Know the Candidates: Julie Brixie and Josh Rockey Compete for 73rd District House Seat
Over the next several weeks, ELi will bring you articles highlighting the choices for state- and county-wide elections. We seek to interview each of the major candidates for these offices and share an objective look at their backgrounds and goals for office.
In this first post, we look at the candidates for the Michigan State House of Representatives in the 73rd district – Republican Josh Rockey and incumbent Democrat Julie Brixie.
The 73rd district includes portions of East Lansing south of Grand River Avenue.
Josh Rockey
Josh Rockey has owned the computer repair and IT services business Z-Solutions for 22 years. The Williamston resident was the technology director for Webberville Schools when he noticed various businesses reaching out to him for help.
“I ended up leaving the school to pursue that,” he said. “We support a huge amount of different industries and small businesses all over the state.”
This is Rockey’s first political campaign.
“I saw that we need really good representation,” Rockey said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and because I’ve lived in all the different areas of the district, I realized our communities have gotten much bigger. The state rep position is going to give me the best opportunity to help people inside the district and help my communities.”
He ensured that his family would be ready for the election.
“My fiance was very supportive,” he said. “When we spoke about it, she reminded me that I’ve always wanted to do this and it is in my nature to help out people and our community.”
When asked about the issues he’s most passionate about, he quickly said that local control is his top priority.
Specifically, he voiced support for “Citizens for Local Choice.” This group opposed plans from the state to shift permitting for large-scale wind, solar and battery-storage arrays from the local to the state level, according to Bridge Michigan.
“That’s actually one of the reasons why I wanted to run is because I thought it was a bad position to take,” he said.
“The local municipalities,” he said, “they’re the ones that have these as their neighbors. They’re the ones that actually have to live with these and I think the local municipalities know how to address these situations better than [the state government].”
Rockey also said he wants the state to “step in and actually use some of its funds to help the local municipalities” pay for improved infrastructure.
“A lot of these pipes are 50 to 80 to 100 years old and they are underneath our feet,” he said. “We have to do something about them. I know they have water main breaks on the regular and there’s just no money, and that’s what every municipality struggles with.”
Education was the final priority he shared with ELi, particularly ensuring “our tax dollars are actually going to make sure the kids are getting the best education they possibly can.”
“Michigan doesn’t rank very high with education right now,” he said, “and we’ve got to figure out a way to approach it and to fix it, to make sure we are addressing the problem and that kids and students have the best education we possibly can give them.”
When asked why East Lansing voters should support him in November, he reiterated his connection to the community and his desire to get things done in the House.
“I’m a small town guy and I’ve been a business owner for over 20 years,” he said. “I grew up with a single mom. I saw her sacrifice everything for me and my sister. She taught us that you can’t always get what you want, but you know she always got us what we needed, and she did it on a budget.
“I understand that when I’m making decisions on taxpayers’ money, that it’s someone that worked 40 hours that week, worked to the bone, and that money mattered to them. It’s important to me to do what’s best for that money, because they trusted us to actually get that money and spend it wisely [to] benefit them and benefit the state as a whole.”
Julie Brixie
Julie Brixie has served in the Michigan House since 2019 and the 73rd district since 2023 when the state underwent redistricting. She grew up in the Chicago area but has lived in the district since arriving at Michigan State University for a master’s degree 36 years ago. An environmental chemist by training, Brixie’s passion for the environment and the election of Donald Trump in 2016 pushed her to run for office.
“I was so horrified by that turn of events that I was motivated to get involved and help flip Michigan [from Republican to Democratic],” she said. “I grew up in a union household and my dad was the grievance chairman of his union at the Chicago City Colleges. Both my parents were teachers and care a lot about education and were pretty social justice minded.”
ELi asked Brixie about bills she’s introduced that she has been particularly proud to put into the public arena.
“I’m so proud of getting the extreme risk protection order measure passed last year,” she said. “It was a really important piece of legislation, part of a package that included universal background checks and storage. We, as elected officials, allow our children to live in an environment where they have to have active shooter drills and we need to do more to make our children safe in public schools and to make everyone safe in public spaces.”
Brixie also touted her sponsorship of the Reproductive Health Act that repealed Michigan’s 1931 abortion ban and her support for the amendments to the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which now includes protections for LGBT individuals.
Brixie is also excited about recently proposed legislation.
“We just introduced a package of bills that would close the ‘dark store tax loophole’ that allows big box stores to unfairly reduce their taxes to the tune of about $2 billion dollars in the state since Governor Snyder changed the appointments on the tax tribunal, and began allowing this,” she said.
When asked why voters should cast a ballot for her this fall, she paused briefly to consider her response.
“I have a proven record and a lengthy one on the Democratic values that I have,” she said. “And we’ve seen that Republican values are anti-women, anti-reproductive freedom. They’re against abortion, often against birth control, and they have dangerous ideas about tax policies that hurt everyday Michiganders. My Democratic values are ones that help lift up the people in our state that need assistance and provide a level playing field for everyone.
“There’s no reason in the world that a billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a working mom who’s struggling to raise kids alone. That’s just flat out wrong. And yet that’s the truth of what happens here in Michigan.”