Not long ago, my friend Mike Henry, the Chair of the Ann Arbor Dems, introduced me to Brian Stone, a 28-year old openly gay man from Dearborn who has already thrown his hat into the ring for the 15th District State House seat. “You should know this guy,” Mike told me. “He’s going to surprise you.”
I generally avoid interviewing candidates before the primaries for an assortment of reasons but I agreed to at least chat with Stone and hear what he had to say. My instant impression was that he is very adept at talking with reporters and interviewers and saying all the right things. It was obvious to me that he has spent time honing that talent. However, that initial impression that he was a “good politician” quickly gave way to an understanding that, despite his relative youth, Brian Stone is a politician who gets it, one who truly believes what he says and has a deep-seated conviction to serve his community. So, I broke my “no candidate interviews before the primaries” rule because Brian Stone has a unique story and stands out in a crowd for all of the right reasons.
I will confess that I was a little reluctant to describe him as “openly gay”. After all, I generally don’t mention the sexuality of other people who I interview or any of their other attributes, for that matter. You don’t see me calling my interviewees “openly blue-eyed” or “openly heterosexual”. But Stone’s openness about this is a tribute to his self-confidence and reflects on his desire to serve and be a role model. When I discussed this with him, he said, “I think for a 16-year old gay kid going through high school who sees someone like him or her in office, it makes a difference.” He is, of course, 100% correct.
Let’s start out with a little background. Where are you from, where’d you go to school, that sort of stuff.
I was born in Dearborn at Oakwood Hospital. I graduated from Dearborn High School. I have an Associate’s degree in Communications from Coastline Community College which I did online while I was deployed. I’m actually just finishing my Bachelor’s degree in Communications at the University of Michigan in Dearborn.
I’m also a Navy veteran. I served for four years from 2008 to 2012 and when I was there I served as a Mass Communications Specialist which meant everything from photography to being an interviewer like you, addressing the media, giving speeches, welcoming visitors, as well as preparing our Admiral for any sort of public affairs situation. I was also part of the 2011 tsunami earthquake disaster response in Sendai, Japan.
Outside of the communications stuff in the service, have you been involved in politics in the past?
Absolutely. In 2008 I got really active in the Obama campaign. After high school, I wasn’t able to find work in Michigan so I had to move to Florida at a hotel/resort on Palm Beach Island. This is one of those resorts where $2,500 a day gets you an okay room and a steak dinner for four costs $1,600. At the time I was making lattes for eight bucks an hour and I remember in March of 2008 we had all of these bigwigs coming. I had always read the New York Times and different newspapers like that because, even though I wasn’t able to afford an education, I liked reading the news. So, I was really surprised to hear that Bob Iger and Martha Stewart and Rupert Murdoch, all these big names were coming along with people from all of these different companies like Comcast and Disney/ABC, Omni Media, New Corps which owns Fox News, and they were all coming there for some company called Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns I hadn’t ever heard of. At that point I’m just some young kid serving lattes.
They came for the weekend and the reservations for this group cost $3 million and I think they spent a little over $8 million in total. Then the following Monday Bear Stearns announced that they were going bankrupt. If you recall, that’s how the financial crisis started. That’s when Goldman Sachs and other companies started getting worried, wondering what their exposure to Bear Stearns was. I think, to this day, that’s why the media says that Goldman Sachs was the beginning of it and not Bear Stearns. Nobody really mentions Bear Stearns.
So they were living it up for the last few days before they went bankrupt?
Right. And then every single person I knew became unemployed including myself. That makes an impact on you and I recognized that I needed to change something. Not just in the world around me but in my life. I got really active in the Obama campaign and everyone was saying, “You’re great, we’d love to hire you.” So, I’d send them my resume and they’d send me an email back saying if you don’t have a degree, we can’t hire you. As it turns out, reading the New York Times every day doesn’t count! [laughs]
I was frustrated but I had no way of getting a degree, no money to my name, barely making it from week to week. Then my father became unemployed and my mother had to leave work because of a medical disability. So, I was out of luck. I thought about it a lot. I had always wanted to go into the military but the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy really kept me from it. Every generation of my family has served in the military since the Revolutionary War so it kinda would have been a black mark if I hadn’t! But, it’s one of those things where I felt like I don’t just want to go in just to get kicked out.
But I think the recession was the extra boost that I needed. I was able through the Navy to get into the Mass Communications program which is extremely selective. They only train about 24 people every two months, if that. Most of them don’t pass. More than 40% of the people who go into the program flunk out. It’s really rigorous. We’re talking about a boot camp system that pumps out tens of thousands of people every two months so it’s an incredibly select group. I knew I wanted to do that so I got in.
Once you’re in the military, politics becomes really important. It seems very “out there”, it seems very esoteric to most people, for these politicians to talk about things like what does it mean for China to be building up their Navy in the world, or what does it mean for this group or that group to be doing this. But, if you’re in the military, they’re talking about you and your friends. They’re talking about decisions that they are potentially going to make about you and your friends; whether you are going to live or are going to die in a conflict that could be pointless and could be just a couple of people who just want to pick a fight because they don’t like anyone else in the neighborhood having as much as them.
This sort of thing starts to come up. And, of course, I was involved in a lot of the public relations that involved diplomacy with the 7th Fleet because I was working for the Admiral. Then you’re really aware of politics because you’re aware of how United States policy affects all of these countries all over the world.
Even beyond that, I was still just a sailor so I’d have to stand guard watches and have my weapon and do all of that. I remember standing on so many guard watches when we were at a port in, say, Korea or Japan or somewhere where I spent the entire watch looking at crates being shipped out on ships that were going overseas to sell their products. Lines and lines, rows and rows, gigantic – I mean really gargantuan, larger than some of our skyscrapers in Detroit – machines that are literally just expediting the process of putting one shipping crate after another on a ship and getting them out at like two or three in the morning. When you see that during the middle of a recession and you think about the fact that you’re whole family is unemployed, you really start to get the feeling that our priorities in America and our priorities in Michigan have almost nothing to do with what’s in our best interest.
What do you mean by that? I want to dig into that a little more.
Let’s talk about coming back to Michigan. When I got off the flight from Tokyo to Detroit, there were certain things I noticed. In Tokyo, I could take a train that, in 45 minutes, could get me to where I wanted to go for six bucks for what would have been an hour drive – you’re traveling at 78 miles per hour. You pass through a train station where three million people can walk through there and arrive and depart on time every single day. In Detroit, I got back to find out that even the roads didn’t work! My first impression was that we’re off-roading here just getting onto I-94!
Then you start applying for school and you start looking at the jobs that are out there and then you read the news and find out what are politicians in Lansing are interested in. They’re not really interested in investing in infrastructure. I’m not even sure that they are aware of what other countries are doing to ensure that they are successful. So, of course, their priorities have nothing to do with that. We have politicians in Lansing who are more interested in poaching a job from Texas or from South Carolina than they are in poaching one from China or South Korea. Even if their heart was in the right place and they wanted to really grow and expand our economy as a whole, I don’t think they’d know how to do it because other countries are not investing in tax breaks. They’re not investing in short term, quarterly gains. They’re not trying to pull 1,000 jobs over to their neighborhood by next year so that can add that to their list of accomplishments.
What these other countries are doing is to try very hard to figure out how to build the structure of a society that is inherently able to succeed. What they’re investing in is education. They’re investing in infrastructure. They’re investing in the things they need to export. So, whether you want to look at the debacle over the bridge in Detroit [to Canada] or you want to look at the way education dollars are handled or if you want to look at how controversial it is just to pay for the darn roads, you can see that over in the legislature, they really just don’t have a clue what is at stake. And they don’t understand that we’re operating in a truly global environment.
You really get a sense of their mindset when you listen to the language they use, right? On one hand, people like you talk about “government investment” in things like education and infrastructure. Republicans call it “government spending.”
Yeah, that’s right. I think the problem is that Republicans like to focus on theoretical debates and they focus on theoretical debates because that’s the only place where anything they are doing makes sense. Society can be objectively judged based on whether or not they are setting up the next generation to succeed. That is the basic standard of any civilization. On that standard, the Republican philosophy actually harms society. It’s actually detrimental to our continued existence here in Michigan because everything that they’re doing, whether it’s cutting education, cutting infrastructure, cutting all of these things that create a resilient area, a resilient state in a 21st Century information economy, they are cutting that. Their hope is that someone else will just come in and do it for them. If you want to look at what the difference is between, say, South Korea and the Phillipines, both countries that forty years ago had about the same amount of money, the same level of resources, and just about everything else. Just about the the same political situation, too. Both of them had been under what was essentially a dictatorship at the time. Where they ended up today was determined by how they chose to invest their tax dollars.
As a democracy, we are invested with the right to decide. But, if we decide that we’re going to run into this theoretical debate and we’re going to talk about the things that don’t matter, then what we’re missing are the things that do. And those things are education and infrastructure. No doubt about it.
Let me put it this way: let’s say some business comes to Detroit and says I am creating an entirely new industry and I will need to export $54.9 billion of manufactured goods out of this state each and every year. And, actually, I’m hoping to do it all from, let’s say Dearborn, Warren, and Detroit. If somebody said that, would we have the infrastructure to support that knowing that that sort of industry would be necessary to hit the point where we’re at 4% or below in unemployment? Do we have the infrastructure? No. Do we have the necessary number of people with college degrees? No. Do we have the right number of STEM majors coming out of our colleges? No. Are we able to even keep and retain our own youth? No.
So, from that standpoint, we can see that even if some benevolent investor wants to come in, they would not be able to create the jobs in a laissez-faire economy. So the question isn’t, well, should this be done by the private or the public sector? We’re essentially saying if the private sector wants it, they don’t just have to pay the bills for what they’re doing. They’re actually taxing them, too, by saying they have to come up with the infrastructure costs. And we are saying that. We’ve got Dan Gilbert investing in all of this infrastructure which is electronic in nature but it’s still infrastructure when we’re talking about the high quality fiber networks.
When we’re talking about that, really, fundamentally, we’re talking about something that our legislature didn’t do. That’s a black eye on us. When we let these things go down and we say we’re going to give out all of these tax breaks and we’re going to entirely focus our tax strategy around making sure that corporations have to pay less, I think in reality we’re just shifting the burden onto them in a different way and we’re forcing people that really need this infrastructure to pay for all of it, even though everyone is getting the economic benefit.
Let’s zero in on where you’re running. You’re running in the 15th House District. Talk about that area a little bit, what it’s like, what you think your chances are in that area.
The 15th District is just about the most interesting place that a person could run for office. We’re socioeconomically diverse, we are racially diverse, we are religiously diverse, and we’re culturally diverse. Even linguistically diverse. So, I think it could be a challenging environment to run a campaign for any candidate. But, for me, I am actually really excited about all of it. This is my town. This is my city. And I know it well.
When you talk about Dearborn, really what it is – because the whole district is within Dearborn – I think the question is really what it is that we as people value. When you look at Dearborn over the last couple of elections, we get it. We’re spending money on schools. We’ve had three different school budget millages come up in Dearborn over the past couple of years and ALL of them have passed. People are unafraid to make sacrifices to ensure that we’re helping the next generation to succeed. Actually, in Dearborn public schools, you can get a two-year degree in high school. This is available to all of the schools, it’s not just some charter thing where if you get into the school, you can do it. It’s offered to everybody. Instead of doing a four-year high school program, you do a five-year one. In your senior and I guess you’d call it your “super senior” years, you’re going to college.
If we’re really thinking right about things, that is exactly what we need to be doing in a 21st Century economy because there really isn’t any way that you could say that a high school education is enough for somebody to survive. The public funds should be making sure that our children have everything they need to succeed and that means a two-year degree as a minimum. Instead of trying to figure out some run-around with all of the other systems in place, we just expanded our public education system.
When we’re talking about law enforcement, for instance, which is a big issue all over the country right now, Dearborn has reduced our use of force by 80%. And we used to be known as a place that was a little bit draconian. In fact, we had a mayor back in the late 50s who was infamous for going to the newspapers and talking these racist rants about the things he would do if people of any another race came into his town. So, we’ve come a long way. And part of the way that we did that was by following best practices. We’re engaging the community. We’re making sure that any time an officer hurts someone they have to do extra paperwork. There are rules in place governing how to use that force.
What this means is that, really, Dearborn is doing thing pretty well. Dearborn is actually doing great compared with the rest of the state of Michigan. For me, as a state legislator, it wouldn’t be so much me bringing the bacon home to Dearborn, it’s helping everyone else see why they need to be following the best practices that are there and letting Dearborn be the model that it already is.
Have these efforts been largely Democratic-led?
Yes, absolutely. We are about as blue-blooded as it gets! [laughs]
You are, I assume, the first person to declare their candidacy in this race. Why did you decide to do it so early?
First of all, I really want to serve. It’s what I want I do. Nobody had to tap me and say, “Hey, you should go do this.” Nobody had to ask me to run for office. I just knew that we need to be looking and thinking long-term in the legislature. I think the question that anyone who runs for office has to ask themselves is, okay, I know I really want to do this, but is there anybody else who I think could do it better? If the answer to that question for me was “yes”, I can tell you I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. But, I really, in the core of my being, I feel that there are certain things that I bring to the table that are essential, especially right now.
Right now we’re seeing a rise in the number of hate crimes against Muslim American community where they’re getting attacked. Not long ago, we had someone assaulted in a grocery store in Dearborn just because they were speaking in Arabic to their son. All over the country Muslims are being shot and killed. Their mosques are being burned down. Zoning councils and boards are discriminating against them by trying to restrict their ability to build a mosque. It is really getting to the point where it’s crazy.
I write for the Huffington Post and I’ve done a lot of advocacy through that. I’ve also worked for ACCESS which is the social advocacy and welfare organization in Dearborn set up by the Arab American community. I’ve been really active in making sure to take a stance. It really doesn’t matter to me whether it’s Rush Limbaugh or the head of the American Family Association, I’ll call them all out because one of the fundamental freedoms that we have in America is the freedom of religion. While some people think that means having the freedom to refuse people services, the reality is that freedom of religion means the freedom to worship. It means the freedom to make your own choices for your faith and to have a place to have a faith and to worship. When we see people getting attacked for those reasons and the lines being blurred where even people who may be Christian but simply because they’re Arabic – and a lot of ignorant people don’t know the difference between someone who’s Arabic and Muslim – they’re getting attacked, we know it’s gotta end. I plan on being a strong voice about that. And I already have been.
Do you see any issues being an openly gay person and getting elected in the Dearborn area?
No.
So, it’s a pretty open-minded area about the LGBT community?
Yeah. Actually, I found a lot of my original support coming from the Arab American community and the Muslim community. I think that people have these ideas in their head about what groups are. Instead, I think it’s important to let people define themselves. A great example of this when we recently had a guy named Steven Crowder who used to work for Fox News was making a Youtube video, going around and saying that people from Dearborn had refused him business while he was acting out a bunch ridiculous gay stereotypes. And, actually, nobody refused him business. I wrote a whole article about it. One business owner of a bakery called Dearborn Sweets who is a Muslim could actually recall off the top of her head that she filled an order for at least one gay wedding and that they came back for the anniversary cake.
[Ed. note: you can read about Stone’s efforts to promote Dearborn Sweets after this ludicrous attack by Crowder (who has a notorious history in Michigan) HERE.]
Muslims are wonderful people. They’re honest. They’re kind. They’re giving. They’re incredibly charitable. They’re concerned about the world around them. And they’re Americans. They’ve been here since the very foundation of our country and I think that their opinions about people are pretty much in line with the rest of the United States. I think what they’re going to be more concerned about than whether or not I’m gay is whether or not I’ve got their back.
Think about it like this: For the guy who needs to find a reliable way to work that doesn’t take 50% of his income, who cares? I’m FOR mass transit.
On that topic, it’s worth noting that our insurance costs in Michigan are above the national average, especially in southeastern Michigan and that mirrors our uninsured motorist rate. So when people ask what the real fix for insurance rates is, I say it’s mass transit, not personal injury protection (PIP) reform. Dearborn is one of the communities most heavily affected by this situation. 170,000 people come here to work and shop every day from outside the community. So, we have high insurance rates because of the uninsured in our city. I’ve personally been in fender benders with uninsured drivers. What’s the alternative? Send all of them to prison? People have got to work. So we need mass transit badly.
Why is that an issue? Isn’t No-Fault the answer to that?
No-Fault helps but where is the cost absorbed? The answer is in your own insurance rates. It means that your insurance rate reflects not only YOUR cost but the risk of them covering the uninsured. Not to mention that this is has spawned a whole new industry. Many smaller insurance companies offer one week or one month policies that cost a lot. But they don’t expect you to renew because people buy them so they can get a car, etc. without having real insurance.
Are you serious?
Yes! They are popping up all over metro Detroit. So this is not a PIP problem. It’s a poor people not having any way to get to work problem. I’ve worked a minimum wage job before where 50% of my income went to transportation. No issue – not income tax reform, not schools, not even minimum wage – can reduce people’s costs by 35% and send that back to the economy except mass transit.
Anything you’d like to finish with?
The only thing I’d like to add is that when we’re talking about Michigan and the future of Michigan, I think there’s a real question hitting us right now which is whether we’re going to be a state that’s modern and competing in the 21st Century or one that’s not. I think that most people would say that they want that but then the question becomes how? All I can do is to encourage the voters to really think about whether or not a candidate has a plan. Whether or not a candidate has a real grasp of what a 21st Century economy is, what it looks like, and what they need to do to get there. Because if you’re not working toward that every single day in the legislature, then you’re not doing us any good. My generation, we’ve already lost out on this battle. We’re already the victims of short-sighted policy. I have to make sure that the next generation aren’t victims of that, as well.
If you’d like to learn more about Brian Stone’s candidacy, visit VoteStone.com. To make a donation to his campaign, click HERE.
