Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Laurie Pohutsky. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Laurie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

The biggest risk I’ve ever taken was running for office in 2018. Prior to running, I was a microbiologist. I’m not a complete introvert, strictly speaking, but spending my days in the lab was certainly a far cry from the extremely public scrutiny a campaign brings. But I also saw a need for change and knew that I wasn’t doing enough. I was fearful about what the state of politics meant for reproductive and LGBTQ rights, our environment, and the overall future.

I filed to run for state representative in one of the most gerrymandered House districts in Michigan. I had no knowledge of how to run a campaign, and even worse, I was in a primary against a man who already held elected office in the district. I was worried that my job would see my campaign as a liability, so I kept it a secret. I worked my normal job, then raced home to knock doors and raise money until the sun went down. I worked so hard, I ran my immune system into the ground and ended up hospitalized and being monitored for organ failure in March of 2018.

It paid off. That August, I won my highly contested primary by nine and a half points. By then, my election had made its way into the New York Times, so I had to tell my employer. Fortunately for me, everyone at the lab was thrilled and even agreed to let me go down to part time while I campaigned for my general election.
Suddenly, people all across the country were paying attention to my campaign and invested in the outcome. What should have been validating terrified me. The prospect of letting people down was horrifying. People I’d never even met were counting on me. When I knocked doors, women brought their daughters out to meet me “so they would know they could do anything.” Aside from the pressure of the implications of an electoral loss, the thought of losing in such a public way gave me preemptive feelings of embarrassment. I would lay awake, the voice in my head asking over and over again, “What if I lose?”

One night, that question replaying in my head as I begged for sleep to come, I gave myself an answer.

“What if I lose?”

“Then I lose.”

It was a painfully simple answer, but I was shocked at how it made my anxiety wash away. If I lost, then I lost, but it wouldn’t be for a lack of effort. It wouldn’t be because I took any of the support I’d received for granted. It wouldn’t be because I hadn’t obliterated my immune system and nearly killed myself in the process. And all of those little girls whose mothers had told them they could do or be anything would still know that. Even if I didn’t cross the finish line, they could follow the map I’d started charting. If I lost, I lost. But the risk was still worth taking.

Fortunately, I didn’t lose. I won by 217 votes, the narrowest margin in the entire Michigan House of Representatives that year. I’m currently serving in my fourth term. I’ve been able to change the laws that spurred my first run and fight for the district that sent me to Lansing. I was the first openly queer woman elected to the Michigan legislature and the first queer person to serve as Speaker Pro Tempore. Running for office was the biggest risk I ever took, but it was also the best choice I ever made.

Laurie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

To put it bluntly, I ran for office because I was pissed off.

After the 2016 election, I was fearful for our future, particularly as it related to reproductive rights. I’d connected with women who were doing work all across the country and even internationally on reproductive rights, but began to realize that there were serious threats more locally in Michigan. I ran for state representative because I wanted to change restrictive laws around abortion care and reproductive health.

The thing I’m proudest of is that I have the rare privilege of being able to have accomplished the thing that made me want to run for office to begin with. In 2023, I sponsored bills to repeal Michigan’s criminal abortion ban and to expand access to abortion care by repealing punitive and arbitrary laws that created barriers to reproductive health. I had the privilege of working with and getting to know people who had been doing this work for decades, and I’m grateful for the movement we all built together to accomplish what was truly a monumental task.

My job is much more than writing bills and changing laws, though. Often, I’m the first person constituents reach out to when they encounter a problem. They might call me because their Medicaid was paused and they need to take their child to the doctor, or because their utilities are getting shut off and they have nowhere to turn. When COVID hit, our office was inundated with thousands of calls and emails from people trying to access unemployment benefits. These were people who were on the verge of losing their home or were pregnant and wouldn’t be able to stay afloat once their baby was born. While the action inside the Capitol usually gets all the coverage, the services we provide to our constituents are the most important things we do.

I won my first two elections with the narrowest margin in the state House. I had countless conversations with people who wanted to know how I managed to pull it off. The truth was that I was just honest with people. Even those who didn’t agree with my policy positions respected that I didn’t try to lie about what they were. I also prioritized accessibility and keeping open lines of communication with my district. People knew that if they heard something about me that didn’t make sense, they could ask me directly. More than that, they knew me well enough to know when something they heard didn’t make sense.
In the state of Michigan, we have term limits. This means that my time in public service has an expiration date, but I’ll have to live with myself for the rest of my life. I make it a point to be a person I want to know for that long, even after my time in the Capitol is done.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In October of 2024, my best friend of twenty-two years, Katie, died. It was an odd mix of the anticipated and the totally unexpected. She had been battling breast cancer for ten months, but had recently undergone a mastectomy and was doing remarkably well. She had re-enrolled for her final semester of law school and had completely turned a corner. Then one Saturday, she sent a text that she was back in the hospital for an infection but was hoping to be released on Wednesday. She lamented that she was tired of hospital stays and felt like this was a huge step backwards in her recovery. The next day, she was gone.

She died just less than a month before an election that would determine whether the Michigan House, the chamber I was serving as the second-in-command of, would maintain a Democratic majority or not. To say this was the busiest time of my life would be an understatement. My days and nights were a blur of traveling across the state to knock doors and fundraise, punctuated by calls from reporters asking me to comment on what all was at stake not just in Michigan but all across the country. When Katie died, I felt totally unmoored. She was my person, my conscience. I felt like my entire life needed to be reorganized because one of the most important pieces of it was gone.

I’d like to say that my whole world stopped, but that would be a lie. I was on my way to go knock doors for one of the caucus’ most precarious seats when I got the news from Katie’s husband that she’d died. I pulled over and called my own husband and my and Katie’s friend to break the news to them. Then I got back on the road and knocked doors. And then I did it again the next day, and every day after that until the election. There were times that I made the most of the time in my car to cry or grieve, but those moments were few and far between. Honestly, I was worried that if I gave into the pit of uncontrollable grief I knew was there, I’d never dig my way back out, and there was no time for that. The expression “fake it till you make it” took on a whole new meaning.

Except I didn’t make it. Neither did my caucus. Everyone knows what happened at the national level, but the Michigan House was the only state chamber in the country to flip from Democratic to Republican control. Our lame duck session was chaotic and overall disappointing. Critical policies that the state needed to withstand upcoming changes from the federal level died before the term ended. I would catch myself as I presided over the chamber and things devolved going to text Katie, only to remember that she wouldn’t be able to commiserate with me or voice her disbelief and outrage. I also lost a leadership race within my caucus, which was less calamitous but still personally humbling. The term ended with a few victories, but far more losses. I rang in the New Year quietly on my couch with my husband, for the first time letting myself begin to grapple with turning a page that wouldn’t include Katie.

Usually, when we talk about resilience, the story ends with a grand victory that makes all the pain worth it or teaches a lesson that results in a lightbulb moment. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we don’t give ourselves credit for subtle resilience. It’s a blessing when you can end a story of personal strife with a success, but we should be just as proud of ourselves when we end it quietly, without a tangible victory, but with an agreement with ourselves that we’ll keep going.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I have a remarkably small team. My office consists of myself, my legislative director, and my constituent services director. We occasionally have an intern who works part time, but for the most part, we keep a small crew. During the election season, one of my staff will pick up extra hours to help assist me on my campaign.

Working in government and politics is both extremely unique and yet eerily similar to other private sector industries. We have times where things are fairly quiet and manageable, and other times where things are chaotic and fast moving. Often, we’re guided by larger trends that we can’t always predict. It can make for a difficult workplace that people get deeply emotionally invested in.

Because of all of these factors, maintaining morale can be hard. Turnover for these positions is alarmingly high, but I’ve been fortunate to have had the same legislative director for nearly my entire time in office. I don’t claim to have some secret for employee satisfaction or to be a uniquely adept employer. I just do my best to honor the work people do, respect them as professionals, protect their ability to have a life outside of work, and be honest with them. Most people end up working in legislative offices or on campaigns because they deeply believe in someone or something. They’re placing a trust in me, and it’s important for me not to take that for granted or abuse it.

More practically speaking, when the chamber flipped last year from Democratic to Republican control and I was no longer serving as Speaker Pro Tempore, my office budget decreased significantly. I didn’t want to cut anyone’s pay, so I worked to cut corners where I could to make sure I could maintain everyone’s salary. My team had worked tirelessly, and I didn’t want them to suffer financially over an outcome they had worked to avoid.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauriepohutsky/
• Twitter: https://x.com/lpohutsky19
• Other: https://bsky.app/profile/lauriepohutsky.bsky.social

Image Credits

Jeremy Herliczek and Samantha Skorka