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Is Kent County going to have its own Ottawa Impact moment – Part I

February 19, 2024
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In January of 2023, people first became aware of the group known as Ottawa Impact. Ottawa Impact, was formed in early 2022, by Republicans in Ottawa County to shift the politics in that county further to the right.

GRIID ran two articles in one week – January 4 and January 11 – which not only pointed out how the commercial news media had completed failed to report on the group Ottawa Impact, but we also provided some analysis of the contract that all political candidates signed with Ottawa Impact.

In 2024, there is a possibility that what happened in Ottawa County might be repeated here in Kent County. There is a group of Republicans in Kent County known as the Kent Contract Coalition. Their website is pretty clear cut, although lacking in content. Like the group Ottawa Impact, the Kent Contract Coalition has a list of candidates that have signed the contract agreement, which you can find here.

The contract consists of the some of the following policy commitments:

  • Defending the 2nd Amendment and adopting a Constitutional Carry resolution.
  • Anti-Public Education, Anti-Trans and Anti-CRT. 
  • Removing Kent County from the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, the Michigan Public Health Institute membership, and end the promotion of Planned Parenthood.

There are a few other contract talking points, but they are vague or promote notions of government transparency and accountability. This seems rather odd, since the Ottawa Impact made the same commitment, but have not really practiced accountability and transparency.

The Kent Contract has been signed by 14 GOP candidates for Kent County Commission seats, some are incumbents and some are hoping to become elected. The page has hyperlinks to their websites and/or FB pages, which I provide below. However, many of the pages didn’t work, had already been gobbled up by another entity or were questionable to open – at least that is what by MacBook told me.

Mark Jordan District #1

Tom Antor District #2 

Mark Laws District #3

Katie DeBoer District #4

Stefanie Boone District #5

Stan Ponstein District 7

Matt Kallman District #9

Bill Hirsch District #10

AJ Hoff District #11

Nick Prill District #13 

Jerri Schmidt District #14 

Josie Kornev District #18 

Jeremiah Bannister District #19

Wally Bujak District #21

So, you can see that this group doesn’t appear to be terribly organized, since many of their campaign sites don’t exist or are not secure. However, this shouldn’t be the only criteria we use to assess what this group is and what they are up to. 

In Part II, I want to present some ideas on how to combat the ideology and the electoral strategy of the Kent Contract Coalition. 

from → Indy News