Our Platform
A vision built of the people, by the people, for the people through Collective Policy Making. We are committed to policies that return power to District 10 and ensure Lansing works for working families.
Engage the Community
We believe governance starts with conversation. True democracy requires actively listening to and collaborating with the community to ensure every voice is heard.
Empower the Community
We equip neighborhoods and local workers with the tools, resources, and authority to make decisions that directly impact their daily lives and build a stronger future.
Create Accountability
We believe in transparency across all levels of power. Elected officials must be answerable to their constituents, just as managers and executives must be accountable to their workers and communities.
Empowering Local Voices
Lansing too often issues top-down mandates that don't fit the unique needs of District 10. True democracy means shifting from Representative Democracy to Participatory Democracy, where the community makes the decisions that impact their daily lives.
Platform Inspiration
Our focus on rebuilding local civic engagement is deeply inspired by the book Bowling Alone and the documentary Join or Die. If you are curious to learn more about the critical importance of community clubs and social capital in a healthy democracy, these are excellent resources to explore.
- Delegate System & Community Assemblies: Hosting regular, welcoming "potluck assemblies" to bring neighbors face-to-face to cure civic isolation, polarization, and rebuild social trust. The delegate system empowers neighbors to bond, debate ideas, and engage in collective policy making to propose legislation directly to Andrew.
- Local Control & Empowerment: Returning decision-making power to local municipalities on issues of zoning, community development, and public safety.
Local Ownership & Thriving Main Streets
Our economy should work for the people who actually build it and live in it. We must prioritize District 10's local small businesses, entrepreneurs, and workers over massive corporate handouts to out-of-state monopolies.
- Empowering Local Ownership: Redirecting state economic funds away from megacorps and toward local entrepreneurs, family-owned shops, and worker-owned businesses.
- Leveling the Playing Field: Ending massive corporate tax breaks and reinvesting that money directly into community-driven projects and small business loans.
- Investing in Our Unique Main Streets: Securing state funding to support vibrant, walkable commercial corridors—from historic hubs like The Village to the redevelopment of Kelly Road.
- Connecting Our Commercial Hubs: Strengthening regional public transit to link workers to jobs, reduce parking congestion, and bring reliable foot traffic to our local storefronts.
Thriving Suburban Neighborhoods
Suburban areas like District 10 have unique priorities that require pragmatic solutions. We must focus on practical infrastructure, excellent schools, and safe communities.
- Pragmatic Infrastructure: Securing funding for practical, neighborhood-level infrastructure improvements in the district's suburbs. Prioritizing immediate maintenance for local roads and investing in smart traffic mitigation, ensuring a smooth commute for working families.
- Defending Local Zoning: Strongly supporting keeping zoning control in the hands of local municipalities, protecting neighborhoods from top-down state mandates to balance necessary growth with the preservation of our parks, green spaces, and the quiet suburban feel we love.
Absolute Transparency & Accountability
Politicians should be public servants, not self-serving elites. Our campaign operates on the radical idea that elected officials must be completely transparent and instantly accountable to their constituents.
- Recallable Delegates: Championing legislation to make it easier for voters to recall elected delegates who abandon their platform or violate the public trust. We believe in true accountability.
- Smart Transparency: Maintaining an open-door policy by publicizing an open schedule for all community events, while prioritizing safety by publishing private or high-security meetings on a delayed log. We still require open-book accounting for all state contracts.
- Clear & Accessible Legislation: We advocate for single-issue bills written in plain language. Hiding unpopular provisions inside massive, unrelated omnibus packages is anti-democratic. Clear, focused legislation ensures true transparency and allows the community to understand and debate the actual merits of a policy.
Specific Policy Plans
We don't just speak in broad platitudes. Below are the precise mechanisms and legislative goals we support.
Economic & Infrastructure Development
- Targeted Grants for Local Ownership: I will fight to redirect state economic development funds (MEDC) to provide targeted grants and tax incentives that help residents open businesses on corridors like Kelly Road or transition existing legacy businesses in Grosse Pointe into worker-owned cooperatives.
- Ending Corporate Subsidies: I will sponsor legislation to audit and roll back massive corporate tax breaks that drain our state budget. Those recovered funds will be earmarked for a "Main Street Infrastructure Fund" to provide zero-interest loans to small businesses and fund municipal infrastructure.
- Supporting "Complete Streets": I will champion state-level funding for local urban design initiatives, specifically supporting the "Kelly Road Complete Streets Corridor Plan" in Harper Woods and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure in Grosse Pointe to safely increase foot traffic and economic activity.
- Regional Transit Investment: A thriving local economy requires reliable public transportation. I will advocate for increased state funding for regional transit networks (SMART and DDOT) to ensure seamless connections between District 10’s commercial corridors and the broader Metro Detroit area, benefiting both our workforce and our local retail sectors.
Environmental & Resource Protection
- Upgrading Stormwater Infrastructure: Climate change is causing more severe weather, and our district has suffered the consequences of outdated sewer systems. I will fight for aggressive state investment in local water infrastructure and Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) to permanently solve the basement and street flooding plaguing our neighborhoods.
- Clean & Affordable Water Guarantee: True access to clean water means urgency in infrastructure. I will sponsor legislation to accelerate the replacement of all lead service lines in our district and ensure state oversight prevents the privatization of our municipal water systems, keeping utility rates accountable to voters, not corporate shareholders.
- Lake St. Clair & Great Lakes Conservation: District 10's identity is tied to the water. I will champion strict regulations against corporate polluters and agricultural runoff to protect the water quality of Lake St. Clair, preserving it for recreation, wildlife, and our local economy.
- Funding Our Community Commons: I will fight for increased state grants directly to local municipalities to upgrade our community parks—ensuring green spaces in both Harper Woods and Grosse Pointe are fully funded. State lands and local parks must be protected in perpetuity, never sold off to private developers to cover municipal budget shortfalls.
Strategic Investment & Conservation
Our district requires practical, forward-thinking solutions that preserve the character and natural beauty of our neighborhoods while ensuring our communities and local economies can thrive. We can accommodate necessary growth by revitalizing our existing spaces.
- Enhancing Local Main Streets (Mixed-Use Zoning): Instead of scattering density throughout quiet residential streets, we focus on zoning for vibrant, walkable, mixed-use development in our existing commercial corridors like Kelly Road and The Village. This adds housing options without altering the layout of existing neighborhoods.
- Gentle Density & Multi-Generational Living: We support "Missing Middle" housing seamlessly designed to match the local architectural style, and Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). This allows aging parents or young adult children to live on family properties without being a financial burden.
- Conservation Subdivisions (Clustered Development): When new land is developed, we incentivize "clustered" zoning to permanently preserve 50% or more of the remaining land as untouched woodlands or community trails.
- Infrastructure-Tied Development: We mandate that any new density must be legally tied to concurrent, developer-funded infrastructure upgrades (traffic calming, buried power lines).
MMD Proportional Representation
I support a constitutional amendment to transition the Michigan State House to Multi-Member Districts (MMD) with Proportional Representation. This replaces the current "winner-take-all" system that heavily disenfranchises voters, with a system that guarantees the number of seats a party holds in the House accurately matches its share of the statewide vote.
- Population-Based House Size: The total number of Representatives will be dynamically tied to the state's population as measured by the federal census, targeting approximately 1 seat for every 75,000 residents. This ensures consistent, appropriate representation for our communities.
- District Size and Seat Allocation: The independent redistricting commission (MICRC) will draw larger districts that elect 4 or 5 representatives each. Seats within each district are distributed to parties based on the percentage of votes they received.
- Open List Voting & Coalitions: Voters get a single vote for their State House Representative, and may vote for a specific candidate or a default party preference list. Independents and political parties can form official pre-election coalitions appearing on the ballot.
- Compensatory Seats: To ensure absolute fairness, once district seats are determined, "Compensatory Seats" are awarded to parties' most popular unelected candidates until the State House achieves exact proportionality matching the statewide vote (capped at 130% of the base district seat count).
Collective Policy Making
Legislation should not be drafted in secret by corporate lobbyists and handed to politicians to sign. We believe in an "open source" model of governance where the community acts as the authors of their own laws.
Under our model for Collective Policy Making:
Learn More
Our push for community assemblies is heavily inspired by the themes of civic decline and revival found in the book Bowling Alone and the documentary Join or Die. We highly recommend them as a foundation for understanding this policy approach.
- Open Source Legislation: We utilize modern online
platforms—similar to code repositories—where citizens, experts, and
impacted workers can draft, debate, suggest edits, and collectively refine
policy proposals in plain view of the public. However, this is not just an
online process; we prioritize in-person collaboration at community
assemblies, and any legislation would ultimately be approved by an
in-person assembly.
Interactive Try the Simulation → - Community Assemblies: We use our neighborhood community assemblies to workshop ideas, gather consensus, have fun, and direct the focus of the district.
- Politicians as Stewards: The role of the elected representative shifts from being an isolated decision-maker to acting as a manager or steward of collective policy. The politician facilitates the process, ensures legal formatting, and carries the community's approved demands to Lansing to actively "whip votes" and fight for its passage. Andrew pledges not to vote against the consensus of the assembly.
- Accessible Drafting & Single-Issue Bills: Legislation should be written in plain language that anyone can understand, not buried in legalese. We advocate for single-issue bills to prevent the practice of hiding unpopular provisions inside massive, unrelated omnibus packages. Clear, focused legislation ensures true transparency and allows the community to debate and vote on the actual merits of a policy.