The 2025 Lansing Elections

Vote for Andy Schor

Four years ago, City Pulse sat uncomfortably on the fence in the Lansing mayoral contest. Given the inevitability that Andy Schor would be reelected (as he was with 64% of the vote), our goal then was to send him a message: step up your leadership in your second term. Today, we endorse Schor for a third one (another inevitability) with more confidence in his leadership, while still encouraging more.

Our city is better off today than four years ago. The administration’s biggest achievement is putting in motion a clear plan for bringing downtown back to life: give people a reason to live and visit there and they will. We think it is a winning strategy. The state may never return a full complement of workers to the Capitol complex. And even if it did, that does nothing post lunch or on weekends. Cranes are in the air. Hundreds of rental units are under construction, some new, some replacing empty office space; so is a new city hall; the land is cleared for the Ovation Center for Arts and Music. The city’s biggest eyesore, the Walter Neller Building, is finally gone, thanks to administration pressure, and more residences will replace it. On the south side of 496, work is moving along on the new public safety building — a clear example of Schor’s ability to lead a drive for public support to the tune of $175 million.

The upside of Schor’s get-along-go-along nature is his role in the significant state funding that came Lansing’s way in his second term. A former state representative, Schor has close ties to all the Capitol powers-who-be, from the Governor’s Office down, who blessed the city with hundreds of millions of dollars last session to help mend our downtown. Certainly, though, it was not just Schor’s affability that made a difference. The mayor is well schooled in urban affairs, going back to his days on the staff of the Michigan Municipal League and his service representing the city as an Ingham County commissioner and in the House.

Schor’s second term was not without stumbles, chief among them his failed plan to restore the historic downtown Masonic Temple as a new city hall and his sellout on old Eastern High School. City Pulse feels so strongly about the need to get historic preservation on the front burner that we may well have endorsed an opponent to Schor this year — if there were one in whom we had confidence to run the city. Don’t get us wrong: Kelsea Hector, who came in a distant second to Schor in the primary, is smart, talented and articulate. However, her lack of governmental experience disqualifies her. We encourage the administration to tap into her expertise on the critical homeless issue.

In other editorials, we have spelled out what needs to be done about preservation, and we’re pleased that Schor is open to our suggestions. We hope his inaugural address will announce a preservation committee, as he promised to form in his endorsement interview with us. We are reminded of a similar effort he undertook is his firm term: the creation of a performing arts center committee. The result is the coming Ovation Center. We hope for that degree of commitment to preservation in the next four years.

 

Yes: Martinez (both), Vandenboom, Lowry

Lansing voters will fill half the seats on the Lansing City Council on Nov. 4. They face difficult choices in all cases because of an unusually strong field. We recommend Deyanira Nevarez Martinez in the 2nd Ward, Heath Lowry in the 4th and Julie Vandenboom and Clara Martinez for the two at-large positions. We encourage you to learn about them in this week’s issue and through their endorsement interviews, which we’ve posted at www.lansingcitypulse.com .

All but one candidate (the elusive Aurelius Christian) sought our endorsement. We found all of the remaining candidates thoughtful in their answers. Leo V. Kaplan reports in this issue on their views on preservation, homelessness, red-tagged properties and who should gather our trash. By and large, we endorsed based on the overall impression we gained of their abilities to think through issues and provide coherent answers, whether we agreed or not with their solutions.

However, for the incumbents, records in office made a difference as well in our choices, specifically regarding historic preservation. Thus, we oppose Peter Spadafore and Jeremy Garza for reelection. Both failed to stand up for saving Old Eastern. Spadafore went a step farther and wrote an opinion piece that fostered the false narrative that advocacy for saving the city’s most historic building would cost Lansing mental health beds. As a prominent civic leader, Spadafore should have used his standing and considerable persuasive talents to try to broker a compromise that would have saved old Eastern and kept U of M’s proposed psychiatric facility in Lansing. However, given that Spadafore led the Lansing school board that negotiated Eastern’s sale without contract language strong enough to preserve the building, perhaps we should not have been surprised, just sadly disappointed.

As for Garza, a self-described “union plumber” — he is safety director of Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 333 — he did the unions’ bidding: oppose saving Old Eastern out of the simplistic fear it would cost construction jobs. Garza says in his campaign literature that he isn’t a “typical politician.” If not, he is certainly a predictable one in putting his employer’s desires above even a Council discussion of old Eastern’s historic status.

Fortunately, in both cases, voters have excellent choices to replace Spadafore and Garza in Lowry and Nevarez Martinez. Both are intelligent, thoughtful and articulate. Both are independent thinkers. We found the same to be true of Vandenboom and Clara Martinez. Some voters expressed concerns about the Nevarez Martinez’ decision to send her children to Catholic schools when she ran for the Lansing School Board. However, she assured us, they are now enrolled in the Lansing School District.

 

For clerk: Chris Swope

Chris Swope has once again drawn no opposition, and it’s easy to understand why. Voters have come to trust the four-term incumbent’s professional management of the City Clerk’s Office. Voter participation trended up in this year’s primary election, and the credit goes to Swope’s leadership in expanding mail, absentee and early voting opportunities. Swope has served twice as president of the statewide and capital region clerks’ association, and this year he is president of the community’s largest service organization, the Rotary Club of Lansing. Yes, it’s always better in a democracy to have an challenger, but we understand why Swope does not. We encourage voters to show their appreciation by supporting him for a fifth term.

 

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