LANSING - What saved the Michigan's Prevailing Wage Act of 1965? Last year at about this time, prospects for keeping the law were dim.

The first salvo against prevailing wage - the most important law on the state's books that sustains wage levels and a healthy construction industry - was the fact that repealing it was made the top legislative priority in the Republican-led state Legislature at the start of 2015. And repeal of the law actually passed in a vote by the state Senate.

Then prevailing wage became the target of no less than two failed petition drives during the past 12 months, until the plug was pulled last month on the second signature gathering effort by its sponsors at the Associated Builders and Contractors and its front group, Protecting Michigan Taxpayers.

So despite the backing of the deep-pocketed Devos family of Grand Rapids to fund the repeal effort, and overwhelming GOP support for repeal legislatively (except by Gov. Snyder, whose likely veto has kept prevailing wage in place), the law survives.

It was a "strategic decision," to stop the second prevailing wage repeal petition, said Chris Fisher, the former president of the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors of Michigan not long after the petition effort was ended.

Patrick "Shorty" Gleason, legislative director of the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council, speculated that the "strategic decision" to stop the second petition drive was likely based on one nagging, overriding factor that likely made gathering legitimate petition signatures difficult: Michigan residents strongly support prevailing wage.

"I really believe that as hard as they tried to push their agenda to repeal prevailing wage, it was not received well by the public," Gleason said. "You look at the polling, and at what an absolute disaster the first petition drive was, and I think they came to the conclusion that there was no point in repeating that effort this year."

The polling is convincing. In June 2015, a Detroit News/Glengariff poll of 600 likely voters found that 59.2 percent of respondents support prevailing wage, with only 25 percent opposing the law. The News said at the time: "A group seeking to repeal Michigan's 50-year-old prevailing wage law might find its biggest support among Republican state lawmakers: A new poll suggests likely voters want to keep union-level wages for government construction projects."

That poll followed an EPIC/MRA poll in May 2015 of 400 likely Michigan voters, which found that 49 percent believe the law should be kept as is, and 29 percent said it should be repealed or eliminated, with the rest undecided or refused to answer.

"The citizens of Michigan have a tremendous amount of respect for the hard-working men and women in the building trades, and you're not going to find a lot of people who support cutting their wages," Gleason said. "I think that's what makes getting enough signatures for a petition drive that much harder."

The petition drive in 2015 to repeal the Michigan Prevailing Wage Act cost about $1.8 million and didn't have trouble getting enough signatures - but it did have trouble getting enough legitimate signatures. The ABC/Protect Michigan Taxpayers hired a Las Vegas firm, Silver Bullet Inc., to collect the names. They collected and turned in more than 390,000 signatures to the state Board of Canvassers, but 43 percent of the names were ruled invalid, with nearly 50,000 duplicate signatures. The effort was thrown out, and the ABC/Protect Michigan Taxpayers have since filed a lawsuit against Silver Bullet in an attempt to get their money back.

The second repeal effort, which involved the hiring of a Michigan-based firm to collect the signatures, started and stopped this year after only six to eight weeks of petition gathering in March and April.

If the required 252,523 legitimate signatures had been gathered, the state Constitution allows petitioners to bring their issue before the state Legislature for a vote (without any input from a potential veto by the governor). If the Legislature doesn't approve the petition language and make it into law, the matter then goes before a vote of the people in the next general election.

Todd Tennis, an IBEW lobbyist for Capitol Services in Lansing, said before the dual petitions to repeal prevailing wage came along, the prevailing thinking was that if sponsors had enough money to hire signature gatherers, any petition issue could garner enough names.

"These two petition efforts are showing that might not be the case," Tennis said. "I think what happened here is that the people do support prevailing wage, and public opinion has been swayed by the various efforts of the building trades to educate the public and the membership, especially with the Decline to Sign effort. That made it harder for the people sponsoring the petition to pull the wool over the public's eyes. And poll after poll has shown that Michigan supports prevailing wage."

Both Gleason and Tennis said they doubt that this will be the last effort to repeal the Michigan Prevailing Wage Act, and the ABC's Fisher told The Detroit Free Press that "We’re not going anywhere. Stay tuned; everything remains on the table at this time.”

Tennis said the spigot of money backing the effort also may have been turned off, for now. “But I am certain they are not surrendering. Prevailing wage repeal has been their Holy Grail for some time now.”

Gleason said with this being an active election year with many local offices up for grabs, and hundreds of candidates walking door to door, now is a great opportunity for building trades union members to ask present and future lawmakers about their position on prevailing wage.

"Ask them where they stand on prevailing wage," Gleason said. "Have a conversation with them. They may have never heard of it, but just letting them know that prevailing wage is important to you is one of the biggest things our members can convey to our lawmakers."