Mark Yonkman, Michigan State Senate District 36
These are the Downballot Diaries – stories of and from some of the candidates Every State Blue’s community is supporting this cycle.
Every State Blue’s projects crowdfund support for underfunded Democrats running for state legislature – typically in the reddest and most gerrymandered districts in the country. We’re redefining what it means for Democrats to run everywhere.
We fund people running hard in the hardest places.
Mark Yonkman is one of those people. This is his story.
Mark W. Yonkman may have a career trajectory like no other.
Yonkman went from working on his family farm, to school and then law school, to serving as corporate counsel for a Fortune 500 company, and then he moved back to the farm. Now, the Democrat wants to go to Lansing to represent Michigan State Senate’s 36th district and bring all the skills he’s learned along the way.
In fact, “I’m the only corporate and securities lawyer to run for state legislature,” Yonkman said. “People just don’t do that.”
After studying in a one-room school (where his aunt was his teacher), Yonkman earned an undergraduate degree at Kalamazoo College, and a law degree at Wayne State Law School. He started his career at Pepper Hamilton, a top-tier law firm in Philadelphia, then moved on to Comerica Bank, and M&T Bank.
After his parents died just before the pandemic, Yonkman retired from banking and returned to Michigan, which his Dutch family had homesteaded in the late 1800s.
The Covid epidemic hit and during the shutdown he and one of his daughters decided to get the farm going again. He and his daughter both felt the disconnect the Democratic party had and has with rural voters. He even wrote a book about how the party could be better, “Reclaim the Rural Vote and Win in 2024.”
“I’ve been to a couple of Democratic conventions and events, and I can introduce myself as a whole bunch of different things,” Yonkman said. “I can say I have a small farm, and 24 head of black Angus cattle and I’m trying regenerative farming, and their eyes glaze over. They smile, and walk away.
“If I go up and say I’m the former general counsel of a Fortune 500 company, they actually flinch. ‘So you’re like Elon Musk.’ He’s smart, capable, and that’s the reason he is where he is. You may not like him but that’s my peer group.
“But then if I say that I was a foster home for the City of Detroit and and I have two black daughters, oh my God. Kumbaya.”
As he worked to revive the farm, Yonkman began writing down the issues rural voters talk about, which he heard as a member of his local Farm Bureau, where he serves as chair of policy development, at the Township Hall, at church, at the library where his daughter is a librarian, and from people who stop by the farm. Rural people talk to one another. He started to realize that the rural voter “has become the largest under-represented minority group in politics, even though it represents up to a third of the Electoral College vote that matters,” he said.
Eventually people began recruiting him to run for office – colleagues at the Farm Bureau, neighbors, Township officials, in each case both Republicans and Democrats.
“So, three things,” Yonkman said. “Democrats make fun of farmers. Paul Krugman says they always vote against their own interests, but no, they vote against their own economic interests as defined by Paul. You think it’s all economic, it’s not. When you say you’re a farmer, Democrats treat you like you’re really dumb.”
For example: The Farm Bureau sends 300 farmers and their spouses to Lansing every year to have lunch with their legislators. Yonkman said it’s a low-key opportunity for elected officials to meet constituents, but the first year Yonkman was involved with the lunch, just one Democrat showed up. The next year, after massive outreach by Yonkman and others, he could identify only two Democrats who showed up.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Republicans, Yonkman said, at least know to reach out.
“Twice before the Harris election, I’m in the house the phone rings, a professional woman is on the line and formally addresses me: ‘Mr. Yonkman, could you please hold for the President, he would like to talk to you.’ It’s cool. I know what he’s doing. He set up a call with a bunch of farmers in Michigan. He comes on and gives a rambling speech, but what he said is not important. The important thing is that he called me. Naturally, the next day I started telling people about the call. I then realized that I’m campaigning for this guy. People get angry about the things Trump does well, but he’s successful for a reason. We should look at the things he’s doing well, and be aware.”
During the Harris campaign, Yonkman said he reached out to a state Democratic official to remind him that the campaign needed to talk to farmers, and he was told no, that the farm vote wasn’t significant enough – it’s less than 1% of the vote.
“Oh my God, no,” said Yonkman. “One of Trump’s gifts is that he is unburdened by data. He looks at how people feel, which is what’s important. I would say that 15% of voters view themselves as a farmer. I wasn’t picked up in any data as a farmer, but I’ll always be a farmer. We had the loan crisis and this crisis and that crisis where people lost their farms, and those people are still farmers and they’re bitter farmers. If Republicans lob them a carrot every once in a while, they’ll do the campaigning for me. Just as you want to make money while you sleep, you also want to get voters while you sleep. Democrats don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff.”
Political operatives, he said, would be smart if they paid attention to the rural vote. The farmers may be registered Republican, but they are far more liberal than that would appear, Yonkman said. Otherwise, voters get the likes of Yonkman’s opponent, the incumbent Michele Hoitenga, an election denier who still won with a walloping 66.3% of the 36th District’s votes in 2022.
Mark Yonkman, running for Michigan State Senate in District 36. Image credit @yonkmanforsenate.
But Yonkman is up for the challenge. As a single gay man in Detroit, he adopted two daughters. And he knows that the Michigan he lives is not the Michigan politicians necessarily see.
“If you’d asked me 30 years ago where I’d want rural Boon to be 30 years ago from then, they moved past what I’d have hoped for,” said Yonkman.
When he has attended local Republican events, Yonkman says he has been treated with enthusiasm. He talks about the issues — including hiring of migrant workers, food security, and housing. And he comes prepared.
“When I speak at events, I always have PowerPoint slides and data points,” Yonkman said. “I also prepare an additional set of slides where I anticipate questions someone might ask. Coming from the Fortune 500, that’s normal. I never criticize the other side’s quarterback by saying that Trump is terrible. He’s so bad. He’s unacceptable. These people know that. That’s not new information.”
“We can all agree on the platitudes. ‘I want lower taxes, more fairness, a unicorn and a leprechaun for every child.’ I don’t talk in platitudes.”
Republicans – from Trump down – have been skilled at reaching out to rural voters and occasionally throwing them a bone. One example involves – weirdly – gas cans. Yonkman said as he was rebuilding the farm, he and his daughter went to auctions to buy equipment. At one, he noticed a pile of old gas cans that were going for $40 to $50 apiece. That was too steep, so they went to Walmart to buy new ones for $19, but when they got back to the farm, those cheaper cans didn’t work on tractors. The gas cans were designed for mowers, for dispensing gasoline to something low, not something like a tractor where the gas can is held aloft. Yonkman returned them to the store, where the woman behind the counter nodded and said, “Oh, yeah, everybody brings these back.”
In this case, a farmer has two choices, he said. One is to order a $15 conversion kit from China, or there’s always the NASCAR fuel dump can for upwards of $300. The president got wind of the issue, and instituted the Make Gas Cans Great Again By Improving Flow. No, that’s not the catchiest title, but the EPA stepped in to encourage manufacturers to incorporate in all new gas cans self-closing vented designs, which makes the gas flow better.
“Even my daughter, who is about as liberal as you can get, liked this idea,” said Yonkman. “Trump has done a bunch of little things like that for farmers. Democrats exercise willful blindness to those things. We need to pay attention to it.”
Republican party officials have told him that his corporate background puts him on the wrong team. Yonkman doesn’t think so, and if he can get his message out to the Michigan voters, he just may rewrite the playbook for Democrats and rural voters.
Today, candidates like Mark are running in red districts all across the country. These good neighbors have stepped up for their communities, giving them a voice and a choice in this election, boosting turnout and vote share for Democrats statewide, and making much-needed progress in some of the reddest places.
You can help them. Support Mark and his fellow Michigan candidates who are running in solid-red districts by clicking here or on the button below. 100% of your contribution goes to the candidates.
Chip In to First In Line Michigan
Learn more about Every State Blue and our projects (Blue Missouri, Blue Ohio, Blue Tennessee, and our First In Line initiative), here.
