Oakland County, Michigan, like much of the country, was a good place for a Democrat to be up for election in 2018. Accelerating a trend that began with the county’s choice of Bill Clinton for president in 1992, Oakland County voters chose Democrats over Republicans for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general last fall.
Those same voters flipped two of five state Senate seats, two state House seats, and two U.S. House seats. And, despite extreme Republican gerrymandering of its districts, voters gave Democrats a majority on the Oakland County Commission for the first time in more than 40 years.
Now a fresh young Democrat is hoping to carry the blue wave forward in 2020 and announcing his candidacy for the state’s 45th House District, which Rochester-area voters used to hand to Republicans with up to 70% of their votes—though the current term-limited incumbent only managed to carry the district by a comparatively shoddy 55% in 2018.
During a recent interview, Brendan Johnson told Daily Kos that one of the first things he would change if elected is that he would “have a much more open line of communication between the district and Lansing.”
Johnson said that he was disturbed while attending a recent coffee hour held by the incumbent, state Rep. Michael Webber. For one thing, the coffee hour was held at 9 AM on a weekday. A Daily Kos search of Webber’s website showed two invitations for constituents to meet with him during what the site calls his “in district office hours.” Both the June and August dates took place on Fridays at 9 AM.
If elected, Johnson said, he would be “cognizant that this is a working district, with people who have day jobs and can't attend coffee hours” that are scheduled during working hours. The district’s voters, Johnson added, “can't take off work to go talk to [their] legislator about how the schools need a budget to work on [or] about how guns are terrifying [them] as a parent.”
Johnson also said he would be more responsive than Webber seemed to be at the coffee hour Johnson attended. According to Johnson, Webber answered many constituents’ questions with little more detail than to say, “It’s all in committee.” “I want to make sure our people’s issues are actually being represented and actually fought for,” he added.
While Johnson is currently working on more specific policy proposals after filing roughly two weeks ago, he did say that he agrees with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s call to “fix the damn roads” and that he supports the governor’s proposed 45-cent-per-gallon fuel tax. “I personally don't have a problem raising the gas tax, especially as we're watching the Amazon burn,” he said.
He may be a newcomer to running for office, but Johnson does have some experience in both state and national policy arenas. While in college, Johnson served as a foreign affairs and security intern for Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin and as a legislative intern for Republican state Rep. Pete Lund.
Johnson’s possible Republican opponent, Mark Tisdel, is well known in the area. Tisdel, who currently serves as the president of the Rochester Hills City Council and has been on the council since 2011, is also known for his nonprofit fundraising efforts and as a local singer.
A search by Daily Kos failed to find a website or other materials for Tisdel’s campaign.
Johnson—who, ironically, is also a pianist and has occasionally backed Tisdel in concert—said that his plans to overcome the difference in name recognition are “all about the ground game. Knocking on doors, getting the message out, showing up at events and being a real leader on the ground, and being visible.” If Johnson is the eventual nominee (with the seat opening up, a primary on both sides could well be in the offing), the area’s Democratic leaders say they are well-equipped to back up that ground game.
According to Oakland County Democratic Party chair Vaughn Derderian, energy at the county level is “pretty much off the charts.” While acknowledging that his statement could seem hyperbolic, Derderian had the facts to back it up. Oakland County precinct delegates, Derderian said, “have self-organized and are doing regular trainings and canvassing activities.” Further, he added, meeting attendance has more than doubled, from an average of 50-60 per meeting to “130, 140 people that are coming out to these meetings just to kind of stay in touch and see what’s going on on a monthly basis.”
Sigrid Grace, who leads the Rochester Area Democratic Club, told Daily Kos that her organization has seen “a tremendous influx of people at meetings. We’ve had to scramble to find big enough rooms to hold all the people.” Grace added that voters in her area are motivated by what they see as Republican obstruction. “People are upset right now about schools starting without knowing what their budget is because the Republican Party went on vacation and didn't work over the summer to get the budget in place,” she said, and added that there is further distress over reported Republican plans to take funding from the state’s schools to pay for Michigan’s by some measures worst-in-the-nation roads.
“People want good schools and they want good roads, and that’s the bottom line,” Grace said.
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.