Ed Bruley Does It To Minorities Again!

BRULEY AGAIN BRUSHES OFF ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO

POLITICALLY ENFRANCHISE MACOMB COUNTY MINORITIES

The Macomb County Apportionment Committee meets today, Friday, June 3, 2011, to once again give the shaft to minorities in Macomb County.  Oh, wait, I should clarify that....three of the committee's four Democrats will do today more to keep blacks in their place than any other group in Macomb County ever has.  


The commission is made up of Macomb County Democratic Party chairman Ed Bruley, Macomb County Treasurer Ted Wahby, Macomb County Clerk Carmella Sabaugh, Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith, and Macomb County Republican Party Chairman Michael Ennis.


Smith, Ennis, and citizen John Cruz have submitted apportionment maps that more properly represent the latest census data in a way that provides for minority enfranchisement through the political process, while Ed Bruley's maps continues his practice of disenfranchising blacks in Macomb County. 


Ed Bruley will have his way. On the commission he controls Wahby and Sabaugh. Remember, Wahby gave Paul Gieleghem a cushy $50,000 job and Sabaugh can be bullied. The three of them could care less about what the census revealed regarding the increasing minority population.

Despite Bruley's history of ignoring opportunities to politically enfranchise Macomb County's minority population, Bruley has found a group of blacks he can control and even tried to hijack the Macomb County Democratic Black Caucus, of which I am chair. Bruley needs a group of blacks that he could pull off the shelf to support his latest act of dis-enfranchisement (he took Bobby Hill's seat. carved Clinton 
Township's 5th and 31th precincts out of Fred Miller's district, and now his latest map will deny blacks a political footprint in Warren and Eastpointe). His ice is always colder...and refreshing because Bruley's blacks bask in the validation and trinkets of acknowledgement that he provides them.

It will take the departure of Bruley, Wahby and Sabaugh for minorities to be properly integrated into the political landscape of Macomb County. John Cruz and Eric Smith tried their best. Their maps, and that of the Republican representative on the apportionment committee, would have more fairly represented the growing diversity of Macomb County. Bruley's map does not, perhaps because he has not yet found the blacks he needs to control in Warren and Eastpointe.

So, it will take another ten years and the departure of Bruley, Wahby, and Sabaugh for minorities to see real political enfranchisement in Macomb County.