Welcome back to “The Ballot Box,” our series about election histories in Traverse City. Last week, we looked at the birth of electoral politics in the area. This week, we’re zeroing in on the mayoral office, its pioneers and controversies. 

Traverse City incorporated as a village in 1881, and as a city in 1895. Local businessman and lumber baron Perry Hannah – considered by many to be the founding father of Traverse City – had the honor of serving as both the first village president and the first city mayor.

By the time Traverse City was in need of a mayor, Hannah already had a reputation as a politician. A Republican, he’d served on behalf of Grand Traverse County in the Michigan House of Representatives in 1857 and 1858. So when Traverse City incorporated as a village in 1881, Perry was elected village president. He served in the role until 1885, and then held the position again from 1887 through 1894. In between, Benjamin D. Ashton occupied the office for a single year, in 1886. When Traverse City incorporated as a city on May 18, 1895, Hannah stayed on as mayor, serving until January 1, 1896, when he passed the baton to Harry C. Davis.

For decades, Traverse City elected mayors through an annual popular vote. This period saw the elections of several mayors who locals will recognize as namesakes for local roads and landmarks. There was James T. Milliken – father of eventual Michigan governor William Milliken – who served as mayor from 1923 to 1928. There was E.L. Thirlby, local physician and the namesake for Thirlby Field, which was built while he was mayor in 1933 and 1934. There was Conrad Foster, founder of the city’s Foster Museum (now the Bijou by the Bay) and the Clinch Park Zoo, who was mayor in 1937 and 1938. And there was Adolph LaFranier, mayor in 1939 and 1940, whose last name lives on in the form of a busy north-south roadway.

LaFranier also had the distinction of being the last Traverse City mayor of the 20th century chosen by a vote of the city’s electorate. A charter amendment passed on November 5, 1940 made it so the mayor was elected not by city voters, but by the city commission. That approach remained the status quo for 60 years – and saw almost as many mayors.

During that time, the role was mostly viewed as a figurehead position: City commissioners would appoint a mayor and a mayor pro-tem each year, and the mayor pro-tem would almost always be elevated to the position of mayor the following year. While there were a few recurrent mayors over the years – Larry Hardy held the role in 1962, 1998, and 2001, for instance – most only did the job for one year.

A controversy at the turn of the century forced a change in how Traverse City chose its leader. In December 1999 as the city commission prepared to appoint its officers for the following year, many had the expectation that mayor pro-tem Margaret Dodd would ascend to the mayoral office. Instead, commissioners voted 4-3 to pass over Dodd in favor of first-time commissioner Linda Smyka – a decision outgoing mayor James Tompkins lambasted at the time as “an orchestrated, pre-arranged lynching” of Dodd by her political rivals.

Speaking to Ticker sister publication Northern Express in 2003, Dodd said she’d caught wind of the machinations against her ahead of time and put the word out to her supporters, who turned out in droves for the December 13 meeting. “Dodd Denied,” proclaimed the next day’s Traverse City Record-Eagle, describing the meeting as “a political train wreck” and detailing “almost two hours of often passionate, sometimes-raucous debate” where dozens of people from “an overflow crowd of some 150 area residents” stepped up to support Dodd.

The city commission’s break with longtime political tradition had consequences. In 2000, a citizen petition forced an initiative onto the ballot to change the office of mayor from a city commission appointment to a popular vote. 77 percent of city voters supported that initiative, which reshaped the mayoral seat to a two-year term to be voted on by the electorate every other November.

So in November 2001, Traverse City held its first true mayoral election since 1940. Dodd ran against Phillip Orth, a two-time former mayor (in 1985 and 1997) and one of the four commissioners who had voted against her in 1999. Dodd beat Orth by just 101 votes to become the first voter-elected female mayor in Traverse City history.

She wasn’t the last. In 2003, Dodd and Smyka got a rematch of sorts, with Smyka triumphing 1,889 votes to Dodd’s 1,538. Then, last November, Amy Shamroe earned 64 percent of the vote to become the third woman to win a popular vote election for Traverse City mayor. Shamroe is still in the role today.

There were also five other female mayors in TC history, all during the city commission appointment era: Diane Gilbo in 1975, Carol Hale in 1983, Geraldine Greene in 1987, Linda Johnson in 1993, and Shelley Kester in 1996.

When Dodd passed away in 2015 at the age of 72, she was praised by friends and colleagues for her trailblazing attitude, positivity, and the way she fought for diversity and tolerance.

Pictured: Perry Hannah (left) and Margaret Dodd (right)

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly excluded Diane Gilbo from the list of Traverse City's female mayors. The error has been corrected.