Student council loser wins big as teen mayor

Newly elected Hillsdale Mayor Michael Sessions, 18, waves goodbye to a TV news crew as it leaves his home. Sessions won the election on a write-in vote.

By Brad Heath / The Detroit News

HILLSDALE -- Michael Sessions' political career had an inauspicious start: When he ran for student council this year, he lost.

Now he's about to be mayor.

Sessions, an 18-year-old high school student, won a long-shot write-in campaign this week to oust Hillsdale's 51-year-old mayor.

"I just thought I'd give it a shot," Sessions said with a smile. "I hoped I'd win. But I didn't really know what would happen."

The election swept Sessions -- indeed, all of this usually staid southern Michigan city -- into an intense spotlight Wednesday. So many television stations showed up at the city's high school to interview Sessions that the superintendent pulled him from class. After he got home, a giant satellite truck lumbered up the narrow road in front of his house.

County officials expected to make the results official today. Their unofficial tally had Sessions winning over the incumbent, Douglas Ingles, 732 to 668.

"This is a very exciting time for our community. We need to find ways to generate enthusiasm, and I am 100 percent supportive of any change that makes that happen," said Ingles, who runs a roller skating rink and has served as mayor for four years. "If this helps, I'm happy."

Sessions was too young to put his name on the ballot; he turned 18 after the filing deadline. So he registered to vote on his birthday, and the next week declared he would run a write-in campaign.

"I guess that's all the political obstacles you could really have in an election -- being 18, running against an incumbent and running as a write-in," Sessions' father, Scott Sessions, said.

Sessions started campaigning a month ago. He spent $700 he earned selling caramel apples and other snacks over the summer to pay for business cards and lawn signs. He took friends campaigning door-to-door.

"They'd look at me," he said, scrunching his face, "and say 'How old are you again? How much experience do you have?' And I say 'I'm still in high school.'"

A week before the election, the city's firefighters union threw Sessions its support. That didn't necessarily deliver many votes -- with only three members, it's tied for the distinction of being the state's smallest union. It wasn't a typical endorsement: Before they backed him, firefighters called Sessions' teachers to ask what they thought of him. "The guys were a little leery at first because of his age, but he really impressed us with his openness and his energy," said Kevin Pauken, the union's president.

Sessions learned he'd won an hour after the polls closed, when a friend sent him a message over the Internet to tell him he'd heard the results on local radio station WCSR.

"It demonstrates that if you really want to do something, you can get it done," said Gary Wolfram, who teaches political economy at Hillsdale College.

"The mayor didn't run a visible campaign. He didn't really campaign at all. And Mike struck me as somebody who would get a little spark in this city," he said.

Though home to Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, a city of 8,200 people 70 miles southwest of Ann Arbor, has been scarred by the economic storms that have ravaged dozens of small towns in the Midwest. Its factories and mills are disappearing; its people are vanishing, too.

The election had the city buzzing Wednesday -- though not everyone was enthusiastic.

"I don't think it was very intelligent," Clay Fish grumbled as he walked to work on Wednesday afternoon. "But it doesn't really matter who the mayor is. The City Council and the manager have all the power anyway."

Hillsdale's mayor presides over the City Council. The city is run by a city manager.

Sessions is the youngest mayor in the city's history. Sessions said he's anxious to start -- though he said the reality hadn't sunk in. "But I think once I start meeting everybody, I'm going to flow right into it," he said.

He said he got into the race because he'd heard too many people complain about the city's elected leaders repeatedly winning office because no one would oppose them. "There was a lack of motivation in this city," he said. "I was willing to step up and tell them to give me a chance, let me see what I can do."

Sessions said he wants to attend Hillsdale College next year to study political science; he hasn't applied. It could leave college officials in an interesting situation. "If the president of the college wants to get a street re-paved," Wolfram mused, "he'll have to call a freshman."

You can reach Brad Heath at (313) 222-2563 or bheath@detnews.com.

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