Voter guide: Oakland County races

(This story was updated to accurately reflect the most current information.)

The following are brief biographies of each major party candidate pulled from their official websites, our previous reporting, campaign websites and campaign social media pages. Candidates without that information were contacted, and in some cases did not respond. If the candidate has a campaign website, we've linked to that under "Read more here." This guide does not include third-party candidates or candidates in non-competitive races. For a full listing of all candidates, including from third parties, see here.

Oakland County Executive

Dave Coulter, D

Coulter, of Ferndale, has been Oakland County executive since 2019. He served four terms as an Oakland County commissioner, through 2010, and in 2011 was appointed mayor of Ferndale, after his predecessor resigned. He was elected mayor in 2011, then reelected in 2013, 2015 and 2017. In August 2019, Oakland County commissioners appointed Coulter to serve out the remainder of former executive L. Brooks Patterson's term after Patterson died. Coulter was elected to the position in 2020, becoming the first elected Democrat in the office. He’s seeking a second four-year term. Coulter earned a bachelor’s degree at Michigan State University and completed Harvard University's program for senior executives in state and local government. Before entering politics, Coulter headed external affairs for the Children's Hospital of Michigan Foundation. He was born in Detroit and grew up in St. Clair Shores. Read more here.

Nik Gjonaj, R

Gjonaj, of Clarkston, is a political newcomer but said in an interview that political inexperience would not be a hindrance. His approach? “You bring the experts and give them a seat at the table,” he said. Gjonaj is a Detroit native, “raised in a union household to Albanian immigrants, where he learned the value of hard work at an early age,” his campaign website says. He attended Wayne State University and UCLA but interrupted his studies “to help with the family business” — Alex’s of Royal Oak, one of several restaurants that his father and two uncles have owned. Gjonaj also owned restaurants, in Michigan and other states, but these days he sells business insurance. He is parish business manager of St. Paul Albanian Catholic Church in Rochester Hills, which calls itself “the largest Albanian Catholic parish outside of the homeland.” Read more here.

Oakland County Prosecuting Attorney

Karen McDonald, D

McDonald was elected Oakland County prosecutor in 2020. She had been an Oakland County circuit judge, elected in 2012 and reelected in 2018. As a judge, she specialized in “divorce and custody, child abuse and neglect, and adoption,” says the website of the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office. It also says that McDonald, as judge, presided over the first child adoption by an LGBTQ+ couple in state history. She gave up her judicial seat in 2019 to run for prosecutor. McDonald was a high school English teacher, attended Wayne State University Law School, and became an assistant prosecuting attorney in Oakland County, focused on child sex-assault cases. She then built a private practice before running for judge. She won awards for work in domestic violence prevention and championing children’s rights. In 2021, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointed McDonald to Michigan’s Task Force on Juvenile Justice Reform. Read more here.

Scott Farida, R

Soon after gaining his license to practice law in Michigan, Farida joined the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office in August 2017 as an assistant prosecuting attorney, at times working as acting chief of the Family Support Division. He maintained a 100% conviction rate and “was a driving force of modernization in the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, updating legal practice methodology, procedures, forms and more,” says Farida’s campaign website. Farida resigned in June 2023 to enter private practice. He attended Oakland University and graduated cum laude from the University of Detroit-Mercy Law School, earning numerous honors in law school, as well as at OU. According to his campaign website, “Scott is the son of Oakland County small business owners and descendent of Chaldean immigrants. Scott’s entire family shares that ethnic heritage and a tremendous love of our great nation.” He is a legal aid clinic volunteer. Read more here.

Oakland County Sheriff

Mike Bouchard, R

Bouchard is seeking his seventh term. He became sheriff in 1999, when he was appointed to fill the term of former Sheriff John Nichols, who died in office. Bouchard was first elected sheriff in the 2000 election. In the 1990s, Bouchard was a state representative and state senator, rising to senate majority leader in 1998-99. Before that, he was a member of the Beverly Hills village council, serving two terms as council president. Before becoming sheriff, Bouchard was a Bloomfield Township police officer. Bouchard served two terms as president of the Major County Sheriffs of America. He unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and Michigan governor in 2010. He is the lone Republican holding countywide office in Oakland County. In 2016, he was named Sheriff of the Year by the National Sheriffs Association. Read more here.

Amrit Kohli, D

Kohli, of Ferndale, has no experience as a police officer nor experience in politics or public service. Kohli works as a contractor in information technology, although he says his passion is music. He’s a folk singer and guitar player. Many of his songs are about police brutality. He favors “total change” in policing, starting with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office. If elected sheriff, he’d put a stop to what he says is racist law enforcement and the pursuit of nonviolent offenders. And he’d defund the department, diverting money to mental health programs. Yet, in July, Kohli told the Free Press that he had quit the race for sheriff. Ballots already listed his name and so, as an unopposed Democrat, he was nominated. That put him on ballots for the general election in November. Kohli has since told the Free Press that he might decide, after all, to seek the office. Kohli did not appear to have a campaign website at the time this voter guide was being written.

Oakland County Clerk and Register of Deeds

Lisa Brown, D

Brown, of West Bloomfield, is seeking a fourth term. She previously served three terms as state representative for Michigan’s 39th District, comprised then of Commerce Township and most of West Bloomfield. A former Realtor, she’s a graduate of Michigan State University and the Detroit College of Law. Alongside gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer, Brown was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2014, losing in November to the team of Rick Snyder and Brian Calley. She was first elected county clerk/register of deeds in 2012, defeating Republican Willis Bullard Jr., who’d been appointed to fill a remainder term. During Brown’s tenure, her office received local and nationwide awards for innovations, including its Property Record Notification system, showcased at the Google Next 2019 conference. In 2021, she opened a permanent satellite office in Troy. Brown partnered recently with local communities to conduct the state’s largest early voting program. She has held leadership positions with the Michigan Association of County Clerks. Read more here.

Barb Pallotta, R

Pallotta, of Independence Township, is a newcomer to county politics but with years of experience as a local clerk and in township politics. She began in the 1990s in Novi, moving in 1999 to the Novi clerk’s office as a typist. In 2000, the Novi clerk was hired by Troy and recruited Pallotta to be deputy clerk. In 2011, Pallotta, as a Republican, was chosen by the Independence Township board to fill a vacancy in the elected clerk’s seat, a partisan position. In 2012, she was elected to a four-year term, winning the Republican primary with just over 70% of the vote. In that year’s general election, she faced no opponent in the heavily Republican community. She was reelected in 2016, then resigned in 2019, telling the Clarkston News that “I just feel like I can’t do it anymore. … I want to enjoy my life and travel.” But this year, the Oakland County Republican Party persuaded her to come out of retirement. She ran unopposed in this year’s Republican primary in August. Read more here.

Oakland County Treasurer

Robert Wittenberg, D

Wittenberg, of Huntington Woods, has been the Oakland County treasurer since 2021. Before he was elected, he served three terms as state representative for the 27th House District in Oakland County. He was vice-chair of the House Financial Liability Reform Committee and also on the Tax Policy and Financial Services committees. Earlier, Wittenberg was an insurance agent. He has a degree in business from Indiana University. As treasurer, Wittenberg led the county in creating the Oakland County Land Bank to boost investment in needy areas. Wittenberg had his staff update the county’s investment policy for the first time in 20 years, to allow new ways for investing county surpluses. Read more here.

Donna Blake, R

Blake, of Oxford Village, is a licensed certified public accountant. She has been a forensic accountant for the FBI and also a controller and treasurer at for-profit as well as nonprofit enterprises. Blake has a degree in accounting from Walsh College and a master of business administration from the night and weekend program of Michigan State University, offered in Troy. She earned community praise for helping to form Focus on Oxford PAC, “successfully recruiting conservative school board candidates” for the Oxford Community Schools, and “she also successfully prevented a healthcare clinic from being established at the high school,” says an online flyer of the Republican Party District 9 Committee. Keeping out the clinic helped to preserve “parental rights and values,” the flyer says.

Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner

Jim Nash, D

Nash, of Farmington Hills, is finishing his third four-year term as Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner. From 2004-12, Nash was an Oakland County Commissioner. Earlier, he ran a small furniture business and a florist shop. In 2015, Nash was named Environmentalist of the Year by the Michigan Sierra Club for his volunteering. On the job, Nash was named Public Utility Management Professional of 2017 by the Michigan Water Environment Association. In 2021, his department got the Regional Showcase Award from SEMCOG, and an environment group named it Utility of the Future Today for a sewage plant that turns sanitary waste into methane gas to power the plant while creating compost for farmers. Nash is a graduate of Florida State University and served for three years as a U.S. Army medical specialist. Read more here.

Steve Johnson, R

Johnson, of Highland Township, ran unsuccessfully against Nash in 2020. He’s running again after building a career as principal consultant at Independent Consulting & Advisory Services. His role is to “partner with companies to enhance their strategic and operational effectiveness.” Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in business management and economics at the State University of New York, and he has a master’s degree from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. He cites his “extensive background in corporate management, technology and strategic planning” as his qualification for serving as water resources commissioner. He’s a veteran of the U.S. Navy, where he says he gained advanced training in electronics and computer systems. Read more here.

2nd District Court of Appeals - nonincumbent position - (1) position

Matthew Ackerman

Ackerman, of Bloomfield Hills, graduated with honors from Harvard University, earned a master’s degree in economics at the London School of Economics, and graduated from Columbia Law School in New York City. He then served as a judicial law clerk on the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd and 5th circuits. Since then, he has practiced law with Ackerman & Ackerman in Birmingham, representing property owners. Ackerman is a volunteer in the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Conviction Integrity Unit and an adjunct law professor at Michigan State University College of Law, according to his campaign website. He was recently named a Super Lawyers 2024 Michigan “Rising Star.” Read more here.

Latoya Marie Willis Willis, of Farmington Hills, graduated from Western Michigan University and the University of Detroit Mercy Law School. She then became an assistant Wayne County prosecutor. Over the last 21 years, she has worked in numerous departments. In 2017, Willis was promoted to lead attorney of the Mortgage and Deed Fraud Task Force. After gaining extensive experience in criminal cases, she now prosecutes complex cases involving illegal property transfers, mortgage fraud and criminal enterprise. ?She has been a board member of the Government Bar Association Union and, since 2017, been a member and is currently chair — appointed by the Michigan Supreme Court — of the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, the state agency that investigates attorney misconduct. Read more here.

6th Circuit Court Judge - (1) position

Tricia Dare

Dare, of Oxford, has worked for nearly 27 years as an Oakland County assistant prosecutor and is chief of the special victims, hate crimes and victims services units. She has handled criminal and civil cases. She is married to a retired Oakland County Sheriff’s Office sergeant and is the mother of two college-age daughters. Her grandfathers, grandmother and father were UAW members at General Motors and she is the first generation in her family to attend college. She is a founding member and former chair of the Oakland County Child Abuse & Neglect Council and a member of other professional organizations. She has taught one-day classes at Oakland Community College and Oakland Police Academy and volunteered with organizations that provide resources to vulnerable individuals in the community. She wants to do more as a public servant and make a difference on the other side of the bench to ensure justice, according to an Oakland County Bar Association questionnaire. Read more here.

Nicole Sophia-Calhoun Huddleston

The West Bloomfield lawyer, who has been practicing in Michigan for nearly a decade, has handled family, civil and criminal litigation through southeast Michigan,including by providing free legal counsel and representation. Huddleston has served as managing director at the Detroit Justice Center for the past several years, overseeing the group’s Legal Services Practice. She was an assistant prosecutor in Wayne County before joining the center, working in the domestic violence division, and as a staff attorney at Legal Aid and Defenders and Lakeshore Legal Aid. She is an American Bar Association certified mediator in Michigan and was named in 2021 to the Michigan Supreme Court’s Justice for All Commission. She is married, with a son, 11, and two adult daughters in college; her mother was a supervisor in a nursing home and her father served in Vietnam. She serves on several community boards. She wants the judiciary to reflect the community it serves and advance the principles of equal justice under the law. Read more here.

Oakland County Probate Court Judge - (1) position

Daniel A. O'Brien

O'Brien, who was elected to the Oakland County Probate Court in November 2008, serves as the court’s presiding judge of estates and trusts, according to the county's website. Because of Michigan’s age limit for judges, O’Brien said he will be unable to run again when his current term ends, so he is running for the open seat, which is a six-year term. O’Brien previously served as a magistrate at 52-2 District Court in Clarkston, practiced civil, criminal and probate law, worked as an assistant Oakland County prosecutor, was a research attorney for a Michigan Court of Appeals judge and worked as an electrical engineer for Texas Instruments, according to the county’s website. He earned his law degree from the University of Detroit School of Law and has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Michigan Technological University.

Traci Richards

Richards is an attorney who runs a private law practice in Southfield. According to her campaign website, her first legal job was with the Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office, and she later clerked with a law firm and worked as a tax consultant. The website says her “repeated exposure to the challenges our most vulnerable community members face when navigating our legal system led me to change course.” Richards opened her law practice, obtained her real estate brokerage license, volunteers to help vulnerable adults avoid fraud and recover assets and acts as a Veterans Affairs-appointed fiduciary for a disabled veteran, according to the website. Richards, who lives in Franklin, earned a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Florida A&M University. Read more here.

46th District Court Judge - (1) position

Debra Nance

Nance was first elected a judge of 46th District Court in 2012, then reelected in 2018. The court serves the communities of Southfield, Lathrup Village, Bingham Farms, Beverly Hills, Franklin and Southfield Township. Nance earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Detroit and worked in several human resources jobs. After graduating from the Wayne State University Law School, Nance worked in the Oakland County Prosecutor’s domestic violence unit and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s child and family abuse bureau. Later, she practiced law, taking civil, probate, juvenile and adoption cases before being elected. She is being investigated by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, the state agency that disciplines judges, according to a formal complaint published by the commission on Dec. 14, 2022. Nance is accused of lying twice on separate occasions while under oath, according to the complaint. A hearing has been scheduled for Feb. 3, 2025, at Farmington Hills District Court, at which time evidence will be presented about whether Nance lied under oath, according to an 18-page decision of the commission on Sept. 16, 2024, as published on the commission’s website. Ultimately, the Michigan Supreme Court will decide whether Nance should be disciplined. Read more here.

Robin Dillard-Russaw

Dillard-Russaw is director of the Wayne County Indigent Defense Services Department. For 19 years, she has been a magistrate judge and deputy court administrator at 46th District Court. At the court, Dillard-Russaw created "Counsel at First Appearance," which provides lawyers for criminal suspects who otherwise lack defense counsel during arraignments. She also assisted in the court's administration, including its fiscal management, grant-writing, performance reviews of staff and policymaking. Previously, Dillard-Russaw had been an assistant attorney general for the state of Michigan, an assistant county prosecutor and a criminal defense lawyer. She has a bachelor’s degree from Xavier University in Louisiana, a master’s degree in dispute resolution from Wayne State University and a law degree from the University of Detroit Mercy. Read more here.

52nd District Court Judge - 3rd Circuit - (1) position

Ryan J. Deel

Deel has worked as the judicial staff attorney to Oakland County Probate Court Chief Judge Linda Hallmark since 2006, according to his campaign website. He is also president of the Rochester Hills City Council and serves on the city’s Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, Liquor License Committee and as the city council representative to the Rochester Hills Government Youth Council. The campaign website says he has also been an author and lecturer for the Institute of Continuing Legal Education and the Oakland County Bar Association. Deel earned a law degree from Wayne State University Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University. Deel lives with his wife and twin sons in Rochester Hills. Read more here.

Laura E. Polizzi

Polizzi, a judge at 52-3 District Court, is the incumbent candidate. She was appointed to the bench in May, according to her profile on Oakland County’s website. Her campaign website says she established the first Veterans Treatment Court program at the court. In her work as an attorney, the county’s website says, she litigated domestic, business, real estate and criminal matters and has been recognized by Super Lawyers as a Michigan Rising Star from 2018 through this year. She earned a law degree from Thomas M. Cooley Law School and a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations from Oakland University. Polizzi lives in Rochester Hills with her husband and two children. Read more here.

67th District Judge - 4th Division - (1) position

Jeffrey E. Clothier

Clothier, of Fenton, has a long-standing general law practice based in Flint, with a focus on criminal defense, and says he has handled cases in 72 counties of Michigan. He has a law degree from Michigan State University, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, and a diploma from Flint Southwestern High School. Clothier was admitted to practice before the Michigan Supreme Court in 2002. He has been endorsed by four union locals including the Mid-Michigan Labor Council of the AFL-CIO. He has been a supporter of the Genesee County Bar Association’s outreach efforts. Read more here.

Amanda Odette

Odette, of Grand Blanc, has the same last name as the outgoing judge but is not related. She is the city attorney for Burton, Mount Morris and other municipalities in Genesee County. Odette has prosecuted criminal cases and also handled collection cases and landlord-tenant matters, and she has been supportive of the Genesee County Sobriety Court. Odette says she is the only candidate with experience as both a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. She has a law degree from Michigan State University and a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University in Boston. Read more here.

Editor's note: This story was edited to correct the city Matthew Ackerman's law firm is located in, add additional information and correct a misspelling.

This year's voter guide was compiled by reporters Clara Hendrickson, John Wisely, Arpan Lobo, Paul Egan, Todd Spangler, Niraj Warikoo, Christina Hall, Bill Laytner, Gina Kaufman, Ahmad Garnett, Jenna Prestininzi, Bella Bakeman, Carmella Guaglianone and Diamy Wang, with editing help from Emily Lawler, Pat Byrne, Sally Tato and Jewel Gopwani.

Questions about this guide, or about election coverage in the Free Press? Contact State Government & Politics Editor Emily Lawler: [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Voter guide: Oakland County races