Lisa Posthumus Lyons (born June 12, 1980) is an American politician from

Alto The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian (Latin: '' altus''), historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In four-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in ch ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

, and served three terms as a Republican member of the

Michigan House of Representatives The Michigan House of Representatives is the lower house of the Michigan Legislature. There are 110 members, each of whom is elected from constituencies having approximately 77,000 to 91,000 residents, based on population figures from the 2020 ...

from District 86 (portions of

Ionia Ionia ( ) was an ancient region encompassing the central part of the western coast of Anatolia. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionians who ...

and

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

Counties) from 2011 to 2016. She is currently the elected Kent County Clerk / Register of Deeds. Lyons was named by the Grand Rapids Business Journal as one of The 50 Most Influential Women in West Michigan in 2018. She is the daughter of

Dick Posthumus Richard Posthumus (; born July 19, 1950) is an American businessman, and politician. He was the 61st lieutenant governor of Michigan and majority leader of the Michigan Senate. In 2002, he was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for Governor o ...

, who served as Lieutenant Governor of Michigan from 1999 to 2003 and was the Republican nominee for

governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...

2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...

Background

Lyons describes herself as the fourth generation to own their family's

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

in Alto. She graduated from Lowell High School and from

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

with a bachelor's degree in Agricultural and Natural Resources Communications. Prior to elected office, Lyons was Director of Public Policy & Community Outreach for the

Grand Rapids Grand Rapids is the largest city and county seat of Kent County, Michigan, United States. With a population of 198,917 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 200,117 in 2024, Grand Rapids is the List of municipalities ...

Association of Realtors.

Career

Michigan House of Representatives

In the 2010 general election, Lyons beat Frank Hammond with 25,943 votes, to 10,996 for Hammond and 909 for

Libertarian Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according ...

Robin VanLoon. She was subsequently re-elected in 2012 and 2014. During her tenure, she chaired the House

standing committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...

s on education and on

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

and

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated ...

, and authored 32 Public Acts that were signed into law. In 2012, after supporting a

right-to-work law In the context of labor law in the United States, the term right-to-work laws refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Such agreements can be incorporated into union contracts to requir ...

, Lisa Posthumus Lyons proposed an amendment exempting corrections officers. In response to accusations of conflict of interest regarding her husband's employment as a corrections officer at that time, she said that Democrats had suggested the same sort of legislation in the past, and that her constituency includes hundreds of corrections officers. In June 2013, during a school dissolution bill debate, she said "Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered" in response to the request that surrounding districts interview the teachers from the dissolving school. Many considered her remarks disproportionate to the request, and a former teacher of hers sent a letter condemning her use of the phrase. She later clarified that the remarks were meant for lobbyists such as the teachers' union and not the teachers themselves. Lyons was term-limited in 2016 after serving three terms.

Kent County Clerk / Register of Deeds

In the 2016 general election, Lyons was elected to the combined office of Kent County Clerk / Register of Deeds with 158,341 votes to Democratic Party candidate Christopher Reader's 115,244 votes, and Libertarian candidate James Lewis' 16,017 votes. She began her four-year term of office in January 2017. The Kent County Clerk's Office has three major functions: to manage County elections; to manage vital County records; and to process and maintain all Circuit Court files. In Kent County, the Clerk is also the Register of Deeds. The Clerk is also the Clerk of the Board of Commissioners, and statutorily serves on numerous County boards and commissions. She was re-elected Clerk/Register in the 2020 General Election with 186,362 votes to Democratic Party candidate Devin Ortega-Ferguson's 149,803 votes. She is currently serving her second four-year term. In response to mistrust in elections and the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, Lyons has emphasized the accuracy of voting equipment.

Lieutenant governor candidate

On August 15, 2018,

Michigan Attorney General The attorney general of the State of Michigan is the fourth-ranking official in the U.S. state of Michigan. The officeholder is elected statewide in the November general election alongside the governor of Michigan, governor, Lieutenant Governor of ...

Bill Schuette William Duncan Schuette ( ; born October 13, 1953) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 53rd attorney general of Michigan from 2011 to 2019. He was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for Senate in 1990 and for Governor of Mi ...

announced Lyons as his running mate for his gubernatorial campaign. Her nomination was confirmed by the Michigan Republican State Convention on August 25, 2018 and she officially joined the Republican ticket as candidate for Lieutenant Governor of the State of Michigan. The pair lost the general election on November 6, 2018 to the Democratic ticket of

Gretchen Whitmer Gretchen Esther Whitmer (; born August 23, 1971) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 49th governor of Michigan since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, she served in the Michigan House of R ...

and Garlin Gilchrist.

Personal life

In 2003, Lyons married her husband Brad Lyons, who is a

deputy sheriff A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland, the , which is commonly ...

in Kent County. They have four children.

Electoral history

References

External links

*
Clerk/Register campaign website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Posthumus Lyons, Lisa 1980 births 21st-century American women politicians American politicians of Dutch descent County officials in Michigan Living people Republican Party members of the Michigan House of Representatives Michigan State University alumni People from Kent County, Michigan Women state legislators in Michigan 21st-century members of the Michigan Legislature