Michael Sessions’ Big Adventure in Democracy!

The people have spoken…the bastards! So it seem is the sentiment today in Hillsdale, Michigan a small college town about a 20 minute drive from where I live these days.

Michael Sessions, an 18 year-old high school student who lives with his mother ousted the incumbent mayor, who was running unopposed, based solely on write-in votes. Sessions wasn’t even on the ballot. Says Yahoo News:

“Sessions, who turned 18 on Sept. 22, ran as a write-in candidate because he was too young to get on the ballot in the spring. The young politician used $700 from a summer job to fund his door-to-door campaign in Hillsdale, Mich., a town of about 9,000.

Unofficial results show that Sessions got 732 votes, compared with 668 for Mayor Doug Ingles, 51. Once his victory is certified and he's sworn in - the ceremony is set for Nov. 21 - he may be the youngest mayor in the USA. The U.S. Conference of Mayors lacks the data to determine whether he'll be the youngest mayor ever, says spokeswoman Elena Temple.”

Sessions plans to devote after-school hours to the job and use his bedroom as his office because other than a $250 per month salary, he receives no other compensation. The mayor doesn’t even have an office at city hall.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry here. I regularly advocate for very limited voluntary governance at the local level and so I would feel hypocritical if I denounced this result now. And besides, there are nine other councilpersons to keep an eye on Hizzoner too.

“Democracy”, said H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." Well, I don’t know about “good and hard” in this case, but I for one will be watching to see what the good people of Hillsdale end up with here. Stay tuned.

--Ali Massoud