Some choice: Check kiter or ducking drunk driver?

    Democrat voters in two of the five Grosse Pointes and all of Harper Woods will have slim pickings in the Aug. 5 Michigan primary election for District 1 State Representative.
    They can choose incumbent State Rep Brian Banks, who's been convicted eight times for writing bad checks. Or they can select challenger Michael Koester, a rookie Grosse Pointe Woods council member who last July was charged with drunk driving, but after 10 months of ducking has yet to go to trial.
     Some choice.
     Banks, 37, is the odds-on favorite for a second two-year term, having tallied 68 per cent of the vote in District 1 in Nov. 2012. Half of the gerrymandered district is in Detroit and another quarter covers Harper Woods - both areas heavily African American.
      Koester, 32, is white. His home city, Grosse Pointe Woods, and adjacent Grosse Pointe Shores are the only two of the five Grosse Pointes that were assigned to in District 1 after the most recent legislative reapportionment.
      Banks' criminal past has been well documented - and largely ignored - by Detroit voters and the Democrat Party.
      Newcomer Koester has been cruising under the radar since last July, when he was arrested and jailed, blowing a .14 on a Breathalyzer after crunching a street lampost on Lake Shore Drive in Grosse Pointe Shores in the wee hours of last July 7.
       Several postponments later, Koester still has not gone to trial on the drunk driving charge.
       In filing for state office, incidentally, Koester gets a political "free ride." His Grosse Pointe Woods council term isn't up until November 2015.