Ottawa County provides a glimpse of what occurs when one of many constructing blocks of American democracy is consumed by ideological battles
The brand new commissioners, all Republicans, swore their oaths of workplace on household Bibles. After which the firings started. Gone was the lawyer who had represented Ottawa County for 40 years. Gone was the county administrator who oversaw a employees of 1,800. To run the well being division, they voted to put in a service supervisor from a neighborhood HVAC firm who had gained prominence as a critic of masks mandates.
Because the session entered its fourth hour, Sylvia Rhodea, the board’s new vice chair, put ahead a movement to vary the motto that sat atop the county’s web site and graced its official stationery. “Whereas the imaginative and prescient assertion of ‘The place You Belong’ has been used to advertise the divisive Marxist ideology of the race, fairness motion,” Rhodea stated.
And so started a brand new period for Ottawa County. Throughout America, county governments offered companies so important that they have been usually an afterthought. Their staff paved roads, constructed parks, collected taxes and maintained property information. In an period when Individuals had by no means appeared extra divided and distrustful, county governments, at their finest, helped outline what stays of the frequent good.
Ottawa County stood out for a unique purpose. It was turning into a case research in what occurs when one of many constructing blocks of American democracy is consumed by ideological battles over race, faith and American historical past.
Rhodea’s decision continued on for 20 “whereases,” connecting the present motto to a broader effort that she stated aimed to “divide individuals by race,” scale back their “private company,” and train them to “hate America and doubt the goodness of her individuals.”
Her proposed different, she stated, sought to unite county residents round America’s “true historical past” as a “land of systemic alternative constructed on the Structure, Christianity and capitalism.’”
She flipped to her decision’s closing web page and leaned nearer to the mic. “Now, due to this fact, let it’s resolved that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners establishes a brand new county imaginative and prescient assertion and motto of ‘The place Freedom Rings.’”
The fee’s lone Democrat gazed out in disbelief. A number of seats away, the fee’s new chair savored the second. “There’s just a few actually stunning language on this,” he stated, earlier than calling for a vote on the decision. It handed simply.
A cheer went up within the room, which on this morning was about three-fourths full, however within the coming weeks it could be full of so many indignant individuals calling one another “fascists,” “communists,” “Christian nationalists” and “racists” that the county must open an overflow room down the corridor.
The brand new slogan was largely the brainchild of Joe Moss, the 37-year-old new chair of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners and a newcomer to politics. Moss and his fellow commissioners oversaw a thriving county with a finances of $230 million. On a wall on the entrance of the assembly room the place he now presided have been 16 framed images of earlier boards, made up virtually totally of White, pro-business Republicans in jackets and ties.
Lots of these commissioners traced their roots again to the county’s early Dutch settlers from whom they inherited a Calvinist appreciation for thrift and moderation. They hardly ever spent quite a lot of hundred {dollars} on election campaigns and took delight within the county’s AAA bond score, fiscal self-discipline and low taxes.
Below their management, Ottawa County prospered. It had one of many lowest unemployment charges in Michigan and, since 2010, has been the quickest rising county within the state. Board conferences have been civil, orderly and, till not too long ago, sparsely attended. “We have been rolling alongside good,” stated Greg DeJong, a Republican who spent 12 years on the board earlier than he was unseated. “Nobody got here to our conferences earlier than covid.”
Moss inhabited a unique world than his predecessors. Like so many rising leaders in immediately’s Republican Social gathering, his view of his nation and its politics was formed by his religion and his church, certainly one of dozens of huge evangelical congregations that had taken root amid the county’s sprawling farms and freshly sprouted subdivisions.
In these church buildings, conventional hymns and organ music had been changed by electrical guitars, drums, coloured lights, smoke machines and trendy reward songs. God existed as a tangible power at work within the county’s on a regular basis enterprise, battling a Satan whose presence was simply as actual and uncompromising.
On a typical Sunday at Moss’s Wellspring Church, individuals swayed and sang because the band labored its manner by the 30-minute set that started each service. Then they settled into the pews and listened as their pastor warned of the “many individuals” within the nation who have been “attempting to destroy every little thing that’s righteous and good and pure and holy.” They have been the kind, he stated, who have been demanding free condoms in school, “gender fluidity books” within the public library and drag queen story hours.
By his personal admission, Moss had not paid a lot consideration to native politics. He ran a small know-how enterprise and was centered on elevating his youngsters. Then, within the fall of 2020, the Ottawa County well being division realized of a coronavirus outbreak at his daughter’s Christian college and ordered the varsity’s leaders to adjust to the governor’s masks mandate. Once they refused, state and county officers chained shut the varsity’s doorways for greater than per week and warned dad and mom that continued resistance might carry fines and imprisonment.
All of a sudden, Moss realized that these harmful folks that his pastor had been speaking about on Sundays weren’t simply in Washington and Lansing, the state capital. They have been in West Olive, the place the county authorities was headquartered. “In 2020, I turned a threatened mother or father,” Moss stated on the marketing campaign path. “I used to be threatened particularly … by Ottawa County.”
In 2021, he and Rhodea shaped Ottawa Impression to recruit and lift cash for native candidates who ran as a slate. Moss, Rhodea and many of the different Ottawa Impression candidates declined to talk to native newspapers or tv stations throughout the marketing campaign. Moss and Rhodea additionally declined to remark for this story. As an alternative they relied on the greater than $150,00zero Ottawa Impression had raised from principally native donors — the largest was Moss’s mom — to unfold their message by way of on-line movies, fliers, billboards, yard indicators and Fb posts.
Along with his quarter-zip sweaters and khaki pants, Moss seemed like a suburban dad out for a spherical of golf, one who normally saved a handgun strapped to his hip. On his group’s web site, Moss warned that Ottawa County had been “strategically focused” by the “progressive left,” although the county had, since 1864, persistently voted Republican in presidential races.
He noticed proof of this leftist marketing campaign within the county well being division’s determination within the fall of 2021 to impose a faculty masks mandate for youngsters who have been nonetheless too younger for the vaccine. About 1,00zero individuals, together with Moss, angrily protested the coverage at a county board assembly. He noticed it within the county’s “The place You Belong” motto.
And he noticed it within the $470,00zero that native companies had donated to jump-start a county workplace of variety, fairness and inclusion. The businesses, which bought auto elements and workplace furnishings worldwide, hoped the initiative would possibly assist appeal to and retain world expertise to a spot that was greater than 80 % White and will typically appear unwelcoming to minorities.
Final November, commissioners backed by Ottawa Impression gained eight of the 11 seats on the county board. They have been now answerable for a authorities that they feared, overseeing county staff they didn’t belief.
In late January, Moss got here nose to nose with the pinnacle of the division that he noticed as most chargeable for trampling freedom in Ottawa County. Adeline Hambley, a 43-year-old with lengthy grey hair and horn-rimmed glasses, had began with the county’s well being division 19 years earlier as a area septic inspector.
In one of many earlier board’s final acts, the commissioners had picked her to switch her retiring boss. To the previous board, Hambley appeared like an individual who might work with the brand new Ottawa Impression board members. She had a status for being regular and calm. Because the longtime head of the well being division’s environmental division, she had nothing to do with coronavirus coverage or the masks mandate that had so infuriated Moss and his supporters.
To Moss, Hambley was a barrier to badly wanted change. It was not clear below state legislation whether or not they might take away her with out trigger. And so right here she was, standing nervously earlier than the board. “Hello, I met a few you, and everybody else, good to satisfy you,” she stated, earlier than launching right into a rapid-fire abstract of her 120-person division’s dozens of duties.
Moss and the brand new board members didn’t appear serious about any of it. “I simply need to be clear that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners has a really agency stance on mandates, and there is not going to be mandates in Ottawa County,” he advised her.
“We do difficulty orders often so far as methods which have sewage on the bottom,” Hambley replied.
“I used to be referring to mandates relating to parental rights and the once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic. That form of factor,” Moss stated.
Moss and the board’s option to run the county well being division was Nathaniel Kelly, an HVAC service supervisor with levels from a web based college and no expertise working in public well being. Kelly, who didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark, had often pushed discredited covid therapies, such because the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin.
Earlier than Moss might set up Kelly, he wanted a purpose to fireside Hambley. Then got here a report on an obscure right-wing web site that the well being division was a sponsor of a neighborhood public college’s “Intercourse Ed Week,” which included an occasion referred to as “Kinky Karaoke” and details about polyamory.
Hambley’s workplace issued a press launch saying the well being division’s function within the student-organized occasion was restricted to testing for sexually transmitted illnesses, which it did month-to-month on the campus. The brand new county administrator ordered Hambley to retract the assertion, claiming it was a lie.
And Moss, showing on a conservative radio present, prompt Hambley was engaged in a coverup. “There must be accountability,” he stated. The subsequent day, Hambley filed a lawsuit in state courtroom, accusing the board of micromanaging the division and illegally trying to dismiss her with out trigger.
It had been a troublesome three years for Hambley and her crew. First got here the pandemic, then the backlash over the masks mandate and coronavirus vaccines, which led to demise threats and a police automotive stationed of their parking zone. Now they felt as in the event that they have been being demonized merely for doing their jobs. Moss and many of the different new commissioners declined repeated invites to go to the well being division. So Hambley, in her appearances earlier than the board, tried to clarify what made the division’s work significant.
She described how the division’s communicable illness specialists had been the primary in Michigan to identify an E. coli outbreak in 2022 that triggered 4 deaths and sickened tons of in six states. She talked concerning the division’s cellular dental groups, which supply free cleanings to youngsters whose dad and mom couldn’t afford care. And he or she confirmed board members a photograph of the backyard that the division had constructed as a closing resting place for the cremated stays of those that have been indigent and alone. “We strongly imagine that each particular person’s life issues,” Hambley advised them.
To Hambley, the worth of county authorities lay in its closeness to the individuals it helped. She wished Moss and the opposite commissioners to see her employees as neighbors and public servants, pushed by knowledgeable ethic that required them to put aside their political opinions, droop ethical judgment and care for everybody locally.
“Once you’re illness and illness prevention, it impacts everyone, particularly susceptible populations,” she stated in an interview. “That’s a core tenet of public well being.”
Hambley’s staff had taken half within the college sexual well being occasion as a result of they knew that folks between the ages of 18 and 24 have been on the highest danger for a sexually transmitted an infection, she stated. These have been the susceptible individuals they wanted to achieve.
However Hambley and different senior well being division officers stated it was turning into more durable to do their jobs. “We’ve by no means had a county management against the rules of public well being and against its personal departments,” stated Marcia Mansaray, Hambley’s deputy officer. “It’s disheartening. It’s exhausting … It’s poisonous.”
And it was not simply the well being division. Throughout the county, authorities employees frightened about working afoul of the brand new board’s edicts. Division heads canceled implicit bias coaching classes, which some social employees wanted for his or her state certifications. A transparent bin with condoms that had been within the county psychological well being company’s foyer lavatory for years was quietly eliminated. Hambley and her employees even stopped doing video conferences, frightened that the brand new county administrator, and even Moss, might need the flexibility to secretly monitor them.
The sense of siege quickly unfold to these within the broader group. Dozens of individuals, supporters and opponents, have been lining as much as give public remark on the board’s twice-monthly conferences. The classes, which up to now usually clocked in at lower than an hour, now often stretched longer than 4.
Folks argued concerning the security of coronavirus vaccines, the constitutionality of the lapsed masks mandates and the safety of digital voting machines. They debated whether or not America was a nation blessed by God or stained by racism. They deployed the previous and new county mottos as rallying cries.
Generally the feedback aimed on the new commissioners have been shifting and private. A former instructor at a Christian college spoke of how his dedication to biblical literalism had practically led to his homosexual son’s suicide. “He assumed that even Jesus didn’t love him,” the person advised Moss and the opposite board members. “He had the capsules lined up twice, ages 14 and 20. If he had dedicated suicide I’d’ve been complicit in his demise.”
Usually the commenters expressed beliefs that appeared irreconcilable. “There’s a big revival coming that nobody has ever seen earlier than. The silent majority is silent now not,” proclaimed a person in a darkish blue button-down shirt to a burst of applause. “We is not going to be demonized for our religion in God and his phrase.”
An ordained minister in a pink down coat rose to talk a couple of minutes later. She gripped either side of the lectern and leaned towards the microphone. “I’m sick unto demise of all of the Jesus discuss,” she stated to cheers from the opposite facet. “We’re right here for the frequent good.”
Rebekah Curran, one of many new commissioners endorsed by Ottawa Impression, listened to all of them and sometimes seemed pained. She had moved to western Michigan three years earlier for her husband’s work and instantly received concerned in native politics, beginning up the Ottawa County Republican Ladies’s Membership.
In 2021, not lengthy after Moss based Ottawa Impression, she invited him, his spouse and one other couple over for steaks. Moss advised them about what had occurred at his daughter’s college and his plans to battle again. Then all of them bowed their heads and took turns praying for God’s will to come back to fruition of their county.
Curran admired Moss’s strategic imaginative and prescient. He had created an infrastructure for normal individuals with “the precise values” to run for workplace and win. However as time handed, she grew pissed off by his tendency to dismiss criticism and make huge selections, akin to selecting Kelly to take over the well being division, in secret and with out public enter. So far as Curran might inform, Kelly was the one particular person interviewed for the job. When she pressed Moss and Rhodea to clarify the choice course of, they brushed her off.
“We’re not going to rehash the choice,” Rhodea advised her at a board assembly. Curran believed the earlier board had ruled in a divisive and dictatorial method. Now she frightened the brand new board was doing the identical. “We’ve develop into what we despised,” she stated.
Curran started to surprise if there was a option to run the county that allowed for disagreement with out inflicting a lot anger and concern. “That’s the query. That’s what I’m fighting,” she stated in late January after yet one more practically four-hour board assembly. Earlier that morning she had acquired an e-mail from a constituent who had refused to shake her hand earlier than one of many conferences however was now praising her for her willingness to query a few of Moss’s selections.
“Simply be your personal particular person and please vote your conscience,” he wrote her. “You symbolize me too, a white Democrat who voted towards you.” He closed by expressing remorse for his rudeness earlier within the day. “That’s not how I used to be raised,” he wrote.
To Curran, the e-mail was a glimmer of hope, a “chip on the Berlin Wall.” She instantly emailed again. “I do know you have been in all probability deeply upset this morning,” she wrote. “Whereas we could not agree on every little thing, I hope we are able to achieve a mutual respect for each other.”
The message Curran acquired was from Kevin Crowe, a 65-year-old former mortgage processor who delivered pizzas part-time to get out of the home and make ends meet. Crowe had two homosexual siblings who nonetheless lived within the space. He noticed the board’s determination to vary the motto and shut its variety workplace as yet one more effort to marginalize his siblings. “They don’t like gays,” he stated. “They don’t suppose they need to exist and don’t need them seen.”
He had larger hopes for Curran, whom he discovered within the hallway earlier than the beginning of the subsequent board assembly. “I behaved badly,” he stated, reaching out to shake her hand. Then he invited her to come back to church with him one Sunday at Georgetown United Methodist, a few mile from Curran’s home. “There’s huge rainbow flags out entrance subsequent to the signal,” he stated.
Curran knew Crowe’s church. She handed by it on her option to Resurrection Life Church, the place the parking zone was crowded most Sunday mornings with tons of of automobiles and Pastor Duane Vander Klok frightened that it was getting more durable and more durable for individuals to listen to God’s phrase. “In Canada it’s already unlawful to talk towards homosexuality,” Vander Klok stated, citing legal guidelines prohibiting the promotion of homosexual conversion remedy.
Curran shared his issues. She stated she believed in compassion and kindness however refused to condone homosexuality and opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage. “It’s an excessive amount of,” she stated. Even in conservative Ottawa County she had observed store home windows with rainbow stickers proclaiming that LGTBQ individuals have been welcome.
“Does that imply it’s not a welcoming place for Christians?” Curran puzzled. She was unsure how to answer Crowe’s invitation. “I’d have to hope about it,” she stated. A number of weeks handed, and he or she was nonetheless praying.
By late February, the county’s new “The place Freedom Rings” motto had supplanted the previous saying atop the county’s web site. New stationery was being printed. Amongst Michigan Republicans, Moss’s star was rising.
On the social gathering’s annual conference, he took to the stage to appoint Kristina Karamo to function state social gathering chair. In Karamo, a vocal proponent of disproven election fraud theories who refused to concede her 14-point loss for Michigan secretary of state in November, Moss noticed a “brave chief” with a “backbone of metal.” This was the form of management he wished to carry to Ottawa County.
Lower than three months into the board’s time period, Moss had basically stopped speaking to 2 commissioners endorsed by Ottawa Impression — Curran and Jacob Bonnema — for what he noticed as their disloyalty. Each stated they nonetheless backed Moss’s total targets however complained that he was extra serious about producing battle than working the county. “He’s not afraid to harm individuals. That doesn’t appear to be a consideration for him,” stated Bonnema, a newcomer to politics. “In my expertise actions like this burn vibrant and burn out.”
The opposite huge verify on Moss’s energy was Hambley and the lawsuit that was stopping the board from firing her. In late February, Moss crafted a plan to take away her from her well being division publish. He discovered a minor inconsistency between the way in which the earlier board’s decision appointing Hambley was publicly learn and the way in which it was written into the assembly minutes. By a 6-5 vote, Moss persuaded the brand new board that the discrepancy invalidated Hambley’s appointment.
Curran and Bonnema voted with the minority, saying they have been uncomfortable overturning the earlier board’s will. Hambley’s lawyer blasted Moss’s revision as an illegal “try to rewrite historical past.”
Hambley was sitting down along with her employees for a gathering the next day when her cellphone buzzed with a brand new calendar notification. “Oh, that’s fascinating,” she stated.
Two of the county’s attorneys have been now coming to her common month-to-month assembly with the county administrator at 10 the subsequent morning. It appeared sure they have been going to fireside her. She referred to as her lawyer, who requested a decide for a short lived restraining order.
At 9:58 a.m., the decide granted her request and scheduled a listening to for March 31.
The listening to, which had been moved to a courtroom in Muskegon after all of the judges in Ottawa County recused themselves, centered on two points. First, whether or not Hambley was correctly appointed as county well being officer. Second, whether or not the brand new board had the authority to take away her for political, somewhat than public well being, causes. Hambley and Moss sat at reverse tables and averted eye contact.
“This board goes to do its obligation,” stated David Kallman, who represented Moss and the board. “Miss Hambley is topic to their oversight whether or not she likes it or not.” Moss nodded vigorously in settlement. Hambley and her lawyer countered that Michigan legislation shielded her from political strain, permitting her to make unpopular selections wanted to avoid wasting lives.
“I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. I’m not a libertarian or any of these issues. And your well being officers shouldn’t be,” Hambley stated exterior the courtroom. “They need to be following good science and they need to be defending everybody of their group.”
Earlier this month, Choose Jenny McNeill agreed. She dominated that Hambley was correctly appointed to the job and will solely be eliminated if the brand new board might present she was “incompetent” or had uncared for her duties. “The general public is harmed when the legislation isn’t adopted in terminating the well being director,” the decide wrote.
A full trial on whether or not the brand new board has been micromanaging Hambley and interfering in her duties is more likely to transfer ahead later this 12 months. Finally, it is going to be as much as the courtroom system to resolve how a county authorities irreconcilably divided towards itself ought to operate.