ANN ARBOR – It’s one thing to endorse a candidate – and hope he or she will support your causes.

But when it comes to loyalty and doing yourself a favor, there’s no substitute for voting to put one of your own into public office.

“On Election Day, building trades workers throughout the state will have an opportunity to vote for IBEW Local 252 Business Manager Greg Stephens for University of Michigan Regent,” said Patrick Devlin, secretary-treasurer of the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council. “This is a great opportunity for union members and all working people to do themselves a big favor. It would be great to have a friend on that board.”

Stephens, 59, has been an Ann Arbor Local 252 member for 39 years, and has been business manager for the last 16. He ran for U of M Regent in 2002, received 1.2 million votes and lost by only 7,000 votes.

“If I’m going to be elected, it will be because of the support of my brothers and sisters in the building trades and the labor movement in Michigan,” Stephens said. “But people have to know their ballot. If you’re voting straight Democratic, you vote for me. But if you’re going to split your ticket, you have to find me at the bottom of the ballot.  If you vote straight Republican, you do not vote for me.”

There are eight University of Michigan Board of Regents members.  Their job is to set policy for the University, in areas such as curriculum, hiring policies, budgets – and approving construction projects. In some years during this past decade, the U of M has sponsored more than $1 billion in construction activity, and the campus has seen tremendous amounts of work over the last 20 years.

“In our local union alone, over the past 10 years we’ve had 700,000 to 800,000 man hours per year worked at the University,” Stephens said. “When you multiply that throughout the entire building trades, that’s a lot of work. Now, the U of M has been great about hiring union in the past, and I want to keep it that way. You never know what can happen with the makeup of the Board of Regents potentially changing every two years. You can see how important it is for the building trades to have a voice on that Board to look out for their interests.”

University of Michigan Board of Regents members are elected to eight-year terms, but their elections are staggered, and two are up for election every two years. This is the first cycle since 2002 that Stephens has had the right candidates to compete against. Greg serves on the Board of Directors of the Construction Unity Board, the country’s longest running Labor-Management organization. He’s also a founding member of Michigan Democratic Hunting, Fishing and Gun Ownership Caucus. A U.S. Army Reservist from 1971-1977, Greg has been married to Gail for 40 years. The couple has a son, daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren.

Stephens said his support of union construction on campus is a given – but there’s more motivating him. There isn’t much diversity on the Board: seven of the eight Regents currently on the Board are lawyers, and the other is married to a lawyer. The Regent positions are unpaid.

“What I would bring to that position is a middle-class, working class perspective,” Stephens said. “There has been a tuition hike every year for the last decade at the University; tuition is up 84 percent over the last 10 years. The median income of a family with a student at the U of M is $150,000. That’s not the kind of money people in the building trades make. What’s happening is that unless a student gets in on a scholarship, this is becoming a University only for the wealthy.”

Stephens said Regents have the authority to set tuition rates and make more scholarship endowment money available. “Typically the Regent positions are seen as a resume builder, or a prize for the well-to-do,” Stephens said. “The way I see it, if I get elected, there are things that I can do to help working class people. But if I’m going to win, the labor turnout is going to be the key.”