By Jo Mathis
Legal News
One of Ingham County Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel’s earliest memories is riding in a little red wagon pulled by his father who was out campaigning.
“In fact, if you lived in the right place in Detroit, at one point my dad (Curtis Hertel Sr.) was your state representative (and Speaker of the House), my Uncle John (Hertel) was your senator, my Uncle Dennis (Hertel) was your congressman,” said Hertel, 36, who recalls some lively political discussions at the dinner table.
Hertel loves nothing more than a good campaign —especially now that he’s the one running for the Michigan State Senate.
“I think it’s a lost art—the actual getting to know someone personally, going to their door, talking to them about their issues,” said Hertel, who hopes to replace the term-limited State Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing). “I think it’s not done enough, especially with today’s information age, where people think an email is the same as personal contact. And it’s not.”
The Detroit native has called Ingham County home since attending Michigan State University.
At the age of 22, he ran for county commissioner and won. He held that part-time job for eight years, while also serving as Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s legislative liaison for community health. When Paula Johnson decided to retire as Ingham County Register of Deeds, Hertel decided to run for that office.
“I ran on trying to make the office mean more to people,” he said. “What the Register of Deeds office does is an incredibly important job, in keeping the land records for the county. But we felt we needed to get out in the community more and talk to people about issues.”
The issue most pressing has been foreclosures, he said, noting that Ingham County foreclosures increased about fourfold since the housing crisis. So he and his staff got out in the community and started promoting the financial counseling programs available to citizens of Ingham County, and the steps they could take to save their homes.
About three years ago, amidst reports of fraud in the foreclosure industry, Hertel brought in about 25 registers from around the state to meet with Attorney General Bill Schuette and the FBI.
The discussion centered on an investigation by Schuette’s office of the former president of the Georgia mortgage document processor DocX, who pled guilty to racketeering for her role in the fraudulent signing of mortgage papers.
Hertel and his wife, Elizabeth, a senior policy analyst with the Department of Community Health, have four children between them. His wife used to work for the House Republican Policy Office.
“So we have a mixed marriage in that regard,” he said, noting that she is definitely more conservative than he is. “I think that’s how good government works. You have a smart person from the right and a smart person from the left who sit down, meet in the middle, and get things done.”
When his father was in the legislature, he said, it was a source of pride to pass a bipartisan bill.
“We’ve completely lost that,” he said. “This idea that the other side is evil … I don’t think the other side is evil. I think they’re wrong. If people would just sit down and work together, we’d get a lot more done for what the average citizen wants.”
Although the 68th District votes mostly Democratic, Hertel said the reality is that he’s to the left of the average Michigan resident.
“But I certainly don’t want one-party rule where everything happens to the right,” he said. “Most people are in the middle. People want balance in the government, and we have to do better to actually get Democrats in the State Senate and State House elected so there is some balance and we don’t have one party controlling everything.”
Hertel was pleased this week to announce the endorsement of the woman he hopes to replace.
If he wins in November, Hertel’s office would move from Mason to Lansing, which will be bittersweet because he’s loved working in the Ingham County Courthouse on the square.
“My travel agent’s there,” he said, pointing out the window. “My insurance agent’s there and my rotary club is in this room right here.”
Hertel takes every campaign seriously, even when he’s running unopposed as a Democrat in a largely Democratic county. He’s been knocking on doors since the summer, and has raised the money to support a signage and mail campaign closer to the primary in August and election in November.
“There’s an old John Dingell quote: ‘There’s only two ways to run for office. Scared or unopposed,’” said Hertel. “I’ve been on the county commission for eight years and register of deeds now for six. And in all that time, I’ve probably had one tough election. It was my first one. I was 22 and beat a Republican incumbent. The reason I won is because I knocked on every door three times. I’ve always felt that if I treat every campaign like that one, I should be fine.”
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