Meet the Socialist Running for Michigan State House

In the last legislature, 93 percent of folks in Lansing [the Michigan state capital] accepted money from DTE. It is one of the biggest lobbyists in the state. It’s no surprise that has translated into the electricity crisis we’re in right now.

Over the weekend, we had some of the most severe winter weather we’ve had in a long time. For five days in a row, the temperature hasn’t gotten above single digits. When that winter storm blew through, about 125,000 in Southeast Michigan lost power. Some people went a full day or more without power in deathly frigid temperatures.

This is becoming the norm. It is not just a fluke because of terrible weather. Anytime the wind blows too hard, people lose power.

When I was knocking on doors, I talked to a mom who said, “I have four kids under the age of eight. Our electrical bill is $200 or $300 a month. I’m paying a lot to keep my lights on, and with four kids I can’t not have electricity. I have to cook them dinner; they have to come home and do their homework. If we lose power, that means my mom ten minutes away doesn’t have power. My dad, on the other side of the district, doesn’t have power. I have nowhere to go.” It is unacceptable.

DTE puts right out in public, in their shareholder reports, the reason we’ve gotten to this place. The company “defers maintenance,” which means they don’t trim trees or replace transformers. I talked to a DTE worker who said he worked on a transformer from the 1980s. The infrastructure is crumbling and needs to be replaced and invested in. DTE won’t do it because its priority is paying shareholders.

It ’s making record profits — over $1 billion last year. There is absolutely no reason why they can’t be putting the work in to make sure our grid is reliable. Instead, DTE continues to get approved for rate hikes.

It now charges at a higher rate between the hours of 3 and 7 p.m. The company knows that’s the time kids get home from school, parents get home from work, people have to do their homework, cook dinner, do laundry. The time when we’re using electricity the most, it’s charging the highest rates.

DTE just got approved six weeks ago for another rate increase. It’s got to stop. No matter who I’ve talked to on doors I’ve knocked, everyone, even conservative Republicans, agrees that we have to do something about DTE.

It’s pretty cut and dry. We don’t take money from DTE because, when you get to Lansing, how are you going to hold the company accountable, if you’re beholden to DTE because you took money from them?

People across Southeast Michigan, not just in my district, are fed up and have had enough. Hopefully, I’m going to get in the legislature and propose legislation to hold DTE accountable and force it to pay people for every hour they’re out of power.