The Newcomers

The Detroit Free Press called it an “historic power shift.” Empowered by a citizen-led redistricting plan, last November Michigan voters swept a Democratic majority into the state house and senate for the first time in almost forty years, while also reelecting Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer.

The winners included three first-time Democratic state representatives from districts that include Ann Arbor. (A fourth, Felicia Brabec, won reelection.) In both chambers in Lansing, though, the margins are narrow—just two votes in each—so there’s a sense of precariousness about their hold on power.

The newcomers say that while day-to-day dealings with Republican legislators are usually amicable, GOP reps vote as a bloc against their initiatives, so that even a couple of wavering Dems can doom a bill. “I’m surprised how hard it is to pass legislation, even with a Democratic majority,” Jason Morgan says. Behind the scenes, “There’s still a heavy influence of corporate money and dark money.” 

For now, though, Morgan, Jennifer Conlin, and Carrie Rheingans are savoring legislative victories in everything from education and the environment to gun safety and gay rights.

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When Conlin took a call from Ann Arbor city councilmember Travis Radina in January of 2022, she assumed it was a typical fundraising request. “Which candidate do you want help with now?” she asked.

“Ideally, you would be,” he replied. “We want you to run for state rep.” 

Although she’d volunteered for the Dems and groups like Planned Parenthood, Conlin, the daughter of a prominent—and usually Republican-voting—Ann Arbor family, had not thought of entering politics. A journalist, she was editing the U-M alumni association magazine and freelancing for the New York Times. 

Still, Radina’s pitch resonated. Just two months earlier, she had covered the Oxford High School shooting for the Times. “It was just horrible,” she says. “Walking down the street of Oxford and going into the cafe. People were just like in the fetal position, in their mothers’ arms.”

Driving back to her home in Ann Arbor, she reflected that “I just turned sixty … Is there something else I want to be doing with my life than writing about this stuff?’” 

Radina, who knew her from the alumni association, enjoys scouting out new talent for Democratic races. (He also encouraged Rheingans to run.) Conlin, he says, impressed him as a “critical thinker,” who, through journalism, has explored issues that include gun violence, poverty, and human rights abuses.

It probably didn’t hurt that the Conlin name is well-known locally; several generations of Conlin men have been judges, including her second cousin, trial court judge Patrick Conlin.

Conlin’s husband, journalist Daniel Rivkin, was enthusiastic; on a Zoom call, so were their three adult kids. Encouraged, Conlin quickly called prominent local Dems, securing their support.

The Ann Arbor News described the reconfigured Forty-Eighth district as “one of the most competitive.” Conlin recalls Radina telling her, “We really need someone to run who can listen to both sides.” Campaigning furiously in places like Webster and Genoa townships, Conlin won by almost eight percentage points.

In her Lansing office one September afternoon, Conlin talks fast but projects friendliness. Her district, she says, is “kind of bizarre. I have almost all farms, rivers, lakes, and parks. I have the part of Ann Arbor that’s north of Plymouth Road and west of Dixboro Road. I don’t have the city of Brighton, I don’t have the city of Howell, I don’t have the city of Dexter. But I have [the countryside] all around them. I only have townships, a sliver of Ann Arbor, and the village of Pinckney.”

Going door to door, Conlin says, she wore a shirt that said “‘Jennifer Conlin for State Representative’—it didn’t say I was a Democrat or a Republican.” If someone said they were a Republican, she’d respond, “Well, I’m not a Republican, but half my family are.” 

One man, she says, chased her down the street, shouting, “I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure you don’t win.” But mostly, people were polite, even on hot-button issues like gun control.

That was one of the Democrats’ first priorities: in March, they passed laws requiring background checks for all firearms purchases, safe storage, and “extreme risk protection orders” that will let courts remove guns from owners who judges decide are a danger to themselves or others. “I have a lot of responsible gun owners, who are hunters, who are all behind this,” says Conlin.

But reflecting her purple district, she mostly emphasizes issues that play well across party lines. She held a well-attended town hall in Hamburg Township about lake pollution. And she shares with voters that her eighty-nine-year-old mother, who lives with her, “can’t always afford her prescriptions. All three of my children have student debt.” 

As chair of the house Military, Veterans, and Homeland Security Committee, Conlin sponsored legislation to expand tuition benefits to National Guard family members. And she introduced a bill that increased scrutiny of predatory “payday loans.” She inherited the initiative from a previous Democrat, but her years of reporting on Detroit for the Times had alerted her to the misery caused by the loans, which according to the state’s consumer protection unit, carry annual interest rates as high as 391 percent.

Conlin says she enjoys close ties to family members who identify as Republicans. But she recalls that her parents, Bill, now deceased, and Nan Conlin, “switched to being Democrats” after her family moved in with them a decade ago.

“They liked Obama,” she says. “By the time my father passed away he was watching MSNBC 24/7. To the point I was like, ‘Turn it off, Dad.’”

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“I grew up in rural Michigan, where I never in a million years would have run for office, based on who I am and being LGBT,” reflects Jason Morgan. “It just wouldn’t have happened in Pinconning.”

We’re meeting at the Arborland Starbucks, near the home he shares with his husband Jon Mallek, a state government employee. Casually dressed, he’s short, slight, and boyish—though he’s thirty-four, he says, he still gets carded in bars. With his youthful, unassuming demeanor, Morgan has been surprising people since he was seventeen, and became the first openly gay person to take a date to the high school prom. (The homecoming queen, he says, went to bat for them.)

He moved to Ann Arbor shortly after graduating from Northern Michigan University in 2011. Fascinated with politics since he was a kid, he landed an entry-level job for congressman John Dingell and stayed on to work for Dingell’s widow and successor, Debbie Dingell. While completing his master’s in public administration at U-M, he took temporary jobs for congresswoman Haley Stevens and others.

Elected to the county commission in 2016, he was serving his third term when the state rep seat opened up. Playing at a higher level appealed to him, he says, because of frustrations that the state “didn’t adequately fund services—meaning that the county has to pick up the slack.” He coasted to victory in the Twenty-Third District, which stretches from Ann Arbor’s east side into Wayne and Livingston counties.

Things are less lonely for Morgan than they might have been; about half a dozen state reps are openly gay. Morgan has introduced a measure to replace the words “husband” and “wife” with “spouse” in the state constitution. He admits it’s unlikely to pass because it would require two-thirds approval from the legislature and then a public vote. But Morgan feels the change would offer some protection in case the U.S. Supreme Court reverses its 2015 decision legalizing gay marriage. If that happens, he says, his own marriage “could be overturned. Or other folks may not be allowed to get married in our state.”

Equally passionate about the environment, he recently addressed a League of Conservation Voters rally on the Capitol steps. “I grew up every day swimming in the Great Lakes,” he says, and his father supported the family as a commercial fisherman. Along with state senator Jeff Irwin, he’s preparing a package of bills to make businesses pay to clean up sites they pollute. Though Morgan calls himself an optimist, he notes, “You have any environmental protections, you have the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and other entities fighting back.” 

He considers his party’s biggest victory to date its refueling of the education budget. “It’s tens of millions more for most of our school districts, along with free lunches, increased support for special education and at-risk students, and a more equitable funding system.” Ann Arbor, he points out, will get about $17 million more from the state this year, which he suspects may go in part to increasing the pay of hard-to-hire school bus drivers.

Morgan describes himself as a “mild-mannered” policy wonk, with a strong analytical bent. But he came to elected office from a different place than most. “Having muscular dystrophy was really the driver to get into politics to do the right thing for the right reason,” he says.

He and his mother wept together when, at age thirteen, he was diagnosed with an uncommon form of the crippling condition. Doctors predicted he’d be in a wheelchair in his mid-twenties (at thirty-four, he runs every day) and that he would probably not live past his early forties (a doctor recently told him that she has patients with his condition in their sixties).

With devoted parents behind him, Morgan found a new boldness, taking chances he might not have otherwise, like bringing a boyfriend to the prom. Or becoming a precinct delegate for Hillary Clinton at age seventeen. Or having the confidence to apply for a job with John Dingell fresh out of college. “You’re green as grass,” he recalls Dingell telling him. “But we’re gonna give you a shot.”

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“I’m passionate about this,” Carrie Rheingans tells a town-hall audience in Ypsilanti Township. She and Ypsi rep Jimmie Wilson Jr. are there to promote the most ambitious item on the Democratic agenda: “MiCare,” a single-payer, publicly funded health insurance plan that, if she and others have their way, will replace the state’s current private insurance system.

“Health care should not be a market,” she tells an attentive audience. “It’s a service we all need to live. Right now, about half the people in the country have reported delaying care or splitting pills because they can’t afford it.”

At the podium in the Ypsi Township Civic Center, wearing a vivid pink blouse over black pants, Rheingans, forty-two, acknowledges tough battles ahead. Insurance companies, she says, are “making money off your premiums. They’re making money off you, delaying your care because it’s too expensive.” 

Rheingans is carrying the torch lit by her predecessor, Yousef Rabhi. He introduced a version of the plan five years ago, but under Republican leadership it went nowhere. The bill’s chances of passing are brighter under the Dems, Rabhi says, but, he cautions, “it will take a groundswell from the public.” 

Rheingans and twenty-two cosponsors introduced the MiCare bill in July, but it won’t come to a committee hearing or a vote this year. She’s using the time to promote it, partly through town halls like this one across the state.

The plan could be funded, she tells the group, mostly by redirecting federal dollars from Medicare, Medicaid, and the health insurance marketplace, plus as-yet-undefined taxes. Employer-based private plans would essentially disappear.

The small audience is friendly, but comments suggest the challenges supporters face. One woman describes how well her employer’s insurance plan covered her cancer treatment. “Citizens will fight you tooth and nail for their employer-based health care,” she warns. Someone from the Corner Health Center asks whether “confidential services” for their teen clients would continue under MiCare. Rheingans acknowledges: “That’s something we just can’t know yet.” 

Rheingans has deep experience in healthcare policy, but she cares deeply about many progressive causes, including abortion access, gay rights, and gun safety. When we meet one morning at the Argus Farm Stop on Liberty, she recalls a particularly proud day just two months after taking office: “Our first gun packages passed on March 8, the same day as the LGBTQ expansion of Elliot Larsen [the state civil rights act.] And it was International Women’s Day.”

Growing up on a farm near Linden, south of Flint, Rheingans moved to Ann Arbor in 2000 to start school at U-M and never looked back. She’s melded her idealism and organizational skills into a career that includes administering a Latino community center and managing the Washtenaw Health Initiative. Most recently she’s been a lecturer at the U-M School of Social Work, but she gave up outside employment when elected.

Married and the mother of a seven-year-old daughter, Rheingans has plenty to do just juggling politics and family. When I ask her schedule for the day, she says, “I’m doing a six-month review with one of my staffers, and then I’m meeting with somebody about health-plan stuff and then I’ll be doing ‘call time,’ which is calling people for money” for an upcoming Democratic caucus fundraiser.

“Then I get to pick my kid up from camp, and then I have a Zoom meeting with the Progressive Women’s Caucus. And then I take my kid to her karate lessons.” 

At first, Rheingans thought she’d enter politics through city council, but the Fifth Ward seat she was interested in already had a couple of candidates. With Rabhi’s term limited, Radina persuaded her to switch to the state house. In the Forty-seventh district, which stretches from Ann Arbor’s west side to south of Jackson, Rheingans won a primary against a candidate from Jackson, then topped her Republican opponent with 63 percent of the vote.

Rheingans works with Republicans on shared goals. She’s on the agricultural committee with another farm kid, Rep. Matthew Bierlein, from Tuscola County, and they’re trying to find a way to get Medicaid to cover some of the costs when low-income people shop at farmers’ markets. She sought out another Republican to learn about the approval process for gravel mines.

But it’s the year of the Dems, and knowing this gives Rheingans a buzz. “I got to vote yes three times on the banning of [gay] conversion therapy because I’m on the behavioral health committee, the health policy committee, and then on the full House floor,” she says—and it was “exciting every single time.”