share for Medicaid, fixing Michigan’s roads and hundreds of other programs and services.

As Bill Ballenger from the Ballenger Report said in this week’s edition of MIRS about Johnson’s idea: “Forget about funding government and school and infrastructure altogether. There’s a word for this – anarchy!”

Wasn’t it Fox Mulder from the X-Files who had the poster in office reading, “I Want to Believe?” 

The public wants to believe. Not in UFOs and extraterrestrials, but something just about as fantastic. 

Here’s an amazingly successful person telling us that we can pay basically nothing for a functional government.

Do we buy it? 

He’s got $12.1 million on the table saying that we do.

 (Kyle Melinn is the editor of the Capitol news service MIRS. You can email him at melinnky@gmail.com.)