 "Photo: Courtesy Tim Bledsoe")
Wayne State professor Tim Bledsoe said students come before his work as a newly elected Democrat in state legislature.
Bledsoe, a political science professor, won the state House seat in District 1, an area that includes Grosse Pointe Farms, Harper Woods and northeast Detroit, and has a population of nearly 90,000.
Bledsoe said he only missed one day this year because of elections.
“I expect I may have to miss one more class,” Bledsoe said. “I’ve been very comprehensive to meet my classes.”
As a political scientist and professor, Bledsoe said he had an awareness of legislative shortfalls in Lansing, and wanted to help make it “what it should be.”
“[I have a] desire to take knowledge I had in class and apply it to the real world,” he said.
He hopes to bring our state government up to the 21st century — to use tax dollars effectively and efficiently. His concerns include ethics, finance and lobby reform, and higher education.
Bledsoe said he would like Michigan to “make higher education more affordable and accessible.”
“We’re rapidly pricing higher education out of the reach of Michigan people,” he said.
His biggest challenge is the economy. He said we haven’t seen the auto industry under severe distress in 75 years and foreclosures are becoming common. While campaigning in Detroit, he noticed three empty houses in a row.
Bledsoe won by a popular-vote margin of more than 6,000.
“We were pretty confident going into the closing dates knowing we‘d win,” Bledsoe said.
Bledsoe said he anticipated winning because of the work put into campaigning, using clean money. His campaign was getting a good response.
Active campaigning started in April and picked up in the summer when Bledsoe was not teaching. An average of 125 volunteers helped, from stuffing envelopes to door-to-door campaigning.
“We ran hard and ran with integrity; we had a powerful message,” Bledsoe said. “We had the only campaign in Michigan that wasn’t accepting money from lobbyists.
“That really resonated with citizens and resulted was in overcoming march in our victory.”
He said he feels a lot of emotions — exhausted and exhilarated.
“When you look at the fact that all these people put their trust in you in clearly hard times in this state, there’s certainly something very humbling about that,” he said.
Bledsoe previously ran in 2006 and lost by 2,200 votes.
In December, Bledsoe was invited by Gov. Jennifer Graholm to attend a reception for new legislatures. Instead, he will be teaching his American government class.
“Students will always come first,” he said. “The governor will have plenty of time on other occasions.”
Bledsoe said he hopes his students feel that he is employing the Barack Obama lesson of giving back to the greater community spirit that we haven’t seen in decades.
“We’ve had an era of Republican self-interestedness for too long,” he said. “This is a new spirit, which is really best embodied in the character and spirit of Barack Obama.”
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