“It’s a beautiful day,” says Ann Arbor state senator Jeff Irwin two days after Michigan Democrats won the executive, legislative, and judicial state elections on November 8. “We have a whole new set of opportunities to make our state better.”
New for sure: When the Dems take control of both houses of the state legislature in January, it’ll be the first time since 1984.
Three out of four county voters went straight Democratic, lofting Irwin back to the senate and newcomers Carrie Rheingans and Jennifer Conlin to the state house in districts west and north of Ann Arbor. A barrage of attack ads eroded county commissioner Sue Shink’s margin in the city slightly, but she’ll still join the state house with more than two-thirds of the vote. County voters also approved all three state ballot proposals—including 76 percent for Prop 3, which passed by 57 percent statewide and puts the “right to reproductive freedom” in the state constitution.
Mayor Christopher Taylor also rolled up 76 percent against independent Eric Lipson; and Jenn Cornell, who he endorsed, took 87 percent in the only contested council race. Four other candidates Taylor supported—Dharma Akmon, Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, Cynthia Harrison, and Chris Watson—swept through unopposed, giving the mayor and his allies complete control of city council.
Ann Arbor Proposal 1—the Community Climate Action Millage—trailed the candidates only slightly, passing with a landslide 71 percent of the vote. The one-mill tax will raise an estimated $150 million over twenty years to fund the city’s A2Zero carbon neutrality plan. “I’m delighted with the result,” says Taylor. Calling it “an incredibly big deal in the history of our city,” he says it will “provide impactful services to residents today and make long-term investments in carbon neutrality which will have decades of impact.”
Democrats also won all nine county commission seats. Among the winners: Yousef Rabhi, returning to the county board after being term-limited in the state house. Though he won’t be in Lansing to enjoy it, Rabhi feels “really good” about his party’s statewide win. “For the first time in a long time, we are gonna have the opportunity to do some real transformational stuff in the state of Michigan,” he says.
A total of 182,037 votes were cast, just shy of 2018’s midterm record of 182,153. “The election, as I have said from day one, hinged on voter enthusiasm,” says Rabhi, “and voter enthusiasm this year was driven by abortion. It was driven by the Republicans as a party basically deciding to no longer be participants in the American democratic process.”
“Candidate quality does matter,” Irwin says. “The Republican candidates at the statewide level were just so terrible that it was hard to support them.”
What will the Dems do with their majority? “It’s gotta be [repealing] right-to-work,” says Rabhi, speaking of the 2012 law that allows workers to opt out of union membership. “That’s gotta be number one.”
Irwin agrees the anti-union law is tops but adds “rebuilding our mental health system, building better early childhood education, more support for K–12, and also more support for higher education, which is crucial for U of M, EMU, and Washtenaw Community College.”
In addition to the city’s carbon-neutrality goals, Taylor says he’ll “continue to focus on improving basic services and enhancing quality of life … Residents will see a lot of changes over the next couple of years, particularly with respect to neighborhood streets.”
