LANSING -- Watching Ed McBroom tend to his hundreds of cows in Vulcan, you'd never guess this self-proclaimed farm boy also tends to U.P. constituents. Republican McBroom may be a rookie in the state house this year, but when we met him in his Lansing office, he told me life on the farm has more than prepared him for Lansing.
How do you go from being a farmer to a state politician? What does a U.P. farmer have to offer his district?
"Hard work, and that's what it takes in any kind of a determination to keep pushing and pushing for the answers," said McBroom.
He feels state government has left his rural district in the dark, and he wants to shed light on where their tax dollars are being spent in such a rough economy. McBroom also has an idea of where those tax dollars should be directed...agriculture.
The U.P. farmer insists agriculture is a vital building block to reconstructing our U.P. economy, but he claims big government has prevented the growth of agriculture, something he thinks will also prevent the growth of our local finances.
"We've been held up by the state government time after time, them coming in and saying we don't think that the jobs that you're going to create are good enough for this community, or we think that this job is possibly too old fashioned," McBroom added.
He plans to fix the problem by pushing for investments in agricultural and technical education.
Why has McBroom supported the expansion of vocational and technical education?
"Because those are the jobs that are in our area, to a large extent, are vocational type, technical type jobs. Whether they're at Marinette Marine or ENP or one of the other manufacturing facilities, whether they're out on a farm processing potatoes, we have all these things in our area. Let's capitalize on that," McBroom answered.
He may be a local lawmaker now, but he insists his heart is rooted as deeply in his district as his agriculture.
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