Updated November 22, 2024 at 4:30 p.m.
Following a tight race, Democrat Rebecca Bahar-Cook has won the last open seat on the Michigan State University Board of Trustees.
That’s according to results certified by the Board of State Canvassers Friday.
Bahar-Cook captured 24.24% of the vote to take the second available spot after it was clear within days following the election that Republican Mike Balow won the most votes out of any candidate with 24.9% of the vote.
The race for the last seat was closely contested between Bahar-Cook and Republican Julie Maday. Official results show Bahar-Cook led Maday by more than 4,000 votes.
Initially, Maday looked to have won the board's second open seat after the election, but there was a reporting error that left out 20,000 votes for Bahar-Cook in Allegan County. When it was corrected, the gap between the two candidates narrowed. The race was not called until results were made official.
Bahar-Cook said she’s excited and honored to be elected. She said she’s interested in working on the budget and learning more about the cost of tuition versus expenditures.
“I'm eager to kind of look and understand better how it all fits, to see if some of my expertise in as a fundraiser, or as somebody who was on the county commission in Ingham County in 2008 when I had to cut the budget, if any of those tools can be used to the university's benefit to help save tuition costs,” she said.
Bahar-Cook is an MSU alum, parent of two MSU graduates and the owner of Capitol Fundraising Associates in Lansing. She hopes to bring her skills in coalition building and strategy from her day job to the table over her eight-year term.
“I'm excited to sort of bring that to the MSU Board of Trustees, both to listen to my fellow board members and also share some of the tools I've learned over the years about how to move the ball forward to see how do we best strategize for the university to make it the best it can be,” she said.
Bahar-Cook and Balow will join the board next year. Trustee Dianne Byrum chose not to seek reelection, and Board Chair Dan Kelly was not re-nominated by his party to run for the seat he currently holds.
