Brewer Withdraws Amid Democratic Struggle For Party Chair
DETROIT (WWJ) - UPDATE 3:52 P.M. Brewer withdraws.
"In the interest of Party unity - I am withdrawing my candidacy," says former Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer Saturday afternoon.
Democratic Party Chair
There is a flurry of activity at Cobo Center, as two Democratic party members battle for the chairman's seat. Current chair Mark Brewer and challenger Lon Johnson from Kalkaska, both believe they have enough delegate votes.
Democratic Chair hopeful Lon Johnson stood his ground at the convention Saturday. He's aiming to unseat current chair Mark Brewer. The 41-year-old Johnson says its time for a change in leadership and more must be done to put his party back in power at the state capitol.
"We need to do more," said Johnson. "When we lose - elections have consequences, bad things happen. When we lose we get emergency manager, when we win we get local control and we're not going to run from that."
But Brewer also believes he still has a fighting chance.
"We have a very strong urban agenda, very active in urban elections, getting the vote out, you know we fought very hard against the emergency manager law - the first one and the second one, we've fought very hard for civil rights over the years ... so I'm very proud of our urban agenda, (and) our civil rights agenda," he said.
"We're still in the home stretch - we'll know in a few hours who the next chair for the Democratic party is," said Brewer.
Brewer has been acting chair of the democratic state party for 18 years. He was recently criticized for his lax urban agenda ... but Brewer says he's proud of his work with urban elections and says he fought hard against the emergency financial manager law.
While the GOP meet in Lansing where state Republicans have re-elected chairman Bobby Schostak to represent them.
