Warns Bliss Leaders/Best Man In State/Great Opportunity offered the people of Michigan Decency in Public life

WARNS BLISS LEADERS

Of Impending Defeat by Such Strong Ticket
The Detroit Journal, the republican organ and chief advocate of ripperism, is compelled to acknowledge the strength o the ticked and does so in these words:
The democratic state convention yesterday made a ticket that challenges the attention of the people and the leaders of the republican party. Not every name on the ticket stands for a man of ability equal to that of the leader and the nominee for justice of the supreme court. But no one of them is conspicuously unfit by character or native talent or acquired experience to fill the position to which he was nominated. Frankly, it is a ticket that does honor to the party that named it. With equal frankness it may be added that it is vastly better than the party when that party is in power. Speaking with like candor, had the democratic party been in power for the last two or more years, it would not have named Judge Durand or governor.
The journal only does its duty when it points out that the ticket is strong in elements of attractiveness to the independent voter, who thinks it his duty occasionally to chasten the dominating party. It is weak only because it is what may be called a Cleveland democracy ticket, in which the so-called traitors in the democratic ranks to the sacred cause of the white metal are given the first places in the seats of the would-be mighty - a naturally irritating fact to those who bore the the heat and burden of the desperate fight surrounding the last effort of the peerless leader to win on an issue even then deserving of respect only for its age. How much this elevation of the gold element of the party for the enforced worship of its silver rank and file may work out to the advantage of the republican ticket it is impossible to say.

We advise the republican party not to place too much stress on that weakness of their opponents. Estimated at its utmost as likely to cause a failure to deliver to the Durand ticket the entire normal democratic vote, the fact still remains that the ticket is not one that can be sneered down or otherwise treated lightly. This is an off year, and that fact favors precisely the kid of ticket nominated yesterday. Backed by hard work the republican ticket is safe. Otherwise there is danger

BEST MAN IN STATE

________

For Governor the Detroit Free Press Says is Judge Durand

The Detroit Free Press editorially says:

The nomination of Judge George H. Durand for governor by the democratic state convention was a triumph of political sanity, and the acceptance of the nomination on the part of the nominee becomes an imperative duty of citizenship. Seldom in the history of Michigan has a political convention paid so high an honor to a candidate. Judge Durand might have been nominated for governor without appreciable opposition had he but given his consent; but after he had written an open letter positively declining the nomination, and leaders of the party had arrayed themselves in opposition to his nomination, the rank and file in the convention trampled upon its leaders, trampled upon the judge's declination, trampled upon all petty considerations of "regularity," and nominated the man whose candidacy would appeal most powerfully to the people of the state. There have been no more satisfying manifestations of the intelligence of a party convention that is not corrupt or boss-ridden and that acknowledges subservience to nobody.

The nomination of Judge Durand will prove an inspiration to the advocates of good government in Michigan, whether they be democrats republicans or independents. There is a man of full gubernatorial caliber! If the entire citizenship of the state of Michigan had been at the disposal of the convention it could not have made a more felicitous choice. Judge Durand has served his state with honor on the supreme bench. His abilities as a jurist are unquestioned. His personal integrity has not and cannot be impeached. His character is beyond reproach. Even in the older and more luminous days of her political history Michigan produced no public man of a higher type.

There can be no excuse for the failure of any voter, who is dissatisfied with existing political conditions in this state, to support the candidacy of George H. Durand. No man of higher ability or purer purpose has ever been chosen to the office of chief executive of the commonwealth. If he is elected, he will discharge the duties of the governorship without fear or favor. He will be the chief executive of Michigan - not the tool of an organization, or the creature of a political syndicate. He will restore to the state capitol its ancient traditions - the tradition of scholarship, the tradition of intellectual as well as financial honesty, the tradition of independence, the tradition of recognized ability.

The governorship will no longer be a political broker's office conducted for the benefit of speculators in the faith and credit of the commonwealth. It will have passed into the hands of a gentleman who is without fear and without reproach. After many years Michigan will have a chief executive who requires no apologies. The consummation is one so devoutly to be wished that the nomination of George H. Durand should appeal to the citizenship of Michigan regardless of every consideration but the honor and good name of the state.

GREAT OPPORTUNITY
Offered the People of Michigan for Decency in Public Life

The Detroit Evening News' leader is.
For almost the first time in the history of Michigan, state issues are to be at the fore in a campaign for the election o a state administration. Alone and of itself this is an enormous gain for the commonwealth whose government for many years has been nothing more than an adjunct to the machine of a United States senator, and whose officers have been elected on the tariff issie, the money issue and every other issue that had no possible or remotest connection with the question of honest and intelligent administration of the government at Lansing.
Undoubtedly the republican bosses will make every effort to divert attention from the issues which the democratic platform has raised and to distract the popular mind with national matters; but the democracy has a candidate fully in sympathy with the platform adopted and the purpose it represents, and the lessons of misrule will be driven home with a will from now until November. The republicans will be forced to reply, and every effort that they may make to explain or defend their position must necessarily involve them in worse confusion.

But the platform places the enemy on the defensive, the nominee for governor puts them to rout. It will be a bold and audacious republican spellbinder who will dare institute comparison between Aaron T. Bliss and George H. Durand. To make the suggestion before and audience would be to invite contempt for his candidate.
In the first place, Judge Durand is not a politician. He has no personal ambitions for which he would sully his own honor or corrupt that of the meanest voter in the state. His idea of office is service, a duty to his neighbors and fellow-citizens who constitute the state, and who, as he said in an interview a short time ago, are all partners in the pubic business. His simple and regretful depreciation of the use of money in politics, the purchase of honors, the corrupting of the youth soon to be citizens differentiates him, at once, from a man capable of joining in such a disgraceful scramble for political preferment as that in which his opponent first landed the prize that he has pursued so long and so ardently, and to gain which his was willing to make such shameful concessions to hurtful influences in our public lie. It is the difference between the man that who seeks the office with feverish and unscrupulous desire, and the man that is dragged from congenial retirement by the urgent and insistent demands of a people deeply stirred by the indignities put upon their state, and believing him fitted to right their wrongs and restore to them a government conducted in the public interest.

In opening the convention that nominated Judge Durand, Alfred Luckling declared that the assembly was charged with the high responsibilities in a people's campaign against bad government. Both candidate and platform are an earnest that these responsibilities were soberly and understandingly assumed, and that and invitation has been issued by Michigan democracy to men of all parties who recognize and deplore existing conditions in the stat to join in driving the money-changers out of the temple, restoring justice and honor to their appointed niches in the state capitol and recreating popular sovereignty in its true sense. The promise of success lies in the wise choice of that convention, resulting from its sincere determination to put forward the man who could best unite and inspire the elements which have the one common ground of condemning the ripperism,