Laying in wait

Fahey’s group had cleared its first hurdle. But it faced an entrenched and well-armed opposition. Republican consultants and lawyers had been at work for more than two decades shaping Michigan’s political system to favor party candidates in state and federal legislative races. Working with representatives from the powerful Michigan Chamber of Commerce, they’d outflanked state Democrats in the 2000s.

As revealed in private emails unearthed by Bridge from a pending federal lawsuit, Michigan Republicans worked meticulously to pack Democratic voters into a limited number of districts in 2011 to maintain overall GOP majorities.

In one email, a GOP staffer bragged about cramming “Dem garbage” into southeast Michigan congressional districts. In another, a staffer lauded the 9th Congressional District in Macomb County as “giving the finger to (Democratic U.S. Representative) Sandy Levin. I love it.”

The Republican plan proved very effective: New boundaries drawn after the 2010 U.S. Census gave Republicans an edge in four additional seats in the state House, one additional seat in the state Senate and a 9-5 advantage in the U.S. Congress. Those boundaries also strengthened the party’s hold in districts already friendly to Republicans.

Which is why, while Michigan is nearly evenly divided between Democratic and Republican voters, Republican legislators have held sizeable majorities in both state chambers and in its congressional delegation.

Wounded, but never dead

As VNP shifted focus this year from collecting signatures to educating the public about gerrymandering and how to end it, the group’s opponents mobilized legal challenges.

They formed a group, Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution, which challenged the proposed ballot measure in the Michigan Court of Appeals. CPMC, funded primarily by the Michigan Chamber, argued that the redistricting proposal would change too many things about the state constitution to be decided by ballot.

VNP had its own lawyers: Attorneys who had donated more than $100,000 of their time to draft the ballot petition. But when the legal challenges began, VNP made its first big purchase — hiring lawyers at Fraser Trebilcock to defend the ballot measure. The group survived the appeals challenge and then this summer a second challenge before the Republican dominated Michigan Supreme Court, finally securing Prop 2’s place on the November ballot.

Fahey shrieked with joy when she learned of the ruling from the Voters Not Politicians Twitter account. It was a burst of good news following weeks of uncertainty.

As the Supreme Court showdown unfolded, big donors remained unwilling to pitch in without knowing whether Prop 2 would be on the ballot. VNP field operations ground to a halt as the group diverted all its funds into legal defense. Volunteers were still willing to give their time and money to continue the campaign, but Fahey feared the possibility that resentment could creep in among the ranks.

“Knowing we were in court, how do you justify paying for anything else when if you get thrown off the ballot none of it matters?” Fahey said. “So that was really hard. It was hard on morale.”

Tapping the money spigot

The state Supreme Court’s ruling boosted more than morale.

In the final three months of the campaign, Voters Not Politicians transformed from a primarily grassroots-funded organization to a $15 million behemoth funded mainly by out-of-state liberal groups. Millions of dollars rolled in from organizations that weren’t required to disclose their donors, for which Fahey made no apologies.

“At the end of the day,” Fahey told Bridge at the time, “when you’re up against other dark money, we don’t want to lose because we can’t fund a campaign.”

Small individual donations were suddenly being joined by endorsements from celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Lawrence. It was a far cry from the early months of scraping by; Fahey’s group was flush.

Protect My Vote, the opposition committee funded by the Michigan Freedom Fund that formed after Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution faded away, poured their own millions into animated advertisements and radio spots to convince voters that Prop 2 was overly confusing and susceptible to abuse.

Fahey, meanwhile, held seven debates with Tony Daunt, executive director of the Freedom Fund. She and McCullen, her assistant, were driving to one of the debates in Fahey’s mom’s minivan in October when they hit a deer carcass in the road, totalling the vehicle and paving the way for the brightly-colored Dodge Caravan the pair rode on Election Day.

The opposition ads frustrated Fahey, but they were expected. What she didn’t expect was pressure from environmental and social justice groups that wanted to join VNP’s efforts but expected some influence over how the redistricting campaign functioned. Fahey said some of these groups tried to pressure VNP to wait until 2020 to mount the ballot initiative, perhaps concerned that Prop 2 would bring neutrality to redistricting decisions just as progressive groups gained their own power in Lansing.

“That’s when it was clear to me we needed to be our own group,” Fahey said. “They wanted to see how (the 2018 election) panned out to see who got to gerrymander next. And we were not about that.”

In the end, political observers say the biggest surprise was just how easily VNP navigated its way to victory this fall.

Sarah Hubbard, principal of Lansing-based lobbying firm Acuitas, said business leaders, who might have otherwise been the largest funders of an opposition campaign, backed away from the issue after pro-Prop 2 groups began targeting board members of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce in attack ads.

“My sense is that they decided it wasn’t their battle to fight necessarily and that the downside reputational risk was too great,” Hubbard said. “Who else is going to come up with the money? There’s not a grassroots movement in support of gerrymandering out there.”

In past elections, business-related groups launched “just vote no” campaigns to defeat a variety of initiatives. But Ballenger, the political analyst, said those groups were easily outmaneuvered by Fahey’s group this year. “I don’t think Protect My vote operated with quite the speed and efficiency that the ‘no’ forces operated with six years ago,” he said.