Michigan State University will have two new trustees starting next year. Former Chair Dianne Byrum isn’t running for a third term, and current Chair Dan Kelly failed to win the Republican nomination.
Their successors are expected to come from a pool of four major party nominees. Rebecca Bahar-Cook, an East Lansing Democrat, is a professional fundraiser and former Ingham County commissioner. Tommy Stallworth, a Detroit Democrat, is a former legislator who worked in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office, among numerous other state government positions.
Mike Balow, a Plymouth Republican, is a commercial real estate professional who won his party’s nomination in 2022 and came within 7,700 votes of winning a board seat. And Julie Maday, a Novi Republican, is a former Novi City Councilmember and conservative “Spartan Mom.”
The school hasn’t been without its controversies. Larry Nassar. Mel Tucker. Business School Dean Sanjay Gupta’s firing. An on-campus shooting. Former President Samuel Stanley abrupt departure amid pressures. Board friction spurring a report suggesting the governor remove a pair of members.
The candidates are all aware of the challenges. In varying degrees, they were encouraged to address the tumult within the board and iron out the bumps in collaboration with new President Kevin Guskiewicz.
Also on the ballot are Libertarian Party candidate Grant T. Baker; Green Party candidate John Anthony La Pietra; and two candidates from the U.S. Taxpayers Party, John Paul Sanger and Janet M. Sanger.
Here’s a thumbnail on each candidate:
Bahar-Cook, 54, is the mother of two MSU undergraduates. Her daughter, Sara, is going to MSU for graduate school. She’s the CEO of her own business, Capitol Fundraising Associates, and has worked behind the scenes in getting numerous political candidates elected, including former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, former state Sen. Curtis Hertel and many others.
Her husband, Todd Cook, is also no stranger to Ingham County and statewide politics, currently serving as the Michigan Senate Business Office director.
Bahar-Cook served on the Ingham County Board of Commissioners for 12 years. She is best known for bringing people together to complete a project, whether it’s Whitmer’s inauguration or the Greater Lansing Food Bank’s Empty Plate dinner.
Her top priority for the MSU board, initially, is to listen, find areas where trustees and school leaders have general agreement and move forward with that.
“I’m always interested in listening and bringing people together,” she said. “If board members are willing to listen to each other, great things can happen.”
As for former trustees she admired, Bahar-Cook pointed immediately to Faylene Owen.
“She picked out the things she cared about and dove into it,” she said. “I’d like to do the same thing.”
What areas would Bahar-Cook like to dive into? She doesn’t know right now. If elected, her focus will be to “listen and learn.”
Her campaign strategy is not necessarily about advancing herself but realizing that she’ll do well if the top of the ticket does. That means being a surrogate when she’s able and assisting with getting out voters for Democrats.
“I can’t go to 10 million doors,” she said. “It’s all about getting out the vote, making sure Democrats are turning up at the polls and mailing in those ballots.”
Stallworth, 71, is a former state legislator and gubernatorial staffer who is doing contract work with the state’s opioid response and on economic development in distressed communities like Highland Park. His wife, Nicole Wells-Stallworth, is the executive director of Planned Parenthood of Michigan after having done lobbying work for Oakland University.
Her grandfather is James Bibbs, the first Black track coach in the Big Ten and the first Black coach in MSU history.
Stallworth graduated from MSU in 1975 with a degree in urban planning and development. He worked in several roles over the years, but he’s best known today as being a legislative mentor for new Legislative Black Caucus members.
“I’ve got a lot of experience in dealing with complex issues and being a unifying force,” he said. “I think the public, and those who know me, trust me, which is why people encouraged me to run.”
In the Legislature and with the governor, Stallworth earned a reputation for bringing together people of all personal and political backgrouds.
Stallworth said he’d approach being a trustee with the assumption that everyone on the board is interested in public service and trying to do their best for MSU.
He said MSU is especially important to him and his children, two of whom are graduates. As a community elder, he wants to ensure graduates can use the positive experiences they gained from MSU in their careers.
“I see this as an opportunity to help those who are interested in contributing to make the school the best it can be,” Stallworth said. “Sometimes we get sideways in that. We get emotional and do things that are counterproductive. Hopefully, as a board, we can recalibrate and refocus on those reasons that got us to run in the first place.”
Balow, 52, initially got into the MSU board politics when the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams were cut in 2020. His daughter, Sophia, was a sophomore on the team. He did not feel the administration was clear or consistent with its rationale.
Since then, Balow has spread his wings on his MSU administration critique, whether it’s the school’s insular post-Nassar response or general non-transparency.
He shook his head at the board expenditure to investigate Trustees Dennis Denno and Rema Vassar for speaking their minds about the school releasing documents that allegedly were protected under attorney-client privilege.
The school also was not clear enough on why it besmirched Gupta’s reputation by demoting him, Balow said
“Their response to these things has been, ‘Trust us. We’re doing the right thing,’” he said. “No. We can’t take steps to protect the brand of the university by damaging the public trust.”
Balow sees his experience on community boards as bringing a stabilizing presence to the MSU board. He said he doesn’t like having to run under a partisan label because he sees himself as a pragmatic parent “tired of the nonsense.”
“I’m promising voters that I’ll give them their attention,” he said. “I’ll use my voice and my vote. I won’t embarrass the board. I’ll work with whomever, regardless of political leaning, for the kids and getting them to the right place.”
Maday, 54, sat on numerous city boards and commissions before being elected to the City Council in Novi. A University of Michigan-Dearborn graduate, Maday married a Spartan, David Maday, and came to bleed green and white through her relationships with him and their expanded social circle.
Her interest in the MSU board came when her son, Blake, was a freshman at State and reacted so badly to the mandatory vaccine he was hospitalized. With Blake a Broad School senior, her interest in serving was fueled when Gupta was demoted as dean.
From there on, Maday said she has been frustrated by watching the board’s infighting and dysfunction.
“I am a breast cancer survivor. Two years and three surgeries later, I realized how mortal we are. We are here for a short time, and I didn’t feel like I should sit back when I had a chance to make a real difference,” she said.
Maday said she is not a fan of the board’s practice of hashing out differences behind closed doors. She’s not someone who will go along to get along. If she has an opinion, she said she’ll make that known while being respectful.
Also, Maday said she doesn’t support biological males competing in women’s sports, considering it a women’s rights issue. A free speech advocate, she is concerned that those with different opinions don’t feel comfortable expressing them at proper times out of fear of having a falling out with their professors.
Overall, she said the MSU board has “lost its way.”
“I want to see the university get back to where it was when we fell in love with it.”
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