LEFT: Eddie Kabacinski. RIGHT: Michelle Nard
By: Gena Johnson | Warren Weekly | Published October 28, 2024
WARREN — Current District 12 Macomb County Commissioner Michelle Nard and former District 5 Warren City Councilman Eddie Kabacinski are running as write-in candidates for the seat Nard currently holds.
Nard ran for reelection in the primary and received 1,153 votes, which is 21.1% of the total vote cast. This resulted in a third-place finish in the all-Democratic contest. Michael Howard won the race with 2,014 votes (37.04%), followed by Khaja Shahab Ahmed with 1,236 votes (22.73%). Terry Wisniewski received 1,007 votes (18.52%).
“I ran as a write-in because of the incident that happened on Aug. 6. Apparently, some of the polling precincts were moved and they (the school district) claimed it was due to power outages or something happening in the building,” Nard said. “But when I checked with DTE, they said there were no power outages on Aug. 5 or 6th. So then, they (the school district) said it was some type of fuse or something.”
Nard ran previously as a write-in candidate for mayor of Warren to no avail.
“If I win, that’s great. If I don’t, that’s fine also,” Nard said. “It’s just, I want people to know you cannot disenfranchise voters and nobody’s going to speak on it. I’m doing this for the people because they have a right to choose who they want.”
In the primary election, Kabacinski ran for Macomb County sheriff.
According to Kabacinski, before officially filing for sheriff, he conferred with Terence Mekoski to make sure Mekoski was not a candidate in the race. Kabacinski said he did not want to run against him because Mekoski had previously run for sheriff.
“He (Mekoski) told me two days before the filing deadline that he was not going to do so (run), then I went ahead and filed,” Kabacinski said.
Mekoski later decided to run for sheriff as did Scott Budnick, both Republican candidates, and three Republican candidates were in the race.
“I was debating whether to run for the sheriff’s position or to run for the county commissioner’s position. I chose to run for the sheriff’s position, since we (Republicans) did not really have a candidate at that point to run against Anthony Wickersham,” Kabacinski said.
In the primary, Kabacinski came in third receiving 8,419 votes for sheriff which was 13.57% of the votes cast. Mekoski led the Republicans with 26,752 votes (43.14%). Budnick was a close second with 26,568 votes (42.83%), according to the Macomb County clerk’s official election results.
Kabacinski said that the number of votes he received in the primary were the result of little to no campaigning. This inspired him to run as a write-in candidate.
“I was encouraged by the Macomb County Republican Party as well as other constituents, that I should run as a write-in position for the county commissioner’s position since it was left vacant, and basically you just have the one Democrat that was just going to sail through the primary then into the general election without any opposition,” Kabacinski said.
Nard and Kabacinski will face Democrat Michael Howard and Libertarian Frederick Horndt, who are on the ballot in the race for county commissioner.