Dick Posthumus

BORN:

July 19, 1950, in Alto, Mich.

RESIDENCE: Alto

FAMILY: Wife Pamela and four children, Krista, 24;
Lisa, 22; Heather, 19; and Bryan, 17

EDUCATION: Graduated with high honors,
Michigan State University, bachelor's in public
affairs management

PUBLIC SERVICE: Michigan Senate,
started 1982; Senate majority leader, 1991;
lieutenant governor, 1998

WEB SITE: www.dickposthumus.com

A

the early 1990s gave him a deeper understanding.
"I've been on a lot of trips in my life, but that was
the most intense trip I've ever been on."
Pro-Israel activist Ed Levy of Bloomfield Hills
remembers Posthumus' reaction after his return.
"He was very enthused of what Israel has done
and very supportive," he said. "Posthumus has been
a fine legislator and an excellent lieutenant governor.
I find him to be very honorable and very bright and
very responsive to just about any issue."
Posthumus said Jews should vote for him for rea-
sons other than his stance on Israel.
"People are people," he said. "What's important to
Jewish Americans is important to any other group.
We've got to have good jobs. We've got to have a
good public school system. We've got to protect our
natural resources."

s majority leader of the Michigan Senate

from 1991-1998, Lt. Gov. Dick
Posthumus said he had to figure out a way
to bring consensus.
"In some ways, being Senate majority leader is
harder than being governor," he said. "As a governor,
you're in charge of yourself and everybody works for
you. The majority leader has to bring 20 people
together, and you have to get 20 votes."
That approach, he said, is the difference between
him and his close friend Gov. John Engler.
"We've been close since college, but we have a very
different style in our approach to life," Posthumus
said. "In the end, I have to reach people on an indi-
vidual basis."
To Posthumus, that ability to find consensus from
divergent views is one reason he believes that people
— including Jews from southeastern Michigan —
will vote for an outdoorsman raised in a small farm-
ing community outside of Grand Rapids.
Times are different, the Republican said. "People
look beyond the parties today."
"The Jewish American community is very much
[achieving] the American dream. I think my fami-
ly has almost gone through that same evolution,
and I think I understand those values and what's
the next step in ensuring that we provide that
opportunity for the next generation," said
Posthumus, who was one of the first in his family
to ao
b to college. His father was a farmer and his
mother worked in a factory.
He said being a member of the Church of the
Brethren led him to become a strong advocate for
Israel.
"To me, there are very few things that have hap-
pened in civilization, if any, as horrible to define civ-
ilization as the Holocaust," he said. The Jewish
Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit-spon-
sored 10-day trip that Posthumus took to Israel in

Outlining The Issues

As majority leader, Posthumus said he led battles to
reduce taxes, and sponsored Proposal A "to lower
property taxes, so not only small businesses would
invest, but families would be able to buy homes again

Dick
Posthumus

Staff photo by Krim Hula

and provide a basic funding for our public schools.
"The state has come a long way," he said. "As gov-
ernor, I want to build on that strength that we've
begun to develop in the last 10 years," he said.
Jobs
Strategies that Posthumus advocates to keep
Michigan jobs include "continuing to lower the sin-
gle-business tax, and to look at the automotive
industry in a new way."
He said, "We are no longer the Big Three where
we produce cars from the very beginning to the very
end. We need to take advantage of our competitive
strengths: technology, engineering and design, and
build the industry around that."
Education
To Posthumus, the American dream is based on
good public education.
"The No. 1 goal of my administration is that
every child in kindergarten at the time I reach office
will be reading by the time they are in third grade,"
he said. "Whatever resources we need to direct to
special at-risk kids, I'm going to do that. If you get
at-risk kids reading early, you're not going to lose
them."
Posthumus supports reforms made in the Detroit
Public Schools, and said he strongly believes in local
control. As governor, he said he would turn the
school district back to the city of Detroit but, to
make it accountable, he would have the mayor
appoint the superintendent or the CEO. That
would be a much more accountable system to the
voters, he said.
In the last election, Posthumus supported tuition
vouchers, but the voters were clearly against it, so he
said it will "never be a part of my administration."
Crime
As a way to make Michigan's streets safer, the candidate
proposes a new program called Michigan Exile. "If you
are a felon caught with a gun, you go to jail," he said.
"You don't have to commit a felony after the fact."
Conservation
"We have a moral responSibility to protect our
resources for our kids and our grandkids,"
Posthumus said.
He opposed oil drilling in the Great Lakes and, in
his first six months in office, he said he would imple-
ment a Marshall Plan to protect Michigan's water.
"I don't change my stripes depending on whom I'm
talking to," he said. "These are the issues I believe are
important ...”
Considering his chances to be elected governor,
Posthumus said, "In the end, people are going to vote
for me if I get across my positive vision for Michigan
and they believe in that. If they believe that, then it
doesn't matter who the other candidate is, so it really
falls on my shoulders." E

6/21

2002

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