![]() He surrounded himself with political leaders from both parties, retirees, young professionals who chose to live in Detroit and AmeriCorps volunteers. The state’s support of the deal was pivotal, and it didn’t happen quietly: Snyder signed the bills in a showcase press conference at a building on the Detroit riverfront, an abandoned manufacturing facility being refurbished into an outdoor adventure center. Philanthropists, automakers and unions are among the other institutions contributing to a deal that took an uncommon amount to cross-sector collaboration to develop. This summer, while the city’s bankruptcy trial was still chugging toward the finish line, he signed two bills into law that approve spending $195 million as the state’s contribution to the “grand bargain,” an $816 million package intended to protect the Detroit Institute of Arts from creditors and to minimize pension cuts for retirees. It was after all Snyder who, in 2013, set in motion the chain events leading to the appointment of Detroit’s emergency manager and the filing of Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. Unemployment is now down to about 7.5 percent, representing a fairly steady decline.But it’s Detroit that will be the governor’s greatest legacy. “I mean, who runs with the slogan ‘one tough nerd’? Who does that?”īuoyed by the nationwide economic recovery, Michigan has seen an uptick in jobs since Snyder took the governor’s seat. ![]() He’s definitely unusual,” says Ted Wiatt, the billionaire co-founder of Gateway Computers who brought Snyder to his company. And he did all of this without an ounce of charisma or rhetorical flourish. Instead of fulminating against immigrants like many others in his party, he called for special visas to lure them to Michigan. He was decidedly unorthodox: signing a bill raising the minimum wage one day, cracking down on unions the next slashing benefits for same-sex partners while welcoming President Obama’s health-care law. After taking office in January 2011, Snyder put his head down and got to work. Snyder won by promising to focus with laser-like intensity on what he called Michigan’s “economic disaster”-an implosion that saw the state lose nearly 859,000 jobs between 20, pushing Michigan’s unemployment rate to a high of 14.2 percent. On Election Day, he won 62 percent of the vote against the Democratic mayor of Lansing, part of a GOP wave that turned every branch of Michigan’s government over to Republican control and surged across the Midwest. Billing himself as “one tough nerd”-he even uses the phrase as his Twitter handle-Snyder poured $6 million of his own money into the race and bested a crowded primary field. ![]() Snyder, 55, is now the unlikely governor of Michigan, a venture capitalist, ex-accountant and former computer executive who came out of nowhere to take the statehouse in 2010. ![]()
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