Businessman and former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Kevin Rinke joined The Overton Window Podcast to share how a lifetime of political skepticism eventually led him to public service — and why Michigan’s literacy crisis now commands his full attention.
“I hated politics,” Rinke admits. “To be candid with you.” But that changed after two unexpected events. First, a connection in Colorado led to a brief stint as a personal aide to President Gerald Ford during his post-presidency in 1979–1980. “That was my first step into politics,” Rinke says.
Decades later, it was his son who pushed him further. “I was expressing dissatisfaction,” Rinke says of the 2022 Michigan governor’s race. “My son looked at me and said, ‘Dad, why don’t you run? Why don’t you fix it?’” His wife agreed. “You talk about it all the time, might as well do something about it.”
That decision placed Rinke in the middle of a political landscape he believes has changed dramatically since his time with Ford. He recalled productive meetings between the former president and House Speaker Tip O’Neill, where both sides found common ground. “They had the best interest of the state and the country in their hearts,” Rinke says. “We would come out of each one of those events with a broad idea of five issues that they were both going to agree on.”
Today, he sees far less cooperation. “Politics are so partisan in nature. We’re reaching a breaking point.” But Rinke believes most Americans still agree on more than they realize. “I believe that if you take both ends of the political spectrum, those people would agree on probably 80% of what goes on in America. I think as you move off the extremes, that number goes up to 90%, maybe even 92%.”
For Rinke, literacy is at the top of that shared agenda. “We are failing in public education,” he says, pointing to Michigan’s low literacy rates and high school graduates testing at middle-school reading levels. “Literacy has become so prevalent since Covid, they couldn’t hide anymore.”
Rinke participates with Beyond Basics, a phonics-based tutoring program that partners with public schools to deliver one-on-one reading instruction. “They dispelled all of the excuses that I had been hearing: single parent kids couldn’t read, minority kids couldn’t read, economic dollar income in a household could be correlated to reading efficiency. It’s all smoke,” he says. “Everybody can read.”
He credits Beyond Basics with transforming outcomes in some of Michigan’s most challenged districts. “Every school that we have been in wants them back and wants to expand the program,” he says. The assistant superintendent of Detroit Public Schools has expressed interest in bringing the program district-wide.
Across all areas of policy, Rinke’s focused on results. “We’re at a place where I think people want to feel that their tax dollars are actually being used efficiently and are getting a result.”
“There’s nothing in it for me,” Rinke adds. “I want you to know what the issue is… and that if you choose to get involved, you can help create that solution.”
Listen to the full conversation on The Overton Window Podcast.
