Michael Sessions-Teen Mayor
November 8, 2005, was a landmark day for Michael Sessions. At lunch he left his high school campus to go to the Hillsdale Community Library and cast his ballot in his first election. Then he returned to school.
“It was like any other day,” says Michael, now 19. “I went home—and I was a nervous wreck.”
Who can blame him? He still had hours to wait until he heard the results of the election—an election in which he was running for mayor of his Michigan hometown.
Throwing His Hat in the Ring
Not every teenager would think about running for mayor. But Michael says he can’t remember a time he wasn’t interested in government and politics. “My dad always comes to dinner ranting or raving about what’s going on in the political world,” he explains.
And Michael was very aware of the challenges Hillsdale faces, especially ensuring that there are enough jobs to go around. His father lost his job in 2003, and Michael remembers his dad’s search to find a new one.
Even before he turned 18—the minimum age for a political candidate in Hillsdale—Michael started talking about running for office. In fact, he ran for Student Council vice president his junior year of high school. (He lost!)
The petition to place his name on the Hillsdale ballot was due in May 2005. Unfortunately, Michael didn’t turn 18 until September! He had to wait four months until he was legally old enough.
On his birthday he went to the city clerk’s office and declared himself a write-in candidate for mayor of Hillsdale. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to go down there,” he admits. He was running against current mayor Doug Ingles.
There were less than two months until the election. Michael started campaigning immediately. He spent $700 of his earnings from a summer job to buy signs that announced his candidacy. He walked around town and knocked on doors, introducing himself to the citizens of Hillsdale and explaining his stance on various issues facing the town. He did such a good job that he won the Hillsdale Fire Department’s support—a fact that was announced in the local paper just days before the election.
“That really catapulted the election,” he says. “For a write-in candidate, that’s pretty big.”
Is This a Joke?
It was hard to convince some people he wasn’t just playing a joke, he recalls. “They sat there with a
confused look on their face—‘Young man, how old are you?’” he says. “[But] I made people feel comfortable, able to fill out their ballots for me.”
He sure did. Michael ended up winning the election, 670 votes to his opponent’s 668.
It was Michael’s first election as a voter, too! Of course he voted for himself. But he couldn’t count on his friends’ ballots—only two of his fellow students at Hillsdale High School were old enough to vote in the election!
What about his parents? “Hopefully my parents did [vote for me] too,” says Michael with a chuckle. “I didn’t ask them! That’s their right.”
Taking on mayoral responsibilities wasn’t easy. Because he was only 18, Michael was big news. He spent the first several days after the election being interviewed by newspaper and radio reporters and making guest appearances on national talk shows. “We live on a little dirt road,” he says. “I remember a satellite truck trying to get itself up here for NBC Nightly News. It was getting all caught up in the trees.
“The first city council meeting was quite chaotic,” he adds. More than 200 people attended, and there were news cameras everywhere.
Michael has been in office for more than a year now, and the hubbub has quieted. But attendance at city council meetings is still high. “People want to come, want to voice their opinion,” he says. “I encourage that. I want it to be our form of city government: anybody who wants to show up and voice their opinion.”
Tough Issues
The big issues Hillsdale is facing are still the issues Michael focused on during his campaign. He is still fighting so the town can hire a fourth firefighter, and he’s still brainstorming ways to bring new jobs to the community. He has new ideas that he hopes the city council and city staff will be open to, but he’s also learning to be patient. “Government doesn’t work at the snap of a finger,” he explains. “It goes at a snail’s pace.
“Sometimes I have to do my own thing at a council meeting. I’m not afraid of sticking up for what I think.”
That includes the TEAM program, which combines lessons about the dangers of substance abuse with personal safety tips and information about the legal consequences of negative activities like truancy or joining a gang. “We thought that was a little bit more practical than a program focusing exclusively on drugs, alcohol, and tobacco,” explains Michael, who says that substance abuse isn’t a huge problem in Hillsdale particularly—“it’s a major problem anywhere.”
As someone who’s in the public eye, Michael knows how important it is to set a good example and stay away from drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. But even before he won the mayoral race, he had made a decision to keep controlled substances out of his life. “You have to make a pledge with yourself that you’re going to stay off that,” he says.
“I make sure I watch over the environment I’m in. I’m a strong person, so if I’m being pressured on alcohol abuse or narcotics or anything along those lines, I basically remove myself from the situation. That’s what you have to do.”
A freshman at Hillsdale College, Michael hasn’t chosen a major yet because he isn’t sure what he wants to do when he graduates. He hasn’t decided whether to run for reelection, either. But for now, he’s doing exactly what he wants.
“I just love representing the people here. I love going into a situation and hearing everybody’s concerns, seeing what we can do for them,” he says.
“That’s the best. It’s a blast for me.”
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