By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org
Residents of the City of Wyoming joined those in northern Kent county to determine the next 28th District state senator. In the unofficial results, Republican Mark Huizenga took the seat with 25,735 votes, which was about 10,000 more than his closet competitor, Democrat Keith Courtade, who had 15,683 votes. Libertarian Alex Avery received 611 votes and U.S. Taxpayer candidate Theodore Gerrard received 420 votes.
District 28 encompasses the townships of Plainfield, Byron, Alpine, Algoma, Cannon, and Sparta and the cities of Grandville, Rockford, Walker, Wyoming and the Village of Cedar Springs. Kent County is reporting about a 20% turnout of it registered voters, which is higher than the 12.24% in 2019, the last non-president and non-governor election.
Within the City of Wyoming, which had a voter turnout of about 7,000 out of its 55,703 registered voters (12.57%), Huizenga was the top pick receiving about 800 votes more than Courtade.
Huizenga officially takes over the 28th District senate seat on Jan. 1. Formerly held by Peter MacGregor, who vacated the seat when he became the Kent Country Treasurer last year, Huizenga will fill the remaining one-year of MacGregor’s term. Huizenga has indicated that after the districts are redrawn, he does plan to run again for a senate seat in the Walker area.
Huizenga has served as the mayor of Walker and currently is the 74th District State Representative, which covers Rockford, Cedar Springs, Algoma Township along with the cities of Walker and Grandville. His state house representative seat would be up in the 2022 elections. State house representative seats are two-year terms with a term limit of three terms. The state senate seats are for four-year terms with a term limit of two terms.
Huizenga owns Mark Huizenga Systems Consulting, a consulting firm, and is the managing partner for Key Green Solutions, a software company.
