What does it tell you that about the Mayoral candidates for Grand Rapids that they met with the Chamber of Commerce during their annual Policy Conference?

Last year GRIID posted some articles about the 2023 Policy Conference hosted by the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce. I noted in that article that the GR Chamber of Commerce has a vision, but most people are not part of it.

I also did a follow up to that analysis piece with a second article talking about who attended the annual event and what that means in terms of their priorities.

On Tuesday, the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce held its 2024 Policy Conference at Frederick Meijer Gardens. To attend such an event you needed to pay $200 as a member or $250 for non-members. For an event that costs that much and lasted only 5 hours, made it prohibitive for most people to attend.

The featured speaker for the event was predictably made up of politicians and business leaders. There was also a presentation about a recent poll that the Chamber of Commerce had done by contracting with a Virginia company called TargetPoint.  Based on the results, the number of people who were polled was small, only 83. We don’t know who the polling questions were sent to, but my guess would be Chamber of Commerce members, meaning people who part of the economic elites in West Michigan.

However, besides discussing the polling numbers, most of the day seemed to be spent on local elections, particularly the candidates running for Mayor of Grand Rapids. There was a panel discussion entitled, Local Government Leaders on Future Prosperity, a discussion that no doubt centered around the ongoing development projects in Grand Rapids, what are often referred to as Transformational Projects. This is usually what the Chamber center’s their attention around, meaning what kinds of projects can we promote to bring more revenue to business owners, especially in the downtown area. 

Still, elections, the election process and candidates were the focus of the day. The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce invited David LaGrand and Senita Lenear, both of who are running for Mayor of Grand Rapids. There is a 3rd mayoral candidate, Steve Owens, but he was not invited. 

The question I would have for both David LaGrand and Senita Lenear is, why would you agree to meet with the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, which represents a small sector of the city, especially considering their track record for funding candidates that embrace neoliberal capitalism, along with pushing ordinance changes that essentially criminalized the unhoused in order to keep they away from profit making entities?

Earlier this year, GRIID posted a piece about LaGrand and Lenear as mayoral candidates, making the point that neither candidate was interested in challenging systems of power and oppression in this city, based in part by their platforms, along with who some of their larger campaign contributors are. However there is another quarterly campaign finance deadline coming up next week, so we’ll see an updated version of campaign financing for both LaGrand and Lenear.