Michigan Democrats Petition Tina Fey

With Fox News Channel reporting that Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin says she would be "happy" to go to Michigan--the top of the ticket, John McCain, has pulled resources out of the state--Michigan Democrats have launched an online petition to get Palin laugh-alike Tina Fey to come instead.

"John McCain has abandoned Michigan just like George W. Bush did for the past eight years," said Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer in an e-mail release Thursday. "We'd be happy to welcome Tina Fey as a substitute to spread their message of more of the same policies that ship our jobs overseas and make health care unaffordable."

Fey has been doing a wicked send-up of the Alaska governor on Saturday Night Live.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Republicans launched their own petition, looking to get Palin to the state to stump for Republicans in local races.

The Democrats petition went live late Tuesday night, but the party didn't start publicizing it until Wednesday. Liz Kerr, a spokeswoman for the party did not have a tally on how many had signed the petition, but said that at some point they planned to present it to Fey through her publicist in hopes that she will come. She did not say how they would present the petition, but added they were open to suggestions.

"We saw that the Republicans had a petition [to get Palin to the state]," said Kerr, "so we thought we would come up with one of our own. We're still brainstorming on the next step."


Kerr said that as of midnight Wednesday they had 537 signatures, but at press tiome they had just sent it out to a 100,000-person e-mail list.


A spokesman for SNL said Fey was not commenting on anything Palin-related. Fey's publicist seconded that.


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John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.