The Man Standing Between Michigan Democrats and Decades of Supreme Court Control

Hillsdale — Andrew Fink didn’t even have time to put mustard on a hot dog.

Between hours of nonstop conversation at the Michigan GOP convention with some of the 2,000 Republican delegates who could nominate him for a seat on the state Supreme Court, the 39-year-old Republican lawmaker could hardly stop for a drink of water.

The case for Fink’s opponent, Court of Appeals Judge Mark Boonstra, took only 10 seconds. Boonstra already had 12 years of experience on the bench and is the only candidate at the convention endorsed by former president Donald Trump.

Fink’s argument took longer. He had only two terms in the Michigan House and no time on the bench. But the 67-year-old Boonstra couldn’t run again after serving an eight-year term due to the court’s age limit of 70 years. Fink is young, and, since sitting justices rarely lose re-election, he could keep the seat for decades.

“If we had the opportunity to talk to someone one-on-one, we felt very confident that we could get that person to understand why my candidacy made more sense than my opponent’s did,” Fink said in an interview the next day.

In a nail-biting 1,051-to-986 vote at the Dort Financial Center on Aug. 24, Fink defeated Boonstra and won the Republican nomination for one of two state Supreme Court seats on the ballot in November.

Control over the state’s high court is at stake. Republicans could flip the Michigan Supreme Court, where Democrats currently hold a 4-3 majority, if they win both seats this fall.

Incumbency is a major advantage in Michigan’s judicial elections, since ballots display the incumbent’s title and no party affiliations for challengers. But Fink is running to fill a seat left vacant by retiring Justice David Viviano, a Republican appointee. The other Republican nominee, Patrick O’Grady, has a more difficult challenge. He’s running to unseat Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, who Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointed to the bench two years ago.

With less than two months until Election Day, the two Republican nominees face an uphill battle. A double victory for Democrats could—with the help of incumbency—cement a 6-3 majority for years.

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Fink was born near Ypsilanti into a family of the law. His father was a police officer and his grandfather, Robert V. Fink, was a district court judge in Washtenaw County.

“This sounds strange,” Fink said, “But I enjoy talking to lawyers. I enjoy hearing about cases.”

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Fink wanted to join the military but was only 16 years old. Instead, he earned a politics degree at Hillsdale College and attended law school at the University of Michigan.

But as the war progressed through 2007, the military needed more people. A Marines Corps recruiter told Fink he had a “mission for lawyers.”

“The needs finally met my availability,” Fink said.

Already in debt from two years of law school, Fink attended Officer Candidate School in the summer before his final year. From 2011 to 2014, he worked as a Judge Advocate in the Marines.

After joining his family’s law practice in Ann Arbor, Fink returned to Hillsdale in 2017, where he set up a satellite office for the firm. During those years, he watched a contrast of visions begin to define American politics. One view, he said, believed America should “always improve and develop but stay in touch with the ideas of the founding, those who fought in the Civil War, and those who pioneered and settled this incredible nation.” The other “suggested America needed to be fully rebooted.”

“I thought if I wanted America to still be recognizable as itself, I would regret not getting involved,” he said.

In fall 2019, he announced his run for state representative. A few months later, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a slew of restrictions based on the spread of Covid-19 in the state. One order prevented healthcare providers from performing nonessential procedures.