In a seven-minute YouTube video filmed on campus, President Larry Arnn endorsed Clark Durant for U.S. Senate.
The president made his case for Durant on Jan. 11, saying, “Clark is a very imaginative man, he’s quick as a cat, he’s full of love for a lot of good things.”
Durant is running for the Republican nomination for state senate, where his most daunting opponent is former Rep. Pete Hoekstra. If he wins the primary on Aug. 7, he will face Debbie Stabenow, a junior senator.
Hoekstra has too much in common with Stabenow to be a valid alternative, Durant said, adding that during his tenure in Washington, the former representative didn’t challenge the establishment.
Durant called Arnn’s endorsement “immensely gratifying” and “a deep honor.”
In the video, Arnn said Durant understands the importance of limited, representative government and compared him to one of his personal heroes.
“I studied Winston Churchill and he was a very brash man and a very pushy man, but also, fundamentally, he was a very humble man,” Arnn said. “Clark is like that, and I think he’d be a superb senator.”
Arnn emphasized that he didn’t speak on behalf of the college, but mentioned Durant’s role as one of the founders of Imprimis. Hillsdale was Durant’s first employer after he graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans.
Then-president George Roche hired him as an assistant and within 18 months, Durant was one of the school’s two vice presidents. He had also been the first director of the Center for Constructive Alternatives program and helped start the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program.
He returned to Tulane to go to law school, but not before proposing to his wife, then a teacher at Davis Middle School. He asked her to marry him in a house just outside campus at the intersection of Hillsdale Street and Barber Drive.
After getting his law degree, he moved back to Detroit to practice law. Since then, Durant has served as the chairman of the Legal Services Corporation Board, co-founded the Cornerstone Schools in inner-city Detroit, and been named Michiganian of the year by The Detroit News. He has four children and two grandchildren.
“He seems to me a fine man,” Arnn said. “I think he stands for the right things.”