BEAU LAFAVE

HOUGHTON – Former State Representative Beau LaFave (R-Iron Mt.) is running for Michigan 38th State Senate District, currently held by Sen. Ed McBroom (R-Wacedah), who is term-limited.

LaFave, has received the endorsement of Congressman Jack Bergman (R-Watersmeet), and is vying for the GOP nomination against current State Rep. Dave Prestin (R-Red Cedar), who has been endorsed by state Reps. Greg Markkanen (R-Hancock), Karl Bohnak (R-Deerton) and McBroom.

The 38th Senate District includes Alger, Baraga, Delta, Dickinson, Gogebic, Houghton, Iron, Keweenaw, Luce, Marquette, Menominee, Ontonagon, and Schoolcraft counties and contains portions of Chippewa and Mackinac counties.

LaFave’s key platform points include Second Amendment Rights, emphasizing a commitment to maintaining gun ownership rights over increasing state regulations. “I sponsored Constitutional Carry all three terms in office,” he said in March. “It would make getting a concealed pistol license optional. All law-abiding citizens could open carry, or concealed carry, without paying the government money.”

LaFave also proposes requiring the Department of Natural Recourses conservation officers to obtain search warrants before entering private land or launching investigations on private lands, ending the DNR’s use of the “Open Fields Doctrine, which currently allows officers to walk onto private property without a warrant or permission to enforce conservation and environmental laws.

In 2021, he introduced House Bill 4315, which would require DNR conservation officers to follow the same standards as all other law enforcement officers and acquire a warrant before entering private property without consent.

“Currently, the DNR uses the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act, and the open fields doctrine as an excuse to broadly enter people’s private property without obtaining a warrant,” LaFave said. “As Michigan residents and American citizens, we have rights that they completely disregard because of how current law is written.”

Related to state natural resources and policy, LaFave said he has fought for an Upper Peninsula Natural Resources Commission.

“The state NRC sets the hunting and fishing laws in the state of Michigan,” he said.

All state NRC commissioners are appointed by the governor, and usually, the U.P. gets one as a token, he said.

“So, we’re always outvoted,” he said. “I think that the U.P. NRC, which is a bill package that I wrote – and now my opponent (Dan Preston) is pushing it, of course – would make the U.P. NRC set the hunting and fishing rules for the Upper Peninsula. Now, it wouldn’t be for migratory species that go between both peninsulas. That would be left to the state NRC. But deer, wolves and coyotes, they don’t go between the peninsulas. The U.P. NRC should be made up of people raised and living in the U.P. and actually hunt and fish up here.”

Speaking of his three terms in the House, LaFave listed some of his accomplishments.

“I was elected to the House to represent Dickson, Delta and Menominee counties for six years,” he said. “I got elected in 2016, and I had a lot of things I wanted to get done. Car insurance prices are too high; electricity prices are too high; our kids are fleeing the Upper Peninsula, because they can’t find a good paying job to stay here. Most of this is caused by disastrous policies in Lansing.”

LaFave said his priority in his first term was to eliminate 30 pages of what he calls 30 pages of red tape that prevented high school students from accessing internships. He was able to reduce the number to four pages.

“Now, we’ve tripled the number of high school students in internships in the Upper Peninsula,” he said.

LaFave said he was successful in reducing the cost of auto insurance for the first time in more than 40 years.

LaFave opposed the COVID lockdowns, along with the bans of social gatherings. “The minute I left office, Gretchen Whitmer, and the Democrat-controlled Supreme Court, wiped out all my reforms,” he said, “I had two years of legislative work that were destroyed by the COVID lockdowns. I was the only lawmaker in the state of Michigan to oppose 15 days to slow the spread on day one. Then, months later, it became popular to oppose unconstitutional lockdowns,”

LaFave says successful legislating is about relationships. “Almost every single bill that I wrote,” he said, “was written by a Conservative, Iron Mountain resident. I’m a Republican; always have been and always will be. But I formed relationships with my (colleagues) across the other side of the bridge and on the other side of the isle.”

LaFave said he has earned the respect of his former House colleagues. “The other side of the isle respects me, because when I go to war, politically, I come loaded for bear,” he said. “They don’t like me, but they respect me, because I actually fight to get things done for the Upper Peninsula.”

The Upper Peninsula contains 3% of the state population, said LaFave.

“If you want to get nothing done,” he said, “send somebody down there who’s not going to cause some fights, whose not going to raise a little bit of hell.”