The Warren Sun

Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel is one of many Michigan politicians who has shown opposition to the ways in which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has exercised her powers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hackel recently appeared on WJR's "The Paul W. Smith Show" to discuss his objections to the Whitmer administration.

When discussing the presidential race, Hackel said he finds himself positioned as a moderate, more interested in solutions that work than in convincing the public that a solution will work simply because it's the solution that fits a particular platform.

Hackel told Smith that he is "just tired of the rhetoric. I don't buy into far right, far left."

"I just can't tolerate it no more," Hackel said of divisive politics that take attention away from seeking viable solutions.

Hackel emphasized that his pushback regarding Whitmer's policies have come back to his desire to simply work out logical, functional solutions with transparent data behind those decisions.

"I'm just looking for answers," he told Smith. "I don't have any underlying reasoning as to why I will question or why I will support certain things. It's just based upon, what do I believe is the right thing? Not the politically correct thing on either side."

Hackel said his position regarding Whitmer's emergency powers has nothing to do with the substance of those orders, but the precedent of permitting any government executive to continue to wield that much power-by-pen-stroke is too dangerous to be permitted to continue.

"It flies in the face of what we call a representative democracy," Hackel told Smith. 

Hackel told Smith that he finds himself "very troubled" by the 1945 law Whitmer has cited in her continuing emergency powers. He said he would find those powers troubling regardless of who was entrusted to wield them.

"No one person should have that ability," Hackel said on the radio program.