MEET KYLE

My name is Kyle Blomquist.

I’m running to represent the people of Northern Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives, on a mission to unify working people and dramatically improve their lives.

I’m running as a Democrat, but this campaign isn’t afraid to acknowledge the inherent flaws of a two-party system which too often functions to distract from our common struggles and common cause. Instead, my message is one of solidarity.

I was born and raised in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When I was young, I was blessed to know all of my great-grandparents – including Italian immigrants - and I grew up surrounded by a big family, rich with stories and experiences. My father was a second-generation Architect, and my mother was a homemaker and caregiver, raising four children, chauffeuring all the neighborhood kids around in her conversion van, and making sure we had everything that we needed. We were never wealthy, but we were mostly comfortable.

Like many Yooper kids, I was raised to appreciate nature and community. I grew up around family hunting camps, often with my grandfathers - Camp Pottsville on the Baravetto side and Ponderosa on the Blomquist side - hiking the woods, learning how to read basic game signs, shoot, hunt, and fish. While I hunt far less seriously than in my youth, I still maintain that wonderful November ritual, spending the evenings playing cribbage and trading good-natured barbs with the crew at Camp Misery in northern Dickinson County.

From an early age, I was taught to be understanding, to welcome the stranger, to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves, and to embrace our differences.

Growing up in the 1990s, much of my time was spent with friends, riding my bike around my small U.P. town, watching professional wrestling, playing video games, and finding my first great passion in the sport of football. While I was never naturally gifted - my feet too big, my stride too long and clumsy - I was tenacious and coachable. I put in the work and learned from my mistakes. Above all else, I became unwavering and dependable - especially as my physique grew to match my will - earning the trust of coaches and teammates.

To this day, the faith of those I respect and care for is far more important to me than any personal accolade.

Following high school, I attended Grand Valley State University with an emphasis in engineering and art, before transferring to the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where I pursued my second great passion: Architecture.

The education of would-be Architects is a unique one, centered around analysis, design, documentation, and jury defense (understanding, intent, execution, and explanation). For an Architect, it is not enough to simply create something beautiful; we must know and nurture the user - the human beings who inhabit our buildings - and draw our designs in service to those people. I reveled in the possibilities, an opportunity to transform lives by designing inspired places for people to live, work, and play. Through my studies, I grew as a person, learning to exercise compassion in applying my craft. Empowering people became my focus, and Architecture was my tool to do so.

As I entered Graduate school, my thoughts turned back to Michigan. As the Great Recession crushed the working class, few cities were hit harder or were more emblematic of our national struggle than Detroit. Exploited, divided, beaten, and all-but-broken under the fickle stroke of capitalism. I wrote and designed my Master’s thesis around urban renewal, housing, and mobilization in some of Detroit’s most blighted neighborhoods. Solutions were addressed at all scales – consolidation of empty space, creation of cooperative housing types, and implementation of a construction process which recycled oversized infrastructure and deployed under-employed people in reviving their own communities. While existing only in theory, this reflected my personal belief in the high potential of society when optimism is married with planning and ambitious reform.

It was at Architecture school that I met Megan – a brilliant, studious, and principled young woman, who I married and have been working with ever since.

Upon receiving our Master’s degrees, we returned to my hometown of Iron Mountain to join an Architectural practice that had seen better days. The Housing Market Collapse of 2008 and economic downturn that followed had reduced a once-thriving firm of around twenty staff to only one man: my father, working alone in a large, empty office. The first several years of our careers were wracked with uncertainty, sparse projects, low pay, crushing student loans, and collective sacrifice as the three of us worked to resuscitate the business created by my grandfather 60 years prior. Eventually, we found our footing, and in 2019, Megan and I purchased ownership of the firm which we still operate with a small team today.

Even in the midst of our own reclamation project professionally, Megan and I wanted to do more for a community which was also struggling through difficult times. At first, this took the form of volunteering with the local Downtown Development Authority, Habitat for Humanity, and other organizations striving to make a difference. Eventually, it led Megan to become Chair of the DDA’s Board of Directors and me to join the Iron Mountain City Council where I still serve as Mayor Pro Tem after over a decade on the board. In the intervening years, we have seen a great resurgence in the community, filling vacancy, adding vibrance, and building futures.

In 2018, Megan and I welcomed identical twins. They are rambunctious kids who love to ride bikes, play soccer, football, swim, camp, snuggle, and rough-house. They have made me a vastly better man, having known them, and they are my greatest source of pride. They have sparked in me a quiet desperation, a need to spare them the same anxieties we endure, which has led me to embark on this journey now.

The truth is - despite my personal and professional successes - I feel completely helpless in affecting the pain and injustice I see in the world around me. Deep down, I still hold tight to the aspirations of a young would-be Architect who believed their work would improve people’s lives. Yet, I am confronted by the numerous ways I cannot do enough:

I can design a bright, beautiful medical clinic, but I can’t ensure that everyone who enters receives the care they need or doesn’t leave bankrupt because of a cancer diagnosis.

I can imagine luxurious apartment buildings or lavish homes, but I can’t do anything to house the most vulnerable amongst us.

I can restore a century-old storefront building to its former glory, but I can’t do anything to ensure that the people who work there can afford to shop there or put adequate food on their family’s table.

I can create rich learning environments, but each school project is haunted by the specter of gun violence, and despite every effort that I can make architecturally, there is really very little I can do to make sure that the children taught there won’t be shot there.

There isn’t a hospital or home, shop or school that I can build to prevent children like my own from being starved and bombed in Gaza or torn from their parents here in America.

In many ways, this campaign embodies that personal desperation and embraces the frustrations of the American people. I want my neighbors and friends in Northern Michigan to know that their pain is real, and their worries are valid.

I want working-class families to know that a better world is not only possible, but imminent, if we only have the will to create it.

In ways that even Architecture cannot, I want to empower common people to replace structures that were built to oppress and exploit them.