Smietanka concedes to Granholm

Campaign that started friendly turned to mud-slinging

With 66 percent of the precincts reporting, Granholm had 1,022,269 votes, or 53 percent. Smietanka had 899,000 votes, or 47 percent.

Around 2 a.m. this morning, Smietanka conceded the race to a small group of supporters, many of them crying.

"I congratulate her for a hard-fought race and would urge everybody as is traditional, but I also mean it, to work hard to this attorney general's office work well for the people of this state," he said.

"To the extent that I can have any positive impact, I'll be happy to do so."

Just before that, Granholm had said she was excited but not yet ready to declare herself the winner.

"We'll just wait for the final results," she said. "It's been overwhelming. It's just an amazing thing, when you think that I really was not a political figure and I have never been elected to office before."

With Geoffrey Fieger at the top of the Democratic ticket, many considered Granholm, the Wayne County corporation counsel, the best hope statewide for the Democrats. If elected, she also would become Michigan's first female attorney general.

Smietanka, a former U.S. attorney for western Michigan, was fighting once again for the office he lost to Frank Kelley in the 1994 election. Smietanka won the Republicans' nomination in August even though he lacked Gov. John Engler's support.

Pre-election polls showed the race as very tight.

Despite bitter advertising campaigns on both sides, neither candidate ever had more than a single-digit lead.

The winner succeeds Kelley - known as Michigan's "eternal general" - a Democrat who is retiring after serving since 1962.

Both Smietanka and Granholm had solid backgrounds, backing from law enforcement and newspaper endorsements.

Although they had different positions on abortion and gun control, both said they wanted to expand the attorney general's Internet crimes unit, continue Kelley's consumer advocacy record and start neighborhood-based programs to fight crime.

Smietanka served for 12 years as U.S. attorney for the western district of Michigan and worked for the U.S. Justice Department before starting his own law firm in Grand Rapids. Granholm served four years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit before becoming Wayne County's corporation counsel.

The campaign started friendly, but grew hotter in the weeks before the election. In a debate last Friday, with fingers pointing, Smietanka said the state Democratic Party was misinforming the public about his child support record and lying about how much money he loaned to his own campaign.

Granholm countered that the Republican Party was lying about her conviction record.

The problems began in mid-September, when Granholm distanced herself from Fieger's crime plan because she didn't agree with putting non-violent drug offenders in treatment instead of prison.

Smietanka literature, however, referred to the crime plan as "the Granholm-Fieger plan."

Later, ads sponsored by the Michigan Republican Party said Granholm was "hand-picked by Geoffrey Fieger."

Granholm fought back with an ad touting the support of the popular Kelley, while the Democratic Party pitched in with an ad showing Smietanka with a Pinocchio nose.

By the end of last week, attorneys for both candidates were asking television stations to pull the ads. Legal wrangling between the two candidates could continue well after the election.

Granholm will replace Democrat Frank Kelly, who served as attorney general for nearly 40 years.

Smietanka

Granholm

11-04-98