Deputy Mayor Don Griffin Jr on running for mayor: focus on housing, quality of life, music

Bloomington Deputy Mayor Don Griffin Jr. said he will run for mayor next year to focus on housing, sustainability, quality of life and making Bloomington more of a cultural destination.

The 52-year-old real estate agent and small business owner said he has been inspired to run for office primarily because he has witnessed, as deputy mayor, how good leadership can improve people’s lives.

“You’re helping thousands of people at a time,” he said.

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Griffin is expected to face at least two challengers in the Democratic primary in May. Bloomington City Council President Susan Sandberg and former Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County CEO Kerry Thomson have said they will run for mayor as well. The current mayor, John Hamilton, has said he will not seek re-election. The city’s new mayor will be determined in the November 2023 election. The term would begin in January 2024.

Griffin was born in Bloomington. His parents came here to go to Indiana University. His father, Donald Griffin Sr., was the city’s second Black police officer.

He said he studied architecture at Hampton University for 3.5 years but didn’t have money to finish his degree. He said he felt defeated on the 27-hour bus ride back to Bloomington but decided to work for a real estate company to earn money to go back and finish.

Getting a foot in the door proved difficult. Griffin said people told him he was too young, did not have a large enough sphere of influence nor enough rich friends who would buy homes from him.

And, he said he was told, “Black people don’t buy very many houses in Bloomington.”

Nonetheless, Griffin got his real estate license, and Bloomington real estate agent John West gave him a shot — though Griffin had to agree to not go back to school nor take another job for at least a year.

Real estate agents earn money on commission, and Griffin said the first six months were tough. He secretly worked for Stone Belt at night to make money. “Hardest job I’ve ever had,” he said.

But after six months in real estate, he sold his first piece of property, an empty lot that went for $18,000.

“It was life to me,” he said.

Within a year, Griffin said, he was among the top six agents in the company.

“It became something that I knew I was good at,” he said.

After a few years in the business, he founded Griffin Realty, which he still owns, though he said when he became deputy mayor he stopped being involved in the business' day-to-day operations to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

While he’s never run a political campaign, Griffin said he has been heavily involved in local politics, serving on the redevelopment commission under Mayor John Fernandez and co-founding, with Bloomington City Clerk Nicole Bolden, the Monroe County Black Democratic Caucus.

And for the last 1.5 years, Griffin said, he has gained first-hand knowledge of what the job of mayor requires.

“I’m the only person (among the candidates) who’s actually done the job,” he said.

Griffin said the community must attract and retain good employers by creating a smart, educated workforce and a great community that offers good quality of life.

Griffin said his real estate background and involvement in affordable neighborhoods will help him guide the city’s development of homes from affordable to luxury, all of which, he said, are in short supply. By identifying infill properties, he said he hopes the city can increase homeownership to near 50% in the next five years, from the current 38%.

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Griffin also said he would like the community to focus more on its musical prowess, especially Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. If that school were an engineering program and people who graduated from it left the state, people would complain about brain drain, he said. Bloomington must try to figure out ways to keep some of the world’s best and most creative minds in the community. The city should leverage the reputation of the school and its famous natives — among them songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, violinist Joshua Bell and composer Tyron Cooper — to market itself as an Austin, Texas, of the Midwest.

Griffin and his wife, Nicole, the director of the IU Visitor Information Center, have a son, Dexter, who is studying opera at the Jacobs school. Griffin himself used to sing with Hamilton in a local a-cappella group. He also plays the saxophone and participated in Sounds of South, Bloomington South Panther Regiment and a jazz band.

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington, Indiana Deputy Mayor Don Griffin to run for mayor in 2023