State representative Jeff Irwin figures his chances for winning a third term this November are good. “Ann Arbor is a pretty Democratic town,” says Irwin, a former Washtenaw County commissioner first elected to the Michigan house in 2010. “Hopefully people will think I’ve done a good job and reelect me.” Irwin beat his last Republican opponent, John Spisak, 80 percent to 20 percent–and Spisak is running again this year. So sure is Irwin of his victory that he’ll be taking time off from his own campaign to “help colleagues around the state. For example, in Canton, Dian Slavens’ seat is open. It’ll be a tough race, and if we lose that seat, it’ll be even harder to get the majority.”
Republicans now control the legislature, holding twenty-six of thirty-eight senate seats and fifty-nine of 110 seats in the house. Irwin knows a Democratic takeover is a long shot but figures “we could pick up three or four or maybe more seats” in the senate and make the house even or nearly so. “With a narrower Republican majority we might have more success,” he says.
Irwin hasn’t gotten far on his priorities in education, environmental protection, and equal rights with Republicans reigning in Lansing. They’ve also bottled up his bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. But Irwin believes that “decriminalized marijuana’s time will come. It’s on about twenty local ballots this November, from Mount Pleasant to Grosse Pointe Park, and fourteen cities already have it. Success in November will show the momentum the issue has.”
Though Irwin is all but assured of reelection, Michigan’s term limits will put him out of a job in two years. He acknowledges that for many representatives “the next step is the state senate. But we already have an exemplary state senator now”–Rebekah Warren, who will be in office till 2018 if she also wins reelection in November.
Irwin, who was first elected to the county commission straight out of college, doesn’t sound worried. “There’s a ton of stuff I’m interested in doing,” he says, “from public service or public advocacy to selling hot dogs on the Diag.”
