What’s in a name? Tom Izzo runs for Michigan House. No, not him

• Republican state House candidate Tom Izzo is a General Motors retiree, not the famed college basketball coach 
• Experts say name recognition is a top motivating factor for voters, particularly in local or nonpartisan races
• The district trends Democratic and is represented by incumbent Rep. Kara Hope, D-Holt, who is running to retain her seat

Michigan State University basketball coach Tom Izzo is not running for office. 

But voters in Michigan’s 74th state House district will see a Lansing man with that name — same spelling, different pronunciation — on their ballots running as a Republican against incumbent state Rep. Kara Hope, D-Holt.

Tom Izzo (pronounced eye-zo) is a lifelong Lansing resident and retired General Motors employee who was inspired to get into politics starting in 2020, when he became concerned about the state government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and election procedures. His daughter suggested he “quit yelling at the TV and do something.”

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He became a precinct delegate in 2022, and when he was approached by local elected officials about running for office this year, he said it seemed like the perfect opportunity. 

The district he’s running in, which covers a portion of Lansing and its southern suburbs, trends solidly Democratic. In 2022, Hope defeated her Republican opponent with nearly 70% of the vote.

It’s unlikely that candidate Izzo’s association by proxy with a locally revered sports celebrity would be enough to overcome the long odds. But Izzo is entering the fall 2024 election carrying an advantage, however small, that every candidate craves. 

“There are three things that really determine who voters are going to vote for,” Wayne State University political science professor Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson told Bridge. “The first is name recognition, the second is name recognition and the third is name recognition.”

What’s in a name? 

Most Michigan voters have likely encountered familiar names on their ballots time and time again. In many cases, that’s by design.

When faced with a choice at the ballot box, cues such as party affiliation and endorsements play a role. But experts say the decision for most voters in local and nonpartisan elections ultimately comes down to whether they know the candidate’s name. 

“There's no doubt about it, especially if that person or that family … has a history of being in politics, said Arnold Weinfeld, associate director for Michigan State University’s Institute of Public Policy and Social Relations.

“The political parties, especially on a local level, look for people that have been around the scene a while, and that people can recognize on a ballot.”

Certain last names — Hertel, Kildee, Rocca, and Posthumus, to name a few — have become ubiquitous in Michigan politics as relatives take up the torch when an incumbent steps down or is term-limited out of office. 

Michigan’s strict term limit laws have made it more common for husbands, wives, siblings or children to run in a public officials’ stead when their eligibility expires or they seek a new elected office. 

Relatives don’t necessarily have to wait until their loved one retires to benefit from the name recognition boost, either. State Sen. Rick Outman, R-Six Lakes, and his son Rep. Pat Outman, R-Six Lakes, are both currently serving in the Legislature and representing the same region in different offices. 

In other instances, a candidate’s local celebrity status or work in the community can be a boost on the ballot. Weinfeld pointed to Republicans’ recruitment of longtime Marquette WLUC-TV6 weatherman Karl Bohnak to run in the competitive 109th state House district as one example where name recognition could make a difference. 

Sometimes, the benefits or pitfalls of name recognition are simply happenstance. Take, for example, west Michigan Republican George Lucas, who unsuccessfully ran for state House this year (but is not the filmmaker behind “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones”.) 

When analyzing 2018 election results, Sarbaugh-Thompson noticed an unusual trend of heavily Republican areas supporting Democratic-appointed Supreme Court candidate Megan Cavanagh by wider margins than one would expect.

One possible explanation? The 2018 election happened roughly a month after the highly publicized nomination hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

“The only thing I could figure out was that they did not know it was Cavanagh with a C,” Sarbaugh-Thompson said. “Counties that are just bright red super-Trump counties in their long term voting history, they helped elect (Cavanagh) to the Supreme Court.”

A tale of two Izzos, and Hope

Coach Izzo and candidate Izzo have lived vastly different lives. But the candidate says the name similarity has dogged him since 1983, when he began getting letters and videotapes from parents of basketball players. 

He said he passed those along to Coach Izzo through his then-roommate, former Spartan basketball player Ben Tower, and has met him a handful of times. The candidate said as far as he’s aware, they’re descendants of two different Italian shoemakers who chose different pronunciations of their last name upon moving to the United States.

Coach Izzo did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Bridge Michigan.

Hope, the Democratic incumbent, also has a name that’s recognizable locally for a few reasons: she’s an incumbent with her own record in state and local office, her husband, Evan Hope, is a local township clerk and her late father-in-law served as a school board president.

She also thinks the positive connotations of “hope” can’t hurt her cause. 

“I would hope that I've built a decent reputation, and there's some name ID there,” she said. 

Hope said that while she’s heard occasional anecdotes about voters being confused or spoiling their primary ballots because they thought they were voting for a different Tom Izzo, they’re “not widespread” enough to run an informational campaign beyond informing voters who ask. 

“It didn't seem to be a great use of resources, just given the makeup of the district,” she said. “Honestly, I think most voters would figure out relatively quickly that the MSU basketball coach, who makes $6 million a year, is not running for, you know, $71,000 per year here in Lansing.”

Izzo — who said some of his top priorities include bringing down cost of living for families living paycheck to paycheck, doing away with so-called “sanctuary cities” and stopping Chinese influence on Michigan’s manufacturing industry — said he thinks voters have had enough time since he announced his candidacy in April to know that he’s “obviously not the coach.” 

But, he acknowledged, there are some benefits to occasional mistaken identity. 

“I don't think it can hurt,” he said. “I can tell you this: When I go to make a reservation, I don't have a problem getting a table. When I order a pizza, it comes nice and hot.”