BIG RAPIDS, Mich. (WLNS) – With more than 2,000 new jobs hanging in the balance, the battle lines are drawn in Big Rapids over Chinese company Gotion wanting to build a battery plant, but some locals are mounting an effort to kill it.
Republican Rep. Tom Kunse comes from the poorest district in the state and the Chinese company Gotion is dangling 2,350 jobs in front of the local residents.
At the outset, Kunse was a yes vote. Not anymore.
“I was 100% for it when it came out in September and October, but nothing good has come since, and it’s the connection to the Chinese Communist Party,” he said”
The Whitmer administration is proposing to give the Chinese electric battery company an incentive package worth $846 million.
Meanwhile, the governor is again fighting Tudor Dixon, a former GOP candidate for governor, who is among those leading a brigade of vocal local residents that don’t want the Chinese jobs. A recent survey reports the community is split down the middle.
The problem for some is that, according to Kunse, the Gotion bylaws in the Big Rapids deal pledge allegiance to the Communist Party.
“When it comes out that the chairman of the board has been posing with the Chinese Communist Party and they are a fully owned subsidiary,” said Kunse. “I don’t like it that the company is coming here and pledged allegiance to a foreign government.”
Whitmer has not publicly waded into the controversy, but state and local economic development leaders continue to defend the proposal.
Kunse believes opponents will put this issue on the ballot to give voters the final say.
