EAST LANSING — All four major-party candidates for Michigan State University’s Board of Trustees said they disagree with the board’s decision to ask Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to remove Trustees Rema Vassar and Dennis Denno for misconduct.
Republican Julie Maday, from Novi, said the board appears to have asked Whitmer to get involved because relationships have broken down to a point where the eight trustees who hold statewide office can’t work together.
“From the outside, it looks like they hate each other,” she said.
Democrats Rebecca Bahar-Cook and Thomas Stallworth, and Republicans Mike Balow and Maday were nominated earlier this year at their respective party conventions .
Chair Dan Kelly, R-Clarkston and the lone GOP member on the board, unsuccessfully sought his party’s nomination for the chance to remain on the board. Longtime trustee Dianne Byrum, D-Lansing, is retiring and said she wouldn’t be seeking another term .
Trustees, in a 6-2 vote, asked Whitmer in March to act after report by the law firm Miller & Chevalier found Vassar, D-Detroit, and Denno, D-East Lansing, had bullied other MSU officials and acted outside the boundaries of their roles. The firm recommended the trustees request that Whitmer remove the trustees because of its findings. The board also censured Vassar, who resigned as board chair but not as a trustee, as well as Denno and Brianna Scott, D-Muskegon.