By now, most have probably seen the results of the Nov. 5 election for three seats on Mott Community College’s Board of Trustees. For those who haven’t, the three top vote-getters in a crowded field were:

• Candice Miller
• Jeffrey Swanson
• Kenyetta Dotson

There’s plenty of bad, but first I want to start with the good. Kenyetta Dotson is a talented, beloved community leader in Flint and Genesee County. She’s a Mott graduate, is the mother of a Mott student, and she’s mentored countless young people in the community who became Mott students and graduates. She’s fair, hard-working, highly intelligent, caring, and respected, and she also understands education and Mott Community College from several perspectives. She epitomizes the characteristics we should seek out in all local elected officials, and Mott will be lucky to have her voice and wisdom on its board.

The other good thing: Andy Everman is not among that top three. I don’t want to recap his tenure, but … who am I kidding, yes I do! He continuously and publicly disrespected Mott’s previous president; he called a staff member at the college a “pussy” during a public meeting; he frequently was dismissive of members of the public during meetings; he advocated for and oversaw controversial and secretive processes to hire the board’s attorney and to search for a new college president; a colleague on the board accused him of faking a medical emergency in order to avoid agenda items during a meeting; he was caught on video contradicting himself, which led to him becoming a meme. I’m just going to leave this video here because it perfectly sums up his tenure as board chair and I hope it is what people remember most about how little he’s had to offer local politics.

My northern Michigan family has an obnoxious habit of, every time someone (usually me) loses a card game, breaking into a loud singing of “na na na na hey hey hey GOODBYE,” and let me tell you, I’ve never felt like chanting that more than while seeing election returns that showed Everman losing his seat. All of those characteristics above that I listed of Dotson, the opposite is true of Everman. His absence from Mott’s board is a net positive for the college in every way imaginable.

But unfortunately, that’s the end of the feel-good news from Tuesday. The Genesee County Republican Party has actively been pushing and funding candidates for Mott’s non-partisan board in more than one election cycle. The resulting leadership they’ve helped put in place has resulted in some truly awful governance, a consistent lack of basic procedural knowledge during board meetings, priorities that aren’t focused on the core educational mission of the college, accusations of meeting in secret and possibly violating the Open Meetings Act, and more. But the party’s organization has also vaulted most of their preferred candidates onto the board and into the majority, so I can’t really argue with the clear success of their tactics. They have an agenda, they’re organized, and they’ve mostly executed on it.

Swanson and Miller were both listed on a far-right, Qanon-friendly postcard that threatened to get rid of faculty whose political beliefs don’t align with the board’s. No one seems to know who sent it or wants to claim responsibility for it, but it still somehow went to a lot of Genesee County voters. The mailer likely violated campaign finance law as it didn’t include a line stating who paid for it, and Swanson and fellow trustee Wendy Wolcott both denied being involved with it.

Swanson has been on the board since 2022 and is a known commodity. He, like Everman, has been caught on video being dishonest in a public meeting, claiming to have written a multi-page motion during a meeting despite never being seen writing anything during the lengthy times he was on camera. The college also couldn’t produce a copy of that allegedly hand-written motion after a Freedom of Information Act request was submitted seeking it.

Miller is a newcomer on the board. She’s on the Burton City Council (but is NOT the former U.S. Rep. and MI Secretary of State Candice Miller). There is scarcely any information about her, or her reasons for running for the Mott Board of Trustees, online. She didn’t fill out the League of Women Voters questionnaire that several other candidates did. She did, however, post a picture with Wolcott’s son, Matthew Smith, on her Facebook page and identified him as her campaign manager. Honestly, anyone on a Qanon-friendly mailer has no business on any public board, let alone a college’s, but there was an intentional and organized effort to get her on this board, she was the highest vote getter, and here we are.

The important point isn’t really how we got here. It’s what’s next.

Get Organized

I am a faculty member at Mott, but it’s not my full-time job. My involvement in this issue mostly came about as a voter, taxpayer, community member, and neighbor of the college who has been disgusted by this board’s mismanagement and chaos over the past two years. I am passionate about this, but I’m not in any way an experienced political or community organizer. I can write a little bit, thanks mostly to having to find thousands of words to write about the Detroit Pistons playing some of the worst professional basketball I’ve ever seen for about 15 years or so, so that’s how I’ve chosen to be involved in keeping a lens on this board’s issues.

Whether the recalls against Trustees Wolcott, John Daly, or Janet Couch are successful or not, I do intend to continue writing about this board. Mott is vital to our city and county, and the current and future students deserve so much better than this out-of-touch, corrupt board making decisions that impact their lives and education.

I’ve met and heard from many people who are passionate and who care about Mott. But the truth is that passion has been siloed and not organized. The election results reflect that.

In this election, there were two factions of candidates: people running for Mott’s board who actually care about education, the college, and its direction (Dotson, Whitmore, Figueroa, Wares, Watchorn, Johnson, and Wagonlander) and a group that either has connections to Wolcott/Smith and/or to other ultra right wing extremists in Genesee County (Miller, Swanson, Davis, Sepanak, Marden). I don’t really put Everman in either category, since he seemed to alienate people on both sides (he was specifically called out on the Qanon mailer, despite reliably voting with Swanson and Wolcott on nearly all issues), ultimately resulting in his ouster. But even adding Everman’s votes to the latter group, the former still had more overall votes cast (175,957-169,639) according to the unofficial election results. If those were spread among three or four candidates instead of seven, the board makeup would be drastically different right now. As frustrating as I find that as a voter, it’s also pointless to armchair quarterback it (but like I said, I’m a sports blogger by trade, it’s sorta what I do).

And here’s a nicer way of putting it: we had several good candidates, but there were just too many. And it was clear early on that there were too many. I’ve feared since July that good candidates would split votes, which would allow a better-promoted slate to remain in the majority and that’s exactly what happened.

Moving forward, I would implore the Genesee County Democratic Party to take Mott’s Board of Trustees more seriously. Their counterparts in the Genesee County Republican Party clearly do. I can’t answer why it wasn’t a priority for the Genesee County Democratic Party in this election, and I am also not going to hide my disappointment with that.

Along with promoting candidates to a broader network of voters, the party also could’ve helped convince fewer people to run with earlier involvement. I certainly have no issue with people being passionate about Mott and wanting to serve. But the number of candidates who registered to run, the fact that they clearly didn’t connect with each other beforehand to organize a slate, the lack of a clear and consistent platform/vision for the college that all in a slate were committed to, the fact that several secured valuable endorsements that were spread out among more than three candidates and ultimately split votes … all of those things were massive and avoidable mistakes that ultimately the college will pay for.

Better coordination between teachers/professors, staff at colleges and in schools, and unions in Genesee County is also vital, and not just for Mott. Obviously, that could help with endorsements, but it could also help with actually building a communications network to send candidate information out to, and to just generally stay informed about education in the county. For example, many school board races had extreme candidates running this year. It would’ve been useful to connect to a wider group of citizens and voters who have successfully fought back against extremists trying to enact unpopular or irrelevant policies in their communities. Organizing some sort of open and recurring meetup for people who work in education is definitely an action item I plan to take away and work on.

A hopeful sign for the future and potential blueprint for Mott happened in Davison, though. Wolcott, who somehow registered as a Democrat and made it on the ballot for Genesee County Commission in her region despite in no way being a Democrat, was rejected by voters. Smith, her son, who only narrowly avoided being recalled two years ago, was successfully booted from Davison’s School Board by voters. Smith also lost in the Republican primary for Davison Township clerk over the summer.

Davison is a community that leans much more Republican than Democrat, and voters there who know Wolcott and Smith best didn’t want them in office. It is a good reminder that people with extreme political beliefs aren’t popular and, frequently, can’t actually govern once they get into office. People in local communities, no matter their political background, want their colleges, schools, and other local treasures run responsibly, and when people prove incapable of being good stewards of those organizations, they get voted out no matter their political party.

Most people support, believe in, and want good public education — and there’s no better example of this than the recent election. Voters in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska all resoundingly rejected ballot proposals which would’ve diverted tax money away from public schools and toward vouchers for private schools. Two of those three states are heavily Republican. A board that continues to meddle with and weaken our public community college here, that continues to try and advance some sort of mysterious political agenda that has nothing to do with education, will quickly become an unpopular one.

Mott’s new board will have a chance to prove that, minus Everman, it will be more transparent, stop being antagonistic to its stakeholders, and make decisions that include the input of students, faculty, and staff who are most impacted by their decisions. If this board moves in that direction and exhibits good governance and leadership, then great … that’s actually the only real thing that has been repeatedly asked of them over the past two years. I don’t expect to agree with every decision as long as there is a framework, an opportunity for input from people impacted, and a clear explanation for why elected officials make the decisions they do. The previous two years, the majority of this board has not done that, or even cared to try.

But if they don’t improve, it is good to remind ourselves that positions on this board aren’t permanent, and there are models for how to successfully remove or beat candidates who seek these offices with chaotic or self-serving intentions. We just have to be clear-headed and organized enough to see them through.