by
Christopher Graveline
Christopher Graveline wore a very nice pinstriped suit to his Monday morning meeting. It lacked the crackpot distinction of Don Quixote’s shaving-basin helmet, but the two men share an impossible dream. Don Quixote wanted to achieve glory through knighthood. Graveline wants to be elected attorney general of Michigan as an independent.
Many voters, Graveline believes, yearn for someone like him – competent, experienced, decent, not the ambitious candidates running on the major-party tickets, all with positions staked out on the political right and left. Graveline is a 45-year-old former Army lawyer (one who can say he helped prosecute the Abu Ghraib defendants, surely more interesting than your average captain with a juris doctorate), who says he occupies the moderate middle. Hence, his independent candidacy to be the state’s top lawyer.
He knows his chances of winning are approximately that of a mule running the Kentucky Derby, on more than one level. Anyone who might attempt to enter such an animal in that race would find themselves disqualified well short of the starting line. And that’s what happened to Graveline last week when he tried to submit a little over 14,000 voter signatures to qualify for the ballot as an independent. Michigan law requires 30,000 valid signatures, and the state Bureau of Elections wouldn’t even accept his application.
No worries. Graveline’s a lawyer. He’ll be suing.
Message of Moderation
In the meantime, he’s continuing to talk about his message of moderation, of using the AG’s office to focus the law for the good of all people in Michigan, not as a cudgel for one side to use on the other, or as a springboard to the governor’s office for the person who holds it. He wants to bring his experience as a federal prosecutor in Detroit to bear on the state’s many ills, including violent crime, opioid abuse, identity theft and consumer protection. He sees himself as a servant like Frank Kelley, who served 38 years in the AG’s office before leaving in 1999.
“He stood up for people,” Graveline said. “Where has that been in the last 12, 15, 16 years?”
Attorney General Bill Schuette
Graveline sees the current occupant of the office, Bill Schuette, as having stood up for the Michigan Republican party, by attacking Obamacare and a ballot petition against partisan gerrymandering. He expects that if he’s replaced by either state legislators Tom Leonard or Tonya Schuitmaker, running as Republicans in next month’s primary, or Dana Nessel, the sole Democrat on the ballot, the office will continue to be run that way.
Graveline thinks it should be a nonpartisan post.
“The politicization of the office encourages these political death matches,” he said.
Graveline knows a thing or two about hot cases. As a prosecutor of the Abu Ghraib prison defendants in the early 2000s, he co-wrote a book about the experience. He said he was fortunate to have a commanding officer in that notorious case who wasn’t swayed by the worldwide publicity over lurid photos that revealed American soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners.
“He said let’s find out the facts, and prosecute (based on) the facts,” he said. “My initial read was that these soldiers were told to (do those things, by superior officers), but that’s not true. These were prison guards on the night shift, and the detainees were their props.”
Eleven American service members were convicted of various crimes related to the abuse.
Detroit Gang Prosecutions
More recently, Graveline served in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit, heading the Violent and Organized Crime Unit, where he prosecuted gang members in Detroit. He had to leave his job to run for office, leaving his large family – he and wife Colleen have five children, ages 5 through 15 – without an income until his future is clearer. He’s not worried about finding work after his quest fails, as it almost certainly will.
“My resume speaks for itself,” he said. Informed that some more paranoid voters see independent candidates as being backed by Russia, to split the Democratic vote to benefit Republicans, he laughs.
“I have a security clearance from the U.S. government,” he said. “I’m not doing this to be the spoiler. The current system doesn’t allow for someone like me. That needs to change, because I think it’s what people want.”
