Marcia is running for Michigan’s 85th House District out of Ottawa County, Michigan.
Stand at the gravesite of someone young whose life was taken too soon, and you’ll understand.
Stand at the gravesite of someone whose death was completely preventable, and you’ll understand.
Stand at the gravesite of someone you loved and cherished deeply, and you’ll understand.
You’ll understand that we owe a debt to our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and children. We owe them something.
What do we owe them? Meaningful action that saves lives.
It is this debt that inspired the creation of health departments in the United States and shaped the career of Marcia Mansaray, former deputy health officer of the Ottawa County Health Department.
“This idea that health departments grew out of the pain and suffering of human beings is something we can never forget,” explains Mansaray. “The pandemic politicized so much, but at the heart of everything is the fact that health departments were formed to help people. I became part of the Ottawa County Health Department because I wanted to help people. I didn’t come on board to fight. That’s something I just wasn’t prepared to do.”
Mansaray was born and raised in Michigan. Her grandparents, Louis and Nellie Zondervan, founded the Zondervan Publishing Company in their home—a company known for publishing Bibles. On her website, Mansaray jokes that as a child, she believed all Bibles were published there. Zondervan has been a pillar of the community, and this is a legacy Mansaray takes very seriously.
She has spent two decades in public health as a health educator, epidemiologist, and, ultimately, as the deputy health officer for the Ottawa County Department of Public Health. This position brought her into the national spotlight when Michigan’s fastest-growing county became home to Ottawa Impact. The group was created by Joe Moss and Sylvia Rhodea in 2021 as a conservative advocacy organization and political action committee. Moss and Rhodea currently serve on the County Board of Commissioners, along with several other members of Ottawa Impact.
Among the items on Ottawa Impact’s agenda was reducing the county’s health department. Given the group’s strong opposition to mask mandates and other COVID restrictions, many believed their decisions regarding the health department were retaliatory. Almost immediately after taking office in January 2023, Ottawa Impact members began implementing their agenda. They fired county administrator John Shay, changed the county’s motto to “Where Freedom Rings,” dissolved the county’s diversity office, and attempted to fire health department leaders Adeline Hambley and Mansaray.
When their attempt to fire Hambley and Mansaray failed, they shifted strategies. In August 2023, they demanded that Hambley cut the health department’s budget from $6.4 million to $2.5 million, impacting essential services like vaccines, cancer screenings, and sexually transmitted infection testing.
“I didn’t take this job to be thrust into the spotlight in this manner,” Mansaray explains. “I got into it to help people, and even when people with views different from mine came along, I saw my job as one of collaboration. To be completely honest, the turn of events shocked me. I wasn’t a politician; I was a health officer, and I took that role very seriously.”
Mansaray’s résumé highlights one of her greatest strengths: collaboration. Her goal of meeting the community’s health needs has made her highly effective at reaching out to others. “Initially, I did my best to reach out to Ottawa Impact,” she says. “But communication broke down. Everything became a battle.”
Throughout the remainder of 2023, Moss and his colleagues in Ottawa Impact declared Ottawa County a “Constitutional County,” passed a resolution to “protect childhood innocence”—effectively barring county employees from participating in Pride or LGBTQ events—and continued targeting the health department. This is how Mansaray found herself in the spotlight.
As deputy health officer, Mansaray became a target for Ottawa Impact. She fondly remembers thinking that as COVID began to wind down, 2023 would be a quiet year. “I think it may have been a quiet year for someone, but that someone wasn’t me,” she says. Instead, her year was marked by turmoil and a lawsuit as she pushed back against Ottawa Impact and its politically driven changes to the health department. Through it all, she worked to maintain her role as an advocate for the health and well-being of Ottawa residents.
“There was a reason, a purpose, I came here,” Mansaray says. “I wanted to make the world a better place. I wanted to make a difference. That’s the job of the health department. You become a health officer because you want to be a voice for those without one. We simply cannot afford to make the well-being of human beings a political matter.”
After nearly two decades in public health, Mansaray submitted her resignation on Friday, April 12, and announced she would be running for state representative. Mansaray began her tenure at the Ottawa County Department of Public Health (OCDPH) in 2006 as a health promotion specialist. She became the deputy health director in 2020. During her time at OCDPH, she served as a community health analyst and senior epidemiologist, identifying health trends and outbreaks while leading the county’s health assessments. She also oversaw many of OCDPH’s prevention programs as the health planning and promotion director.
Reflecting on the past few years, Mansaray noted, “This has been a difficult time, but it’s inspired me to think on a larger scale and dream of even bigger and better things for our community.”
Mansaray’s dream continues to drive her forward. “We cannot have politically driven attacks on funding and services for public health,” she says. “Health departments were created for a purpose. They save lives. If you look back at the history of health departments, you realize that someone lost a loved one… someone saw children suffering… someone saw neighbors, friends, and family sick… and they knew something needed to be done. That’s where health departments started. They are not political, and they shouldn’t be used for political gains. That’s why I couldn’t just stand by. Human beings suffer when we allow extremist ideology to take the place of good governance.”
Mansaray has a profound understanding of the debt we owe to our fellow human beings. It is a debt we owe to our family, friends, and community: meaningful action.
Update: Marcia lost her bid for Michigan’s 85th House seat in November 2024 to Incumbent Bradley Slagh.
Listen to our related podcasts: The Highjacking of Ottawa County, Michigan and The Continuation of the Highjacking of Ottawa County, Michigan.