MICHIGAN, USA — Michigan's primary election is Aug. 2 and one of the hottest contests on the ballot is the Republican governor primary.
13 ON YOUR SIDE sat down with the candidates for governor to discuss a range of issues that are directly affecting Michiganders and asked for their opinion and possible solutions for these issues.
Today, we are highlighting Ralph Rebandt, he is the lead pastor of the Oakland Hills Community Church in Farmington Hills.
Rebandt is also the chaplain for the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, Southeastern Michigan Chiefs of Police, Farmington Hills Police Department and Beverly Hills Police Department.
Decision to run for Governor
Ralph Rebandt was counseling families during the COVID pandemic and he was worrying about all the stress they were feeling. After meeting with Ken Massie, Mayor of Farmington Hills, he shared his vision to make Michigan a lighthouse to the nation and Massie later helped give him advice on how to launch his campaign.
Rebandt said it was months later than he got his true calling to run after he injured his foot while working on a barn. A few days later his friends talked him in to going to Mackinac Island with them and that is where he officially decided to run for Governor.
"They talked me into going and about 12:30 In the afternoon, sure enough, my foot was throbbing, and I sat on the wall. There's the fort up on the hill, there's the park area, and then there's a little stonewall on the front. And as I was texting somebody about 12:30, a random guy walked up to me and he said, 'I'd like to give this coin to you in the name of Jesus Christ.' And I looked up at him and I said, well, 'thank you. He's my Savior and my Lord.' So I take the coin, I look at it. There's a lighthouse on this coin. I flip the coin over. And there's a Bible verse from Psalm 43 that says, 'Send forth your truth and light.' So he gives it to me, I look yeah, I flip it over. I look up to ask him why he gave it to me. I mean, you know why he's singled me out. And Steven, God is my witness. He was not there. He was not there. And I've never had anything that weird happened in my life. As a pastor, I've heard people tell stories, and you're like, yeah, whatever. But when it happens to you, it's incredibly crazy and surreal. But anyway, that was really the defining moment where I just said, 'Okay, God, I'm getting the message I'm gonna run regardless.' So that's why I haven't dropped out. That's why I can't drop out in this. So I'm convinced I'm gonna win on Tuesday."
Michigan's Economy
The economy is a major concern for many Michiganders with high gas prices and inflation rates putting a strain on people across the state. Rebandt says that suspending the gas tax is a good start for immediate relief and he offers some ideas for long term solutions as well.
"The first thing I would do is suspend the gas tax, that would be the first thing and that brings immediate relief to people and it drops it down. That's a short term fix. I also have been getting dozens of letters from senior citizens telling me that they're having trouble deciding whether they're going to put food on their table or put gas in your tank. And you know, they're on a fixed income. And they're, you know, they can't go out and get a second job. It's just they're beyond those work days. And so what I have said is that I would propose and push for elimination of property taxes for anyone 65 and older, because that would be again, another immediate relief for them. Long term, what I've stated is that we have so many natural resources under our ground here in Michigan, and I would love to see us drill I'd love love to see us get the gas. I mean, we do have natural pipelines underneath Michigan. They're caverns and they're, you know, I mean, anybody in the gas industry knows that. And so we, we'd really open that up. I've told people that I'd like Michigan to have its own refineries. I'd like us to have our own armories, you know, make us make some benefits of living in Michigan. So, make Michigan kind of an independent sovereign state here in I'd have to be dependent on foreign countries. So those are things short term and long term that I would do to immediately help resolve the issues for people in Michigan."
Rebandt offered his take on corporate tax incentives for brining businesses to Michigan and encouraging them to stay.
"If you're talking about tax incentives, if that's a different word for corporate welfare, I'm not in favor of corporate welfare, because as Michiganders, we have funded over $900 billion dollars in corporate welfare. I'll give you a quick illustration. 148 million of that went to Allen Park, there was a move to put in all of these factories in the downriver area where the, you know, Ford and whatever they were leaving our state, for Mexico or for other countries. And so they had all these vacant warehouses and factories, and they were going to turn them into movie studios. And so they did all these props and setups and they, you know, spent $148 million of our money. And, Steven, there was not one movie filmed in any of those. That's what corporate welfare is. That's that was a waste of our taxpayer money. So I'm not in favor of corporate welfare. What I would do is lower the corporate tax to 2.5%. A lot of states are doing that, that draws businesses into the state. It allows the people who are here to benefit from that, too. I'm not you know, there are family owned generationally owned businesses in Michigan, that when we throw money at Hollywood to get them to come in, or some other businesses, we're really ignoring them. We're picking losers and winners and I the government should not do that we should just create an environment by lowering taxes and getting rid of the administrative state that is so handcuffed every industry in Michigan."
Rebandt also talked about Michigan's tourism industry and said that he would work to get the right people in the tourism department to help bring more tourists to the state.
Alternative Energy in Michigan
Michigan has many different sources of energy in the state, ranging from fossil fuels, natural gas, wind, solar and nuclear. We asked the candidates about these different types of energy and their plans to address Michigan's energy needs in the future.
"In terms of nuclear energy, I think it's very effective. It's very good, it's safe. The Line 5 tunnel, gonna talk about that real quick. I'm 100% in favor of that. Because you know, even the reality of that is if you were to shut down the line five pipeline, it would take 2100 trucks, semis, over the Mackinac Bridge every day, every day to truck as much fuel that that they would need in the UP. So you know, I need to protect the folks that are up there as well. And if you talk about pollution, think of all the pollution from 2,100, diesel trucks, all of the fixing the darn roads and all of the people just sitting on the bridge because they're backed up with all these trucks. It's lunacy. I don't know what else to say. That's that's the only word I can come up with right now. When when the gas is just piped quietly through Line 5. I'm for the tunnel, by the way. Make Line 5 safer."
Education in Michigan
We asked each of the candidates what there thoughts were on education in Michigan and how they could improve schools in the state.
"I'm on record as saying that I would dismantle the public education system and rebuild it. I didn't say destroy it or do away with it. I said, I would dismantle it, which means we need to take it back to the local level and have parents involved in the decisions of the training of their children. You know, the school boards the MEA, they have too much, I'll say they have too much power because they don't have the authority to tell us what to teach our kids. They don't have that authority. They want to think they do and they want to tell us they do but they do not have that authority. And so I'm all about the people who the decision decision affects the most need to make that decision. And so parents should be involved. In fact, our Michigan Education Code, 380.10 states that parents and legal guardians are the ones who are to determine their children's education. It's not school board, and it's not the Michigan Education Association. So the things that I would do, I would get rid of all of the things that are causing division, critical race theory, social emotional learning... I would remove Sex Ed because when I was growing up, we had had health class health class taught you what your body did, and how it functioned. Today, Sex Ed or health class is all about pornography and sex education. "
We also asked about school safety after the recent tragedies in Uvalde, Texas and right here in Michigan at Oxford High School.
"The important thing here is that first of all, we realize that it's not the guns. Secondly, killing zones are gun free zones. These you know, okay, we're not going to have guns in school. Well, if I was going to go on a rampage, I would know right where to go, because nobody's going to be shooting back at me. But if we take that away, and we make schools not gun free zones anymore, but we allow a teacher if he or she wants to, and I understand I've done research on this, teachers really don't want to do that. If they did, they would probably be a cap. But anyway, my point is, just by simply having one person in the school that's carrying a gun, that will totally change the mentality of these, these mentally ill people. The other point that I've said, in terms of child safety is that I want to have a retired law enforcement officer, or retired military with a gun sniffing dog in schools, kids love dogs, they're fun. It helps bond between the officer and the students."
Health Care in Michigan
Rebandt shared his thoughts on the Michigan No Fault Auto Insurance reform that left many catastrophic accident survivors with less care than they had in the past.
"We will have to send that back to the legislature, we'll have to revisit the entire thing because that bill was obviously written by insurance companies and lobbyists, it was not written for the average citizen. That's another reason why I want to have this roundtable in my office. And that's another reason why I've told people that I will have what's called Operation waiting room, which simply means when the legislature stays up all night and signs up passes a bill to me, I'm not going to sign it at 12:15 in the morning. There'll be a two week waiting period that people from Michigan can sit at this roundtable. They can also post answers thoughts questions on my website, so that my staff can help filter these things out and bring questions. And if the citizens don't like it, I'm not going to sign it, we'll send it back and say rework it. But that bill has to be reworked."
Abortion
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year.
Abortion remains legal in Michigan because of a lawsuit filed by the governor in April, and a preliminary injunction filed by a Michigan judge in May. Both are currently blocking a 1931 trigger law in Michigan that would ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest.
"I would support that 1931 Bill, the exception that's listed there is the life of the mother, I would not support any other exceptions than that. But what I have said is, if you look at 1931, versus where we are today, in 1931, the life of the mother was if she was going to physically die, then the child would be taken. In other words, when I read the 1931 law, I'm thinking of ectopic pregnancies. And when a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, she doesn't go to Planned Parenthood for an abortion, when she has a problem pregnancy, she goes to the hospital, oftentimes the emergency room, and at that point, they find out that the the baby's growing in her fallopian tubes, or wherever else, it's not a viable pregnancy.... You know, I've been portrayed as this hard nosed guy saying that he has no exceptions, and the mothers are going to die. And you know, that's not it at all. I understand what 1931 was saying. And I believe that that's a legitimate exception as stated 1931, but the way it's understood today, I'm not in favor of the way it could go."
2020 Election Results
Many people in Michigan have raised concerns over election security and believe that their was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election in Michigan and across the nation. We asked Rebandt to weigh in on that and provide her ideas on how to secure elections in Michigan.
"I am convinced that widespread fraud took place in November of 2020. So much so that President Trump won Michigan, not Biden. And there are reasons for that. One, I was at the TCF center the day after the election, and I saw mail in ballots that weren't folded stacks of them. I'm not quite sure how that works out, but when I mail something, I always fold it put in an envelope. So I'm not sure how that happened. I saw a lot of anomalies. I saw the birthdate of people on the in those stacks, January 1 1900, which means the person was 120 years old. I'm not sure we have any 120 year old people here in Michigan... If it's a real ballot, it's going to have a real birthdate and it's going to be a real person. So I've saw hundreds of those I. I saw in the military and count when the military votes are coming in. This was shocking to me, not one military vote, voted for Donald Trump or John James. I can't believe that people in the military would actually think that President Biden would support them more. It just that blows my mind. I can't even imagine that."
Election Security
We asked all of the candidates about their thoughts on election security in the state, what they would do to increase voter confidence and whether or not they supported voter ID.
"I do support voter ID. That's one of the things that I would would promote. We need to clean up the voter registration file, whatever it is, we need to clean that up. It's sometimes 10 years old, and that's why you end up having six ballots sent to an address. Sometimes 10 years old, we got to clean it up. We have to have voter ID. I'm all about a picture ID I'm all about a signature ID verification that's extremely important."
Police Shortage in Michigan
Police departments in major cities in the state like Grand Rapids and Detroit have been short-staffed for years now and have been working to increase recruiting and retention. We asked the candidates how they would address these staffing issues in the state.
"This is a very important question to me, because I've been a police chaplain for over 30 years here in Farmington Hills, a neighboring city, Beverly Hills, and then for the Michigan chiefs of police in southeastern Chiefs of Police, who, by the way, Steven, I don't know if you know, but southeastern chiefs unanimously endorsed me for Governor over a year ago. And so it's obviously important to me. Grand Rapids and Detroit, this is from national data, state data, local data, it has nothing to do with me, I'm just showing you what a fact is. They have a hard time recruiting minorities, all these big cities have a hard time recruiting minorities. And if someone says, well, all we have to do is just put a school in Detroit, and we'll get a lot of, you know, black police officers. For decades, that hasn't happened. So yes, it's a major problem. But, you know, one of the things we have to do is we have to restore the dignity to the office of police. And it's not that they're not dignified. It's that there's been a false narrative about them, that they're racist, and they're out to get minorities. And, you know, that's absolutely not true."
Gun Control in Michigan
Rebandt is a big supporter of the 2nd Amendment and says that there are already too many regulations on guns in the state.
"We have too many gun control laws right now, I would not support anymore. Because again, it's not the gun. It's the person we have to deal with, the heart. That's what's contrasted Farmington Hills with Oxford. That's the issue. The issue is one of the heart, the issues of mental illness, the issue is people on drugs where they lose their sense of reality. And many of these people who have mental issues who are on psychotropic drugs are mass shooters, and they have no sense of reality... All the things that the left are telling us are really there lies they're not even true."
Plans for Bipartisanship as Governor
Rebandt is excited to work across the aisle if elected governor and thinks he can find a consensus between Democrats and Republicans on a very contentious issue that Michiganders are split on.
"Believe it or not, I really am convinced that I can use science to bring us together on this. I obviously have my my faith position on that, that God has created each child at conception that at conception, there's a person and that person deserves equal justice and safety. But I can prove that scientifically. And I would just love the opportunity to bring the Michigan Legislature together on that subject."
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