Ellis Boal for Charlevoix County Commissioner

1. Why should people vote for you?

   It is hard to sum up in 2-3 sentences, but I will try: The successful struggle to keep Wal-Mart out is a typical example of how I work: (a) do your homework, and (b) involve large masses of people. Other examples recently are my work with anti-war movement and with the striking nurses in Petoskey.

   I know many people disagree with the latter two. And so far they have not been successful, though I have great hopes for the peace work over the next year. In November, responding to one of my guest commentaries in the Petoskey News-Review, Congressman Bart Stupak changed his stance. Before, on his website he had favored continuing the war until "order and secuirty are restored" in Iraq. Today, he says support the troops by

   fund[ing] the equipment to keep them safe and the benefits promised. I also feel that it is time for the president to articulate a plan for troop withdrawal over the coming year.

   Even if you disagree with what I have done, I point to these examples to show the method by which successful government can be achieved. When citizens work together for a common goal, anything is possible.

   For a fuller answer you will just have to spend time on the site. The front page, the background page, the detailed bio page, and this FAQ page explain my credentials and my longterm vision for the county.

   After reading, if something is still unanswered, I hope you will email me.

2. Your opinion on the proposed regulation eliminating smoking at worksites and public places?

   At a bizarre meeting in November the county commissioners defeated a workplace smoking ban on a 3-3 tie vote. The regulation would cover Charlevoix and three adjacent counties. Then the commissioners voted 5-1 in favor of it, provided Charlevoix County is exempted.

   The law provides that the four counties must act as a group. The other three counties voted for it. The bottom line is, Charlevoix voted for the regulation in every county except itself.

   I would replace the commissioner who proposed this scheme if I am elected. I will support the workplace smoking ban for Charlevoix County.

   The full regulation is downloadable at Northwest Michigan Community Health Agency.

   Generally, at worksites it prohibits smoking in common areas, health care areas, and vehicles. Also covered are public transportation, public accommodations, meeting places, common areas of multi-unit residential areas, indoor galleries, libraries, museums, and recreation areas. Smoking is allowed in restaurants, bars, and private residences. Employers may set up separate ventilated inspected smoking rooms for employees, under terms negotiated by unions or employee groups.

   I have represented employees throughout my working life. I have seen injuries and deaths at the worksite. Sometimes the fault was the employer's, sometimes it was the employee's, and sometimes fault could not be assigned. None of that matters when it comes to saving lives. There are many workplace health-and-safety laws and this should be one of them. Smoking-related illnesses are a burden on the health system. The issue is too important to be left to personal choice.

   Clients and attorneys have not smoked in my office since the mid-1970s.

3. What is the "gold standard" for waterfront development?

   Many riparian owners are interested in water quality, but lack the knowledge or encouragement to take specific actions for compliance.

   Township boards and zoning administrators should have proactive assistance in enforcement. Use educational information from non-profits like Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council for a general overview of the importance of the greenbelt, letters to riparians from the zoning administrator outlining the zoning requirements, and a technical ombudsman who could assess problems and suggest solutions. Make fixes as easy as possible. If after a reasonable time no corrective action is taking place, then begin enforcement.

4. During the prosecutor campaign in 2004 your opponent's website said "My opponent doesn't have any criminal trial experience." Your response?

   As seen in my detailed biography, practically all of my cases have been civil, involving labor and employment from the workers' side. But a small number were criminal:

   • Last year I defended a young Native American man on two serious traffic misdemeanors. The morning after Easter when there was little traffic, he had stopped on US31 near Bay Shore to clear an obstruction from the oncoming lane. Two women he didn't know pulled up. They had lost the object -- a new pair of shoes. He gave it to them. They thanked him, and everyone pulled away. A passing police car suspected "criminal activity," the officer testified later. He also noticed a medicine wheel hanging from the passenger visor, but claimed that wasn't a factor. He pulled my client over, and charged and cuffed him and took him in. Later I was hired. We found the two women by a chance street encounter. My client chased and managed to flag down their car. I subpoenaed them to testify. I met the prosecutor and the police officer in a side room before the court hearing. I invited the prosecutor to interview the women. He would not. He said "They will be committing perjury." He apologized later, but I didn't care for that at the time. Politely I ended the meeting. The hearing began. The women testified, explaining first how my client had found them. The prosecutor did not cross-examine. Judge May called one of them back for further questions. In a ruling from the bench later reaffirmed in a written opinion, he credited them and my client, and dismissed the case. Thomas Erdmann of South Haven, my client's step-father, wrote an unsolicited and unexpected letter to the Petoskey News-Review, appreciating the court and the community.

   • Two years ago with co-counsel I defended seven members of Citizens to Save Healthcare -- including myself -- on trespass charges for sitting in at the offices of Northern Michigan Hospital demanding to know how much money it had diverted from health care to its fight against the Teamster nurses union. All seven cases were dismissed, including four after jury selection.

   • Weiss v City of Chicago arose out of protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. I was one of 13 -- including lawyers, newspaper columnists, and convention delegates -- who were voluntarily arrested for refusing a police order to disperse a march led by comedian/activist Dick Gregory from downtown Chicago to the convention site. At the time I was a school teacher and taxi driver. The six-week bench trial was my introduction to legal proceedings. We were convicted and and the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed. The US Supreme Court denied review. Justice William Douglas wrote separately, saying he would have granted review and reversed on free-speech grounds. Newspapers nationally covered the case, and my picture was in three different Chicago newpapers.

   • In the 1970s in Detroit I won three misdemeanor jury cases -- one involving kids at a party, one involving young political activists distrubuting literature at high schools, and one involving a driver who spit out the window onto another car that turned out to be a police car -- and one two-year felony jury case involving court-hallway conduct during proceedings of a rent strike. As assigned counsel in the same period I also lost one felony jury case. These cases were not appealed or reported anywhere, which is why they don't appear on my detailed bio page.

5. What are your complaints about the way the former drain commissioner JoAnne Beemon was being treated?

   She was not allowed to do her job. The drain code requires that Beemon serve office hours of at one day a week, with the day identified on her door and stationery. But the county paid her a dollar a year plus per diems.

   Two years ago departing prosecutor Mary Beth Kur said stormwater runoff regulations Beemon had drafted were unenforceable. I disagree:

   • The land division act provides that plats shall be conditioned on published rules of the drain commissioner, and the drain commissioner can require drains or storm water basins.

   • The mobile home commission act and accompanying rules require the drain commissioner's review as to outlet drainage pursuant to the drain commissioner's written rules.

   • The drain code provides for (1) negotiated agreements to dedicate private drains for public use under specifications of the drain commissioner, (2) stopping unacceptable substances in a drain by discretionary action of the drain commissioner, and (3) prescription of the amount and manner of tiling of drains by the drain commissioner.

   These regulations helped to stop Wal-Mart in Charlevoix.

   I summarized my opinions on this in an op-ed and a letter to the editor in the Petoskey News-Review. No letter-writer subsequently disagreed.

6. Are there other examples of environmental interests not being properly protected in the past?

   The stormwater ordinance drafted in 2001 was never properly published and never went into effect. Two years later the county realized there was a problem. Then it re-enacted the ordinance, and in the process changed some of the language back to the pre-2001 version.

7. Your lifetime litigation resumé is very impressive, except for the fact that if you examine all the decisions, you lost most of them. Explain.

   The type of case in which I specialized in private practice is not the type of case I would handle as prosecutor. I always represented workers against corporations and unions. Those cases are tough but occasionally I did score. I also had an effect in other ways. As explained on the background page, two of my cases are widely cited and studied in law schools. One of them clarified and the other changed the law itself.

8. You say you are for regular working folk. Yet you went to private schools and you live on the lake. Is that arrogant?

   I have to play the cards I am dealt. I try to work for the benefit of society, as I see the problems of society. Many people disagree with my solutions. But rarely do they doubt my sincerity.

9. Why aren't you a Republican or a Democrat, like most people?

   First, we don't have a functioning two-party system in Charlevoix. Though the Democrats may be backing a independent candidate against me, they did not put up anyone in their own name. In the last election they put up no county-wide candidates.

   Second, to be effective politically and in office, I believe, it is not sufficient simply to act on one's beliefs and values. Even with integrity and honesty, one person by himself or herself cannot hope to bring about significant changes in society. Change requires a group effort of like-minded people. That is what a political party is, or should be.

   Third, the Green Party program most closely mirrors my own ideas. The Republican and Democratic Party principles are less well-defined, and to the extent I grasp them I tend to disagree.

   For example, as reported in the Charlevoix Courier, Republicans opened a local headquarters in Charlevoix in 2002. Republican National Committee vice chair Chuck Yob was on hand, helping candidates celebrate.

   Well and good. But in giving reasons why voters should elect the Republican for secretary of state in 2002 Yob noted among other things "She is running against a man who is a black attorney from Detroit."

   Without comment, the Courier reported this on October 16, 2002, alongside a picture of local party candidates. If Yob didn't really say what he was quoted as saying, he could have written for a correction. He didn't.

   He continues to hold Republican office today, and continues to speak for the party.

   A political campaign should be an enlightening process, where candidates put forth their qualifications and positions. So, I do not agree with appeals like that one. They are one reason I have chosen the Green Party.

10. Why did the Green Party nominate you in a meeting instead of in an open primary election as the Republicans did? Is that backroom politics?

    The Green Party at present is small, and it is just not practical to work through a primary. Our nominating meeting for Charlevoix County was November 8. We notified everyone we knew of, including the print media, weeks in advance through emails and postcards. I was nominated in district 1. When the Green Party grows, we will have primaries in Michigan, as it does today in California.

11. How can the Green Party ever hope to succeed in a two-party winner-take-all system?

    In Charlevoix County the second party is the Green Party. As noted above, the Democrats have no county-wide candidates.

    More generally, even if the Greens get a toehold here, it will still be difficult regionally and nationally. What is needed is structural change, whereby a majority candidate can be selected. This can be done with instant runoff voting (IRV). Under IRV, in an election like this one where three or more candidates may be on the ballot, voters would mark down their first, second, and third choices. If no candidate gets an absolute majority, results are recounted with the bottom-most choice discarded, except that the votes which were alloted to it are re-distributed according to the second choice indicated on each of those ballots. With machine voting IRV is not difficult to implement.

12. Did you really march with Dr. Martin Luther King?

    In the fall of 1966 Dr. King was living in Chicago where I was in graduate school. I got involved in a campaign, supporting a progressive black candidate in a local election whose name I don't remember. I think he was running for city alderman or perhaps it was a state race. Doing get-out-the-vote work on election day, Dr. King was scheduled to address us at lunch. About 30 of us were there. I don't have a clear recollection that he actually did.

    Anticipating this question, last year I emailed an old friend Jack Bloom, a historian at Indiana University who has studied King's life. I asked if he could check sources and verify Dr. King's whereabouts and activities on election day of 1966.

    He could not, and therefore I do not know the answer to the question.