4 Republican hopefuls look to stand out in District 2 county board race

Voters in Burtchville Township, Fort Gratiot, and northern Port Huron will still have a handful of hopefuls to choose from as their representative on the St. Clair County Board of Commissioners even after one of five original candidates dropped out.

A seat in District 2 opened up earlier this year when current Commissioner Jorja Baldwin announced she was running for state representative. Toward the end of April, five candidates for the Republican nomination emerged.

However, last weekend, Port Huron City Councilman Jeff Pemberton announced he was withdrawing from the race.

Remaining as candidates are local attorney Kerry Ange, Tri-Hospital EMS President and CEO Ken Cummings, and Fort Gratiot retirees David Hoffman and Steve Tebay. When asked in interviews this week, all of them identified priorities on the conservative spectrum, though varying reasons for wanting to run for a county board seat.

In addition to St. Clair County’s northern two waterfront townships, the district itself encapsulates the first three precincts in the city of Port Huron.

There were no listed Democratic candidates for District 2 — there are write-in candidate deadlines in July and October — and whoever wins the Aug. 6 primary among Ange, Cummings, Hoffman and Tebay will head to the November general election thus far unchallenged.

Cummings’ interest in a county seat may go further back than his competitors, citing his application to fill board vacancies in both 2019 when Baldwin was first appointed and 2010 following the death of Dennis Kearns.

However, it was also in 2019 when Ange said she began to follow county government more after an unsuccessful but lower bid for its courts’ guardian ad litem services representing youths in abuse and neglect cases.

“That’s really what sparked my interest in the commission,” she said. “… It’s been in my mind ever since then, and I have come to understand the importance of the county commission being, along with the City Council, the closest level of government to the people and the enormous responsibility of overseeing the multi-million budget. It’s obviously a tremendous responsibility. As a wife, a mother, and a professional in this community, my goal in my campaign is to bring my experience to bear.”

Hoffman and Tebay, each residents of the same Fort Gratiot enclave neighborhood, were inspired to run much more recently.

A resident of the Blue Water Area in the last four years, Hoffman said he’d be able to draw from his experience in family business, owner and operator of the organization POW/MIA Remembrance Ceremonies, as a veteran, and previously as a community emergency response team member in Lapeer County if succesffully elected a local commissioner.

But his reasons for running were broader, pointing to concern for his grandkids, freedom, and what he saw as the direction of the county.

“It has to start somewhere, so it’s got to start at the local level,” Hoffman said. “That’s why I chose to get involved. I’m a retired pastor. I had 30 years in at Ford and became a pastor. I was within the ministry … about 14 years, full time, and then, I finally retired, and I said, ‘I could sit on the sidelines and do nothing,’ because I didn’t necessarily have to go back to work. But then, I said, ‘You know what? With the way things are going, we need change in this country, and it starts at the grassroots level.’ So, here I am at the grassroots level.”

Tebay said he ran unsuccessfully for Yale school board in the past and served on multiple bioterrorism, state, and emergency preparedness taskforces amid his lengthy career as a pharmacist.

Though still registered, he’s retired and stopped working out of Beaumont Hospitals in 2021. He called working with the St. Clair County Veteran Honor Guard one of his passions. And he said he thought his years in management, healthcare, and especially finance, budgeting, and purchasing, would be an asset to the county.

“I am not a politician, that’s for sure,” Tebay said. “The thing that really set me off was the solar issue out here in Fort Gratiot. … And it’s all profit. They’re just going to sell it back to us.”

Hundreds of acres were sited for part of a massive solar development last year before the township’s planning commission rejected a Chicago-based company’s request. It’s now pending in circuit court ahead of a new set of state laws taking effect later this year that empowers the Michigan Public Service Commission to have final authorization over large-scale renewable energy projects.

“Because it’s not just Fort Gratiot,” Tebay said. “It’s other townships in the county that are also going to deal with this. I think it should come back to the local level. That’s my big thing.”

Every candidate referenced the solar project and the MPSC authority as a major concern.

Cummings said he was “pretty offended” at the state legislature’s and governor’s direction, adding he agreed it affects property owners, neighbors, and trampled on local choice rights.

But that wasn't the only thing that candidates mentioned as a priority.

They all also mentioned ongoing concerns at the landfill, getting up-to-date information on county progress to eradicate odors impacting residents, and more.

Tebay said he thought the county should promote its “beautiful” towns and parks to visitors.

“Sometimes you feel like the distance between, say, 26 Mile and Port Huron seems like 150 miles because it’s a good amount of distance,” he said. “And a lot of people don’t want to travel that far, but we’ve got so much to offer, especially along the waterways.”

Both Hoffman and Tebay emphasized that they’d make it appoint to be more transparent and accessible — that representing residents wasn’t only about their beliefs.

Cummings said something similar, and that he thought it was important for a commissioner to be able to find common ground with the rest of the board.

Ahead of Baldwin’s announcement, he’d planned to run for Burtchville Township supervisor before changing course.

“I’ve always participated in local government by being involved and trying to stay attuned to the issues. But I think the other part of it for me is I work with all these people already and have done so for many, many years,” Cummings said. “Township officials, fire departments, first responders, police agencies, county commissioners. Literally, I’m involved and work with almost every elected official in the county … so I have that exposure already. And to be honest with you, I don’t have a hot-button issue that is driving me into this race right now. When Jorja Baldwin announced her intention to run for state rep., I saw another opportunity for me to really further the pathway that I have followed for the past 40 years.”

After following Baldwin’s voting over the last several years, Ange said she discovered they were likeminded, but now, she found she wanted to get back to basics.

A big example, she said, was following expenditures and the use of funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

“I do see that it is in peril if the balance of the commission tips just by one vote,” Ange said. “Then, it’s possible that those monies could be permitted to be spent on special interests, which is something I’d like to safeguard against.”

In his withdrawal announcement, Pemberton endorsed Cummings.

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: 4 GOP hopefuls look to stand out in District 2 county board race