Two weeks into the year, two Republicans from Emmet County and Charlevoix County have announced their intention to run for the state Senate seat. Senator Wayne Schmidt will depart in late 2022.
Schmidt, a Republican from Traverse City, has held the seat of Lansing’s 37th Circuit for seven years and is now entering his eighth. He will leave office after serving four full two-year terms, leaving an open field for this year’s primary and general election.
The fact that a challenger is Rep. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, means there is also likely to be a shake-up in the 107th State House District, where Damoose currently controls Emmet County, portions of Cheboygan County, and Mackinaw and Chippewa represents counties in the Upper Peninsula.
Damoose, who has just completed the first year of his first term, announced his decision in an email to his supporters last week.
“I ran for the post to bring common sense, grace and civility back into the process,” he said. “That kind of thoughtful, insightful representation is mandatory, and that’s what I’m going to bring to the 37th Senate district.”
A few weeks earlier, Charlevoix resident William Hindle also announced that he would be running for a Republican nomination for the seat.
“I’m not a professional politician and nobody would ever take me for one,” Hindle said in a press release. “I think voters in northern Michigan are more interested in someone defending their constitutional rights than someone who thinks they’re qualified to tell citizens how to live their lives.”
Hindle owns North Coast Home Inspection and has been in the construction industry for 40 years, according to information from his campaign.
All challengers will appeal to a slightly different cross-section of voters than in previous years since the completion of the new district maps approved by Michigan’s Redistribution Commission — although these changes won’t have as profound an impact in northern Michigan as might be expected to downplay .
The new district election process was approved by voters in 2018. This successful voting issue established the independent Citizens’ New Borough Commission, which would offer a fairer and more impartial method of drawing borough boundaries that would represent voter interests rather than partisan strategies.
The district lines for both the 37th state Senate and the state’s 107th House of Representatives seats have shifted only slightly following the all-new map approval process, and neither of those shifts would be significant, according to data from the last two elections.
The changes also did not cut incumbents from the current constituencies in those two northern Michigan counties. Both Damoose and Hindle would also have been safely in the 37th district according to the old layout.
Ultimately, however, the maps condense the areas of both districts into the Upper Peninsula, with more weight being given to the districts of the Lower Peninsula. While the old map of District 37 covered most of the eastern half of the UP and extended well beyond Newberry, the new version keeps that perimeter mostly in Mackinaw and Chippewa counties.
The 107th District map similarly restricts their area to include a smaller portion of the eastern Upper Peninsula and also drops their small sections of Cheboygan County. It now specifically includes Charlevoix County, which was previously part of the 105th District.
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