chancery wrote: ↑Sat Apr 22, 2023 1:15 pm
My partner grew up in western Michigan, which she left as soon as she could. Her sister still lives in Ottawa County, where she is a brave activist with the local Democratic party and with her church, which displays a rainbow flag and a "Black Lives Matter" sign, and otherwise fits the MAGA definition of "woke."
Interestingly enough, since the Trump candidate primaried the more moderate Peter Meijer in 2022, the GOP lost that part of West Michigan. Granted, northern Ottawa County went for the GOP and Kent County, and the City of Muskegon voted for the Dem. Meijer's old district did not have Ottawa County so he may not have played well there but I suspect the Trump world would have primaried Pete Hoekstra.
So, Ottawa County hired the losing candidate as County Administrator.
West Michigan has always been heavily Dutch Calvinist (I grew up in Southwest Michigan so I know the area rather well) but it looks like they have had to turn it up a few hundred notches.
The southern part of Ottawa County still had Huizenga who, while losing the upper part of his old district, covered Fred UPton's old SW Michigan part which contains a few rural counties and my hometown Kalamazoo County (which voted for the Dem, of course)