MARCH 2021

George Heartwell on tackling divisive issues in a nonpartisan role

While Trump pulled out of the Paris accord, hundreds of mayors on the front lines of climate change stayed in the game. Ahead of the curve was Grand Rapids, Michigan, already in 2008 named by some the greenest city in America. We hopped on a call with George Heartwell, who served as mayor from 2004-2016. During his time in office, his leadership was recognized with the Climate Protection Award for Large Cities, and he was asked to join Obama’s climate task force. He spoke with us about how cities can respond nimbly to 21st century challenges, and what he learned while navigating the evolving political landscape of West Michigan.

CHRISTIAN: George, thanks for joining us.

You know, I still remember hearing you speak for the first time; it was in 2004 at the Healing our Waters Conference. You talked about the power of cities, how they’re large enough to matter yet small enough that a group of concerned citizens can move the needle. Are you as optimistic now about cities as you were then? 

GEORGE: You’re being very kind. As I recall, that speech started by saying mayors will save the world (laughs). And you know, to tell you the truth, I still believe that’s the case. What can be accomplished at the local level, especially without the clutter of partisan politics, is important and significant, especially with respect to climate change. 

I was privileged to be one of 38 mayors credentialed by the UN to represent U.S. mayors at the Paris climate accords. In the very first week of the conference, Mayor Ann Hidalgo of Paris and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg gathered 600 of us at City Hall, and we had a day together that I think was perhaps one of the most impactful of my twelve years as mayor. We were working across international boundaries to develop our own strategy, for influencing and affecting the final outcomes of the Paris Agreement, but also to look ahead to how we were going to be implementing those accords in our own communities. I can say this with certainty: 600 mayors went away from City Hall absolutely convinced that we were the frontline guards. International agreements are important–don’t get me wrong. National commitments are important. But the hard work, the work that makes a difference, is done at the city level.

When I came back to Michigan, my term was over at the end of that month. I watched as a climate denier was elected President and I watched him take us out of the Agreement. It was discouraging. But the work has continued… mayor after mayor in this country, hundreds of them, perhaps now over a thousand, have signed onto a subsequent agreement during the Trump era that says in effect, Mr. President, you may not care, but we do.

My successor in Grand Rapids has done some incredible work and has taken the city from the roughly 20-25% renewable energy it had when I left office to now something closer to 40% of the city’s electrical power coming from renewables. It’s happening, and it’s happening at the local level. 

There was a book I had bought for the title, so that I could put it on my shelf and people could see the spine, but then I read it and it was absolutely right on. The book was If Mayors Ruled the World and what it said was that at the level of national or state or provincial governments, politics play such an immobilizing role that things either don’t get done or get watered down to such an effect that they are often inconsequential. But at the city level, hurricanes blow in and rivers flood and the heat island effect begins to take people’s lives, so mayors are compelled–compelled!–to do that work. 

CHRISTIAN: Clearly you haven’t slowed down one bit.

GEORGE: (laughs) Oh I’ve slowed down, but my passions are still there. 

CHRISTIAN: I really appreciated that conference. My sister and I were there because Patty Birkholz had very kindly invited us; I was 13 at the time and Kathryn was 15 and here we were around these visionaries for the Great Lakes, Patty and Peter Wege and David Ullrich and yourself… just a really wonderful group of leaders. I feel like the impact of that leadership remains, but I’m aware that both Peter and Patty have passed away, and you’ve retired.

For the generation that will be stepping into your shoes, I’d love for you to speak about being a socially and environmentally conscious leader focused on supporting marginalized communities. We’re in a part of the state that has wealth that in theory could help with that, but also an outsized conservative reputation. We’ve got the DeVos family here, Betsy DeVos, her brother Erik Prince with Blackwater. Militia activity has been making headlines in Michigan–

GEORGE: (laughs)

CHRISTIAN: –although there are probably more militias now than when you were in office. But how did you navigate this community?

GEORGE: It’s funny to think about it. My father chaired the Kent County Democratic Party in the ‘50s when, as he used to say, there were three of us. For him to see Kent County today, especially the city of Grand Rapids, Gerry Ford’s hometown–he wouldn’t recognize it. 

The city has become decidedly democratic, with demographic changes resulting in political changes. I believe it has voted in the last nine or ten presidential elections for the democratic candidate. In Kent County, interestingly, which is still Republican territory, Joe Biden won the county, Barack Obama won the county. So I think the outstate perception is that Kent County is a decidedly conservative bastion, and that isn’t as true today as it once was. The fact that a liberal such as I could be elected three times as mayor in Grand Rapids certainly speaks to the changes that have taken place.

Because I worked in a nonpartisan office, I felt it gave me at least some opportunity to work with Republicans as well as Democrats. I didn’t go to Lansing and Washington with a big capital D on my forehead, I was simply the nonpartisan mayor of Grand Rapids trying to do good things for my community. When it came to working with some of our philanthropists–who deserve enormous credit for the renaissance of the city–even though most of them lived outside the city, they saw the importance of investing in the core city, and they found that they could work with a mayor even though they didn’t always agree with his political ideology. I think Grand Rapids and Kent County are worth studying in terms of their models of working across business and government and philanthropy, that triangle. By trusting one another and working together and building up and respecting each of those sectors, I think we got things done where communities that fight between sectors struggle–you know, the mayor versus the Chamber of Commerce, or the philanthropists versus the business people.

CHRISTIAN: One of the things I find interesting is that if you look at the congressional opposition to Trump, two of the ten who voted for his impeachment–Peter Meijer and Fred Upton–are from West Michigan. And Justin Amash as well. Here are some of the most outspoken Republican critics of the ideology of Trump coming out of a very traditionally conservative–or thought of as conservative–area.

GEORGE: I give them each, Upton and Meijer, a lot of credit for being bold enough to take the stands that they did, and Amash too. But in part, it’s a very strategic recognition that the districts they serve are marginal Republican districts. There’s a moderate Republican voice here, in addition to the strident right wing voice, that they need to speak to. And they can speak to moderate Democrats as well. 

CHRISTIAN: You had a personal experience recently that reflects the hyperpartisan divide we’re seeing across the country. Can you speak to that? 

GEORGE: Well, as a way to transition from a full and active professional life to the life of a retiree, I serve on a number of boards. The International Joint Commission’s water quality board, the Michigan board of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. Governor Whitmer has twice appointed me to serve on boards, and a little over a year ago I was appointed to chair the Michigan Natural Resources Commission. As soon as the word got out, the NRA weighed in with all of their members in Michigan, with an action alert saying this would be the worst appointment in the history of appointments (laughs). Heartwell is anti-gun, he’s anti-hunting, what was the Governor thinking. My appointment was defeated on a party-line vote in the Senate with only a single Republican, my own senator here in Newaygo County, voting with me. 

CHRISTIAN: It’s not necessarily common that someone in that position would not be approved. 

GEORGE: Absolutely, you’re right about that. It was very unusual. What made it more difficult for me is that the Governor had two appointments. She had appointed a very bright and capable young biologist with a background in deer herd management, an ideal candidate for that position. She was appointed just before I was, and they used her appointment to try to knock me out. So they went to the Governor the day before, on the 59th day, and said if you withdraw Heartwell, we’ll let her through. The Governor said the hell I will. The very next day they took her to a vote on the Senate floor and voted her down as well. So I felt responsible for that.

CHRISTIAN: In your earlier role as mayor were you seeing this increasing tension across the aisle?

GEORGE: I think I certainly saw that. In race relations, an area of passion for me. Even in 2014, 2015, I was watching things deteriorate in the city. The issue around guns was that I objected to guns in public meetings. I argued that it was a suppression of the First Amendment rights of others when someone exercised their Second Amendment rights and carried a firearm into a public meeting. It was on those grounds that the NRA began challenging me when I was still in office. I would have gun rights folks lined up at the lectern at every meeting to tell me how foolhardy I was–that’s a kind word (laughs). So you could sort of feel that tension.

I was fortunate to serve in a nonpartisan office, but when you look at the policies I implemented over the years and the speeches I made, I think it’s clear that I’m quite liberal, and I think it could be–correctly–assumed that I was a Democrat. And so the right wing pushed back. We saw that regularly throughout my term in office, but I think in increasing measure the closer I got to the end. 

CHRISTIAN: Well it’s very interesting that you had spoken out against guns in public meetings given how much more significant that has become over the last few years.

GEORGE: Isn’t it? Guns in the capitol.

CHRISTIAN: Was it a theoretical issue for you at that point?

GEORGE: Well there was a trigger for it, pardon that pun. The city, early in my tenure, had passed an ordinance prohibiting guns in public buildings. Other cities in Michigan did the same thing. The state legislature ran to the rescue to protect gun rights, and they preempted any local ordinance that was more restrictive than the state statute with respect to firearms. Other cities rescinded their ordinances. Grand Rapids didn’t–we said no, it’s important. We know we can’t enforce it, but it’s going to stay in the books, because the day is going to come when reason will triumph. So I became sort of the cause célèbre for the gun toters, and for the last several years I was in office, a meeting didn’t pass that there wasn’t at least one person sitting in the front row at the chambers, armed, who would get up to speak during the public comment section. 

CHRISTIAN: It seems like gun rights is one of a handful of issues–I would say abortion is another–that have become so deeply personal to many voters that it’s hard to work on anything else if you don’t agree on that position.

GEORGE: Yeah that’s interesting, isn’t it? It does seem like there are these defining kind of issues, like abortion and gun rights, that become a litmus test. Either you’re for it or against it, but you can’t talk to each other, you can’t look for the middle ground. 

I remember when I was chair of the Planned Parenthood board, we tried to open a conversation with the local Right to Life in Grand Rapids, just to see if we could find some common ground, you know, like that unwanted pregnancy is a bad thing–we should be able to both agree on that. And yet we could never even start the conversation, because the other side was so dug in and so unwilling to even look for common ground. 

CHRISTIAN: Where do you see the opportunity to move the needle on issues that have become so much more about identity than any evidence or facts that you could present? 

GEORGE: Well, climate change is another one of those issues that seems to have taken on the cloak of partisan politics. I think I’ve gone through some evolution on this question of climate change. In the beginning, I wanted to convert every climate denier. Then I had a stage where I said it’s not worth the effort… I believe I’m right, I don’t believe I’m going to change their mind, so I’m simply going to go ahead and do the things I think are necessary. That didn’t feel quite right either. So I’ve come back, maybe in the maturity of age, to believing that the way we use language, the vocabulary we choose around some of these questions, the way we approach people either civilly or not, makes a difference–and we should always continue to try to find that common ground between us. I think both my politics and my faith argue for that.

CHRISTIAN: It feels like you have to run parallel paths. You have to be open to extending yourself, thinking about how you’re reaching out to people–but you also can’t wait for them. Social change doesn’t happen with permission from everyone, it happens because you build power. As you think about these sides that are so entrenched, and as you look at the current political landscape, what do you think needs to happen to build enough power to implement more ambitious goals around immigration, climate change, race relations?

GEORGE: I’d use the example of a dear friend who was affluent and used his wealth beneficially in the community around race relations. Bob Woodrich and I used to sit and talk about how we get from this place–an unhealthy place–to a place of health and equality in our community. Bob would argue that it’s about changing hearts and minds, and you change one heart and one mind at a time. I didn’t disagree, but I would argue that it’s about public policy. You change policy to do the right thing, and then as people are doing the right thing and learning that it’s better, it’s healthier as a community to live in equity–then hearts and minds change. I’m not prepared to wait for all the hearts and minds to change, I’m too old for that now. I want to see good, sound enforceable public policy that will move us in the right direction towards racial equity. I can fully believe that as that happens–as people begin to live and work together and share equally because that’s what the law says they have to do–then eventually they will see that the other isn’t so scary, isn’t trying to take away my job, isn’t trying to take away my stature, but is my neighbor and becomes my friend. 

CHRISTIAN: In the push to implement some of these policies, you have to reach a certain threshold of political power. You look at things like gerrymandering, which currently in Michigan puts the state legislature more in Republican control relative to how the state votes, and you see voter suppression. How do you build enough momentum to get to the place where you can reform some of these things? And in that push, where do you spend your political capital? 

GEORGE: Great set of questions. My reading of late has included Isabel Wilkerson’s important book Caste, Eddie Glaude, Jr.’s Begin Again on James Baldwin and his relevance to our times, and Ibram X Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist. I think it’s fair to say that those authors and Baldwin would say you need to invest in policy. But you’ve got to come to it, Kendi says, not simply as a white guy with good racial sensitivities. You’ve got to set aside all the myths and stereotypes that have become so much a part of our systemic understanding of society that we don’t even recognize them. You’ve got to hold them up and recognize them–then you can begin to change. And then it’s about developing public policy.

I can’t think of anything other than perhaps climate change that is more important today for the future of our nation than working on becoming an antiracist society and breaking down the castes that are so deeply embedded in the way we live. It’s about, I think, the whole redemption process, where you say you know, I’ve held this understanding and it’s wrong, it’s not helpful. It’s not moving us in the right direction, and so I as a white man need to be the one to change. And when I change, I start to see my relationships with others in a different way, and that’s how fundamental change  takes place. 

CHRISTIAN: And I might tack on sexism and inequality.

GEORGE: Throw immigration in there too, because it fits into that same bucket of inequalities. In each case, it starts with at its very root, fear. I fear as a white man that a woman is going to take my job away. I fear that an immigrant from Mexico is going to be better educated than I am and elected to office and setting the laws. I fear that my black neighbor is going to harm me. You have to address that fundamental issue of human nature and the fear of the other. 

CHRISTIAN: Let’s talk about public solutions versus private solutions. I think I’m becoming more conscious of how highly celebrated philanthropists get more and more credit. They are looked to as the individuals with the power to change and address significant issues in our society. I have admiration and understanding and I also feel like from a democratic standpoint, from a governing standpoint, having those resources controlled by individuals doesn’t necessarily sit right with me. I find myself questioning whether the role of philanthropy and the role of government is balanced right now.

GEORGE: I can still feel the blood rushing to my face when I think about Governor Engler’s efforts to cut back on general assistance funds for single individuals in poverty, based on the assumption that the private sector could take care of those folks and that it was not government’s responsibility.

I think government has a key role to play in the vis-à-vis for-profit business, to provide the first dollars in for what may be seen by business as risky ventures. Say I think it’s got a future, I can’t afford to invest in it, but government comes along and says alright, we’ll seed the field here. We’ll make the initial investment, whether that’s in tax incentives or investment in real estate or research and development. Government has this role at the beginning to drive economic development, then, and also a role to see to the welfare of all of its people. And it ought to come to that role with a recognition that not everyone is equally able to compete in the private marketplace for adequate sustenance to support themselves and their families. Partly because of past injustices, partly because of present circumstances, it has a role to support people who are struggling. You can’t leave that purely to the philanthropic sector.

So, delighted as I am to see philanthropy step up, dependent as I’ve been myself over the years on philanthropists who have been willing to support things that I believe in, I still feel there’s always going to be a key role for government. 

CHRISTIAN: Is there a way to reduce the impact of wealth on our current government?

GEORGE: The wealth in politics is obscene. I’m delighted that Warnock and Ossoff were elected to the Senate in Georgia, but the money that it took, that came from certainly a variety of sources, some that may have strings attached–we’ve never seen that kind of money before.

I was talking to a friend in Grand Rapids who’s contemplating a run for a city commission seat in 2022. I asked him what he thought that would cost, and he said probably $50,000, $75,000. When I ran for city commission in the ‘90s, I was breaking new ground with $30,000. It just seems to be ratcheted up at every level.

The parties that come to the table with money have certain expectations of the folks they support–not always, but oftentimes. There’s a way around that. It’s not one that anybody seems inclined to take seriously right now, and I don’t know what it would take to get legislators who are dependent on those funds to take it seriously, but it’s publicly funding elections. There’s a limit and it’s funded by the government. Not by the pharmaceutical industry, not by the police and firefighters’ unions, it’s funded by folks like you and me. I think ultimately that’s the only solution that allows us to have legislators who are bound only by their commitment to their constituents and their own consciences.

CHRISTIAN: It seems like that alongside of ranked-choice voting could make a very big difference in who is able to be elected and the ties that the people who are elected have to their constituents. And if we consider political capital, to me the question is if we’re going to hang our hat on a couple issues, which ones unlock the most change? Potentially it is campaign finance reform, because without that it’s so difficult to address any of the other issues. 

GEORGE: You’re right, I think it’s that and it’s gerrymandering. Michigan took an important step in the right direction in creating a commission to set the boundaries for our electoral districts. Those will be two key reforms that I think could help move us in the right direction.

CHRISTIAN: What gives you hope right now?

GEORGE: Every day when I get up, I have to renew that hope. I love the quote–and I’ll try to get it at least close to accurate–from Vaclav Havel, who was a dissident elected president of the Czech Republic. He said hope, in a very deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good. It’s not the conviction that things will turn out well, it’s the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

I see a vision for a world where climate is stabilized, a world in which we share the resources of a good world equally. Those are things for me that are hopeful. It’s not optimism–honestly, I’m not particularly optimistic right now, Christian (laughs)! But it’s beyond optimism. It goes to a belief that what I’m doing today is right, it’s essential–no matter, as Havel said, how it turns out.

CHRISTIAN: That’s beautiful. And if I look at my own career choices, I want to go through life in the most meaningful way that I can. I want to do work that’s important. I don’t want to say it’s a selfish thing, but I think hope is the sustaining thing. 

GEORGE: Yes, absolutely. It’s an iterative thing, but it can have moments when it breaks out and accomplishes grand things. I’d like to see a few more of those grand things before I go! But they’re coming, they’re absolutely coming.

CHRISTIAN: In your opinion, where are the opportunities to build hope versus fear? I don’t necessarily think it’s a dichotomy, but in many ways it seems like there’s leadership driven by fear and leadership driven by spreading hope. How do you swing the pendulum toward hope?

GEORGE: Well, that’s the huge question of our time, and it doesn’t have simple or easy answers. It starts with each one of us believing that we can do more. We can make the space around us better for the people who enter that space. We can exude the kind of energy and enthusiasm and love that are captivating and are transforming for other people. So maybe it ultimately is iterative, and it’s one by one by one. But there are grand moments, like for me in Paris when 600 mayors stood up and said by God, we’re going to do something about this. This issue of climate change doesn’t have to be the reality of the future. We know we’re part of a larger movement that can sustain us and that motivates us and moves us towards a better place.

CHRISTIAN: I’ve spent so much time in the venture capital and private equity world lately, where everything is about scale and about can you get to a massive scale quickly. It feels like the depth of change that really drives hope is not something that scales across large tech platforms or huge movements quickly, but as you’re saying, is built on that one-to-one connection. How do you balance the personal nature of the relationships that drive hope and the visionary leadership that can spur a much larger movement? 

GEORGE: Momentum is the word that comes to mind. I think the sum total of all of those acts of hope have a multiplying impact, and they make for the potential for one of those moments where hope just breaks out and transforms everything around it. So part of it is staying hopeful yourself and doing the work of love–I think those two words are inseparable–but believing that in that there is momentum, and so that as I interact with people, each of them is going to be interacting with other people and momentum grows out of that. 

CHRISTIAN: If you look at Me Too, or you look at Black Lives Matter, I think those are moments where you see that washing over of hope. The question for me is, can you capture that and turn it into the policy that solidifies that hope into something that’s much more stable?

GEORGE: Well, absolutely. And Black Lives Matter is a great illustration. Glaude, in the book I mentioned previously, goes back to the Post-Civil War era and the Reconstruction era that brought in powerful civil rights for freed slaves, which was met with pushback in what was called the Redemption period, but then again in my lifetime the civil rights movement emerged. Who would have thought that we could make the policy progress we made under a president from a southern state, from Texas? And yet it happened. There has been more pushback, but that pushback is now met with a new movement, the Black Lives Matter movement. And the Black Lives Matter movement comes at this important point in time, with a new president and a new Congress, when maybe the sheer momentum of hope takes over and good public policy is implemented. 

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.