How the Republican lawmaker from Hillsdale beat a Trump-endorsed judge

Rep. Andrew Fink represents Hillsdale in the state legislature. Courtesy | Michigan House Republicans

Michigan Rep. Andrew Fink, R-Hillsdale, won the Republican nomination for state Supreme Court in a nail-biting vote at the party convention Aug. 24.

Running to fill a seat vacated by another Hillsdale College alumnus, the ’06 graduate and state lawmaker faced a 12-year Court of Appeals judge endorsed by former president Donald Trump. But in a 1051-986 vote last weekend in Flint, Michigan, Fink defeated Judge Mark Boonstra and will run against Democratic nominee Kimberly Ann Thomas, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

Republicans could flip the state Supreme Court, currently 4-3 Democratic appointees over Republican ones, if they win both open seats this fall. Fink is running to fill a seat that will be left vacant by Judge David Viviano ’94, who announced in March he would not seek reelection. The other Republican nominee, Circuit Court Judge Patrick O’Grady, will run to unseat Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2022.

Trump gave his “Complete and Total” endorsement to Boonstra in a mid-May Truth Social post, throwing his support into a state judicial race that rarely sees such high-profile intervention. Boonstra was the only candidate at Saturday’s convention with an endorsement from the former president. But Fink kept campaigning and focused on speaking directly with delegates.

“If we had the opportunity to talk to someone one-on-one, we felt very confident that we could get that person to understand why my candidacy made more sense than my opponent’s did,” Fink told The Collegian.

One advantage Fink said he had over Boonstra was his comparative youth. Boonstra is 67 and Fink is 39. Boonstra could not run for reelection past the age of 70, according to state law, while Fink could hold the seat for more than eight years.

“My argument took a little longer to make than an argument that was based simply on electing somebody who’s already been a judge and has a particular endorsement,” Fink said. “My argument was about the structure of our court system, the structure of our election system, and what it will take to return a majority to the Michigan Supreme Court for citizens who wish for the rule of law to prevail.”

The Michigan GOP did not release the official list of about 2,000 delegates until nine days before the Aug. 24 convention. Until then, Fink and his team crisscrossed the state speaking with Republican Party members and explaining why, if selected as delegates, they should vote for Fink over his Trump-endorsed opponent.

“I think it’s fair to say it was harder work for us,” Fink said.

Heading into Saturday’s convention, Gongwer News Service, a state politics outlet, called the contest a “coin flip.” Fink said he spent almost every moment of the day talking to delegates on the convention floor in the Dort Financial Center in Flint.

“We had an awesome group of volunteers helping us get the message across to the delegates yesterday,” Fink said. “It’s an intensely personal campaign. You can see and hear and feel everything because it’s only a couple thousand people in the room. So in that sense, it was very different from all other kinds of campaigning I have done.”

The race was “highly contested,” said Hillsdale County Republican Party Chairman Brent Leininger, who attended the convention as a delegate from Hillsdale. Fink won by about three percentage points.

“A convention at times can be a very long and drawn out ordeal, dealing with the rules and nuances of the party,” Leininger said. “But it was great to see Rep. Fink win the nomination.”

Many delegates considered age when casting their vote, Leininger said.

“Some thought Andrew’s youth is an issue because he can run for multiple years on the court,” Leininger said. “There are those who thought his youth would be an issue because he doesn’t have the experience as a judge.”

Although Fink is the Republican nominee, the race to fill a state Supreme Court seat is nonpartisan, so Fink will not have “Republican” next to his name on the ballot. Leininger said the party will focus on getting the word out that Fink is the GOP’s candidate.

State Senator Joe Bellino, a Republican whose district includes Hillsdale, said Fink, “when elected,” will be a great justice on the high court.

“His knowledge of our constitution and the law has rarely been seen in the legislature and quickly pointed out to us that he will be a great leader someday,” Bellino told The Collegian in a statement. “I will be proud to say, ‘I knew him when.’”

Thomas, Fink’s opponent, is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and was appointed by Whitmer to the Michigan Task Force on Juvenile Justice Reform in 2021. Before joining the faculty, she was a trial attorney in Philadelphia and currently directs the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Michigan Law.

Fink graduated from Hillsdale in 2006 with a politics degree and served in the Marines after college as a military lawyer in the Judge Advocate General Program. After moving back to Hillsdale in 2017, he was elected as a state representative in 2020 and is currently serving his second term in Lansing.

Fink said his general election campaign will focus on affording “every citizen an equal shot at justice under law.”

“Your case should be decided based on what the law says, not based on who you are or who your friends are,” Fink said. “That’s the message that people should be hearing from us, and I expect it’s going to be successful.”

An earlier version of this article stated that no Michigan Supreme Court justice has lost reelection. An incumbent justice lost reelection in 2018.