Another day, another glossy mailer (or three) trying to sway voters in the race for Michigan’s 103rd House of Representatives seat.

Big money is pouring into a race that both parties feel is up for grabs, at least in part because of incumbent Democrat Betsy Coffia’s narrow victory (second-closest in the state) over incumbent Jack O’Malley in 2022. Given the house’s nearly even partisan split, each party also considers the race critical to its policy agendas.

The 103rd district contains all of Leelanau County along with the northern portions of Benzie and Grand Traverse counties.

The Ticker connected with Coffia and her Republican challenger Lisa Trombley to find out more about their positions and the race.

Betsy Coffia

Coffia is a Kalkaska native who worked as a journalist for a small newspaper in Elk Rapids after high school before heading to Northwestern Michigan College. She subsequently spent time as a social worker and later served two terms on the Grand Traverse County commission.

She grew up in a working-class family that sometimes struggled to make ends meet, she says. That and time spent with families in similar situations later in her life (professionally or otherwise) galvanized her desire to be a “fierce advocate” for everyday folks in northern Michigan.

“In my lifetime, it’s become increasingly difficult for middle class folks to make it, and that’s a big reason that I’m in public service,” she tells The Ticker. “I think we’re better when we all can thrive here. It’s a good thing for our region.”

Democrats are rare in northern Michigan districts, but Coffia says that her northern, rural Michigan identity is what drives her more than political ideology.

“Am I a Democrat? Yes, I'm pro-choice. I am pro-environment, I believe in democracy and I’m going to vote as such,” she says. “But I am a rural Democrat who is incredibly practical and driven to solve real problems in my district, and I think that's what people need and expect.”

Coffia says she’s proud of her repeated efforts to work with local Republicans, if for no other reason than to show that bipartisanship is still alive in what is becoming an extremely nasty political environment.

“I think that one of the most powerful things we can do is just model that we are fellow Americans, that we're neighbors, we have a job to do. And hopefully that helps cool the temperatures,” she says.

She’s also proud of her results so far in Lansing, including her first standalone policy bill that ensured funding for rural districts with sprawling bus routes based on a per-pupil, per-mile formula.

“The point is I got results,” she says. “I got that equity formula into the school aid fund budget and an additional $125 million for rural school districts in my first six months as a freshman.”

About those mailers? Most are made and funded by party organizations or various political groups that don’t work directly with either campaign. Coffia says many of the mailers against her are funded by “right wing billionaires who…are spending massive amounts of money trying to buy this seat.”

“We desperately need campaign finance reform and to curtail what a circus these elections have become, because that money could be so much better spent on housing and childcare and mental health access,” she says.

Lisa Trombley

Trombley was born in the Detroit area but moved as a child to Holland, where she graduated high school and went on to the University of Michigan for a liberal arts degree. She later obtained a master’s degree from American University in Washington D.C.

Trombley, now retired, lived in Washington and spent almost 30 years at Lockheed Martin, a global security, defense and aerospace contractor. While there she served in a variety of high-level administrative roles, primarily in information technology.

“For example, I ran all of the infrastructure for the Air Force inside of the Pentagon,” she tells The Ticker. “I was responsible for every desktop network, cell phone, pager, data set.”

She moved to Traverse City in 2019 (friends of hers had earlier retired here) and got involved in the local Republican party, along with various non-political groups including Impact100, the Old Mission Women’s Club and more.

She had “zero aspirations” to run for office, she says. That changed as she was helping local Republicans find someone to run against Coffia, who she believed was not a good fit for the district.

“I think the incumbent is far more progressive than what this area really is, so I started looking for other candidates, never thinking it would be me,” she says. “People kept saying, ‘Why don’t you think about it?’ And I was failing retirement anyway, so I figured I might as well do something serious.”

Trombley believes her time at Lockheed has prepared her for action in Lansing.

“I was the one who always stuck up my hand to do things that nobody else wanted to do. I'm a problem solver, have been from the beginning,” she says. “I have the ability to lead, the ability to bring people together to get things done. It’s what I‘ve done my entire life.”

As for her priorities, Trombley wants to curb government spending in Lansing and work toward energy affordability.

“Spending is out of control in Lansing. For each of us as individual citizens, it's a zero-sum game with our budgets,” she says. “Lansing should be operating the same way.”

She also wants to work to improve the outcomes for schoolchildren in the state.

“When four out of seven fourth graders across the state don't have reading or math skills proficient with their grade level, that's a problem for the future,” she says. "Our education system has gotten a little bit out of balance, more focused on the teachers than the students."

Coffia and Trombley agree on at least one thing – those mailers are just too much.

“The underlying money that is getting spent… just totally hurts my head as a fiscal conservative because that’s money that should be going to other purposes,” she says. “Unfortunately, it’s the game that’s there.”