“I thought they were gonna go from the top to get rid of their highest [paid] teachers,” explains Shelly Brock, fifty-seven. “So I really started looking for different jobs. I am really interested in the administrative aspect and the caring for people aspect of [the clerk’s office].”
“I don’t know the current clerk,” she admits. “I don’t know how he has things. I just know how I would go about trying to create the best environment.” Asked why voters should choose her and not the incumbent, Brock replies, “That’s up to them. I just know what I would love to try to provide, and I want to try to make sure that I am meeting the needs of the people in my office [and] the needs of the public.”
“I’m not a political person,” Brock says. “I am very genuine, open, and honest, almost to a fault sometimes.”
Larry Kestenbaum was first elected clerk in 2004 by defeating the Republican incumbent, and he’s defeated every challenger, Democrat or Republican, since then. He says he’s running again because “I love the job, and I’ve accomplished a lot. I think there’s a lot more to be done.
“The whole world of elections has changed radically just over the last few years,” says Kestenbaum, sixty-eight. “It’s gonna continue to change, and so we’re implementing these new constitutional mandates [voters approved in 2022], including early voting and drop boxes and permanent absentee voting.”
He says the clerk’s office has done “very well” under his leadership—and with less staff. “The county has grown significantly over that time,” Kestenbaum says. “And the office is only half as big as it was in terms of number of employees.”
Related: County clerk Larry Kestenbaum
Asked if he’s concerned that Brock might beat him, Kestenbaum replies: “There’s a saying—and you’ve probably heard this—‘A candidate has a right to be paranoid.’ And so I am.”
“Everyone will say that it’s really hard to beat an incumbent,” Brock acknowledges. “I just am gonna try to put my best foot forward.”
After a month of campaigning, Brock emails, “Things are very busy here” but declines to say more. Kestenbaum writes that “I walked in both the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti 4th of July parades, with big ‘Kestenbaum’ banners. My opponent wasn’t there at all.
The Democratic winner will face a Republican in the November general election. Also on the primary ballot are Adam de Angeli, executive director of the Washtenaw County Republican Party, or Samantha Strayer, a member relations representative at DFCU Financial.
According to his website, de Angeli’s first professional campaign role was with Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign; in 2021 he founded the Rescue Michigan Coalition, which his website says is now “the state’s largest conservative grassroots leadership organization with over 70,000 active subscribers.”
In response to a League of Women Voters questionnaire, Strayer describes herself as a writer with a bachelor’s in political science from U-C Irvine and a master’s in politics from Hillsdale College. “My goals are first to ensure the integrity of our elections,” she writes. “For example, there is no requirement for any voter to prove s/he is a citizen [and] we need strict rules on signature verification as well as full transparency of the process.”
Neither Republican candidate responded to repeated interview requests.
