As we once again look back and look forward, celebrating twenty years of Rapid Growth, we find our city in the spotlight again, this time nationally, thanks to last week’s primary results. It feels fitting. So much of what we call “the future” started out as someone’s ordinary present, and this week is a good reminder of that.

For context this week, we have to note the news that on Aug. 4, Democratic primary voters chose Abdul El-Sayed for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, and the ripple went well past our borders, for if he wins in November, El-Sayed becomes the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Senate. 

What stood out to me as I surveyed the results was that his victory was delivered primarily by votes in Ann Arbor (as expected) and the Greater Grand Rapids metro region. For context, Detroit did not deliver as decisive a margin for El-Sayed, which speaks to the shifting power centers in our state that we’ve watched shift over our publication’s tenure.

And while some will read this and no doubt clutch their pearls at the mere mention of El-Sayed’s name, or go further and call this an endorsement (it is most certainly not), this is the kind of news that gets written from thirty thousand feet, by those whose job is reporting what just happened. We take our cues from colleagues committed to that kind of journalism, reporting the facts of the day and letting you decide what to do with them. 

In short, we’re staying in our lane: delivering a magazine committed to the best insights on our region and the change agents making good on the promise of something truly grand can happen when we work together for a better tomorrow, for our citizens…and our state alike.

It’s also a reminder of how change tends to happen throughout U.S. history. Moments like the one we just experienced almost always start small, closer to home, with ordinary voters casting their votes to make their voices heard. Last week, West Michigan got really loud once again.

This news sent me back 20 years, to an April 24, 2006, story we ran, “Bliss brings energy, diversity, and ideas to City Commission,” introducing readers to a 30-year-old named Rosalynn Bliss, freshly elected to represent Grand Rapids’ Second Ward. It’s the ward I’ve called home for most of my more than 40 years in Grand Rapids, save for a brief three-year stint in the Third Ward.

Bliss took office in 2006 as the youngest person ever seated on our City Commission, in a ward already long known for electing women to office in numbers no other ward could match. Today, women serve openly in all three wards – another sign of our progress over time, as gender parity becomes our reality and becomes more common across our state. 

Looking back on that time period, Bliss’ early messages were not complicated: stronger neighborhoods, a better quality of life, a city government that actually worked for the people living in it.

She’d go on to spend a decade in that seat before Grand Rapids took another chance on her in 2015, this time electing her the city’s first woman mayor and, at 40, its youngest mayor in more than a hundred years.

Looking back on it now, from 2026, you can see what those votes actually bought us.

As a commissioner, Bliss spent her early years listening to community voices, and out of that came real investment: parks and public spaces, a renewed focus on neighborhood development, trail-connection conversations still bearing fruit today, and the rebuild of the Fulton Street Farmers Market.

As mayor, her administration moved affordable housing efforts forward, built out mental-health and homelessness response, advanced riverfront development, and set in motion the long transformation of 201 Market that eventually cleared the ground for today’s downtown amphitheater and, next year, a new downtown soccer stadium.

She led this city through COVID, racial uprisings, and even a digital transformation that put upon society a new world called social media, whose promise we are rethinking today. 

You see, not every call she made in nearly twenty years of public service went unchallenged – nor should it have, as this is not how democratic leadership is supposed to work. But it’s hard to separate the scale of what changed here for locals from the simple fact that Grand Rapids kept handing her the chance to lead, election after election. A vote still matters, and it is also still one of the clearest signs of a society shifting.

And honestly, that might be the real point of this week’s #RG20LookBack. It’s not just about Rosalynn Bliss. It’s about us, we the people…and how we cast our hopes each election season toward the future.

Democracy sometimes asks something harder of you than picking between two names on a ballot. It asks you to imagine who somebody could grow into once you actually give them the job. Voting is just one of many ways to show up and build a better city.

In my time covering this city, I’ve watched Grand Rapids voters do that again and again – reaching for younger voices who join the greater voting populace to bring new perspectives, and when we’re bold enough to elect a visionary person, they often go on to represent more than just being “a first.” 

In the case of Bliss, we built together a city that brought “energy, diversity, and ideas” to our City Hall. Her career is proof that a vote isn’t only a verdict on the present. Sometimes it’s a bet on a future none of us can yet see the shape of.

Bliss brings energy, diversity, and ideas to City Commission

By Newsroom

Rosalynn Bliss took office this year as the youngest female elected in Grand Rapid’s history. Now she is bringing youthful energy and new ideas to the Second Ward commission post.

According to excerpts from the story:

At a young 30 years old, Bliss very well may also be the city’s busiest and most energetic commissioner as she finds time to volunteer, do the city’s business and serve as director of prevention services for the Child and Family Resource Council — a nonprofit organization that works to prevent child abuse and neglect in the county.

“I’m a huge advocate of the neighborhoods,” Bliss said. “The city has some amazing neighborhoods, and I really want to see them supported and strengthened and for them to feel like the city supports them and is making their lives easier and not harder.”