Like many successful businessmen, Detroit’s Kevin Rinke likes to discuss tactics and crisis management situations in detail with other professionals so he can find innovative ways to make his company better.
When he was in his 20s, he tragically learned firsthand that crisis management is a skill you learn on the spot. His older brother was killed in a fatal airplane accident that forced the reluctant Rinke, who wanted to work at IBM writing code and not in the family business, to rise to the occasion when his family needed him most.
Rinke released an ad Wednesday detailing that event — how it changed his life forever and helped him form the character to take on his current challenge of running for governor.
The ad opens with the story of how he can uniquely rise to the challenge to handle the myriad problems the state faces under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Rinke said it was a conversation with his wife and one of his children that led him to run for governor.
“My wife and my son Grant and I were in our family room, and I was complaining about the direction of Michigan,” he said. “I was complaining about Gretchen Whitmer. I was complaining about the political environment that existed and how petty it was and how it wasn’t serving the people of Michigan, and I said to my wife, ‘I think we should move out.’ To my utter surprise, my son just looked at me and said, ‘Dad, that is total BS.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he says … ‘Instead of moving out, why don’t you fix it?’”
“The nicest thing my 23-year-old son has ever said to me as he was whopping me on the side of the head, saying, ‘Get your priorities straight,’” said Rinke.
Rinke is one of 12 Republican contenders, many of them outsiders like himself, who have stepped up to challenge the incumbent Whitmer as the state’s chief executive.
The Rinke family has been invested in getting Michiganders from one place to the other for well over 100 years in business: His great grandfather had a horse and buggy company, which soon gave way to his grandfather starting one of the state’s first General Motors franchises more than a century ago.
“We owned, back in the 1800s, a farm and implement store where we leased horse-drawn carriages out of our facility. We bought Durant carriages from the Durant Carriage Company, which was up in Pontiac, Michigan. And when horse-drawn carriages turned into horseless carriages, Bill Durant brought us into General Motors. And I think we’re one of the oldest, if not the oldest, GM continuous franchise in North America,” he said of the Rinke family business, which today is run by his cousins.
“When I started working in the family business, I was handed a broom, and my first job was sweeping the floors,” he said. “I eventually graduated to clearing the trash, then the washrooms, and finally cars,” he said.
Rinke, who is funding his own campaign, made his fortune by partnering with Roger Penske and creating one of the world’s largest auto dealer groups. He later sold his portion of the business to run a brain injury rehab facility and a healthcare company. Today, he is a private investor.
Likely voters in Michigan have given poor grades to Gov. Whitmer and President Joe Biden as the pivotal 2022 campaigns ramp up. In late January, an EPIC-MRA statewide poll showed both Democrats with negative job approval ratings from 600 likely Michigan voters. The ABC12 News poll showed that 52% of respondents held a negative view of Whitmer, 45% gave her positive marks, and 3% were undecided or refused to answer.
Only 41% of likely voters in that poll said they would support Whitmer for a second term as governor in this year’s election.
