Richard Dale Snyder (born August 19, 1958) is an American business executive, venture capitalist, attorney, accountant, and politician who served as the 48th governor of Michigan from 2011 to 2019. Snyder, who was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, began his career in business in 1982. He was chairman of the board of Gateway from 2005 to 2007, a co-founder of Ardesta, LLC, a venture capital firm, HealthMedia, Inc., a digital health coaching company, and is currently CEO of SensCy, a cybersecurity company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
A member of the Republican Party, he won the 2010 Michigan gubernatorial election and won reelection in 2014. Snyder was term-limited and could not seek re-election in 2018 and was succeeded by Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. Snyder was considered a possible Republican Party candidate for Vice President of the United States in 2012, although ultimately Paul Ryan was selected.
In 2014, Snyder gained national attention during the Flint water crisis, in which he was accused of mishandling the situation that exposed thousands of Flint residents to lead-contaminated water. A report by the University of Michigan School of Public Health concluded Snyder bore "significant legal responsibility" for the Flint water crisis. In 2020, an article was published in Vice detailing evidence of corruption and a cover-up by Snyder, including that he was warned repeatedly about the dangerous effects of the decisions he had made about the Flint water supply. In January 2021, Snyder was among those criminally charged for the crisis. He pled not guilty to two misdemeanor charges. In December 2022, Genesee County Judge F. Kay Behm dismissed the charges.
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Early life, education, and family
Snyder was born to Dale F. and Helen Louella Snyder in Battle Creek, Calhoun County, Michigan, where he was raised. His father owned a local window-cleaning company in Battle Creek and was of paternal Dutch descent. He has an elder sister. When he was 16, he took a business class at Kellogg Community College on weekends. By his senior year at Lakeview High School, Snyder had earned 23 college credits.
Snyder visited the admissions office of the University of Michigan in November 1975 and spoke with the admissions director, who recommended that Snyder attend Michigan and create his own degree. Snyder received a Bachelor of General Studies in 1977, a Master of Business Administration in 1979, and a Juris Doctor in 1982, all from the University of Michigan. Snyder is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). He resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife Sue and their three children and has a vacation home near Gun Lake. The couple were married in 1987 at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church in Dearborn, Michigan. Snyder has indicated he is a practicing Presbyterian.
Business career
Coopers & Lybrand
Snyder was employed with Coopers & Lybrand, from 1982 to 1991, beginning in the tax department of the Detroit office. Snyder was named partner in 1988. The next year, Snyder was named partner-in-charge of the mergers and acquisitions practice in the Chicago office. He served as an adjunct assistant professor of accounting at the University of Michigan from 1982 to 1984.
Gateway, Inc.
Snyder joined the computer company Gateway (based in Irvine, California) in 1991 as the executive vice president. He served as president and chief operating officer from 1996 to 1997. He remained on the board of directors until 2007. From 2005 to 2007, Snyder served as the chairman of the board. During 2006, Snyder served as interim chief executive officer while a search for a permanent replacement was made. His tenure on the Gateway board ran from 1991 to 2007 until Gateway was sold to Acer Inc. Snyder stated that he did not vote for outsourcing while he was a Gateway board director and he worked to bring jobs to America as the interim CEO of Gateway.
Venture Capital / Investments
In 1997, Snyder returned to Ann Arbor to found Avalon Investments Inc., a venture capital company with a $100 million fund, along with the co-founder of Gateway, Ted Waitt. Snyder was president and chief executive officer of Avalon from 1997 to 2000. He then co-founded Ardesta LLC, an investment firm, in 2000 along with three co-founders, which invested in 20 start-up companies through 2011. He was chairman and chief executive officer of the company.
HealthMedia, Inc.
In 1998, Snyder funded and co-founded HealthMedia Incorporated (HMI). HMI was developer of digital health coaching applications that implemented tailored questionnaires to gather personal information with the goal of creating customized health promotion plans for individuals. The University of Michigan Office of Technology Transfer provided the new company with exclusive research and development findings into health-related computerized tailored messaging and the exclusive licence to sell that content. Despite these benefits, HMI underperformed. In 2001, Snyder replaced the founding CEO and personally rescued the company from insolvency with more of his own money. After multiple rounds of more additional financing through venture capital, HMI was sold in 2008 for a reported $200 million to Johnson & Johnson. The sale of HMI transferred included personal health information from millions of users, which played a key role in the negotiated price. At the time of the reported $200 million deal, U-M President Mary Sue Coleman was on Johnson & Johnson's board of directors. When campaigning for Michigan governor in 2010, Snyder was quoted as saying, "[HMI] is one of the best success stories in the state." Following Snyder's election as Michigan governor, Johnson & Johnson then folded HMI into a subsidiary (Johnson & Johnson Health and Wellness Solutions) and is no longer operating in the state of Michigan.
SensCy, Inc.
In July 2022, Snyder co-founded SensCy along with former State of Michigan CIO David Behen, Ann Arbor entrepreneur Bhushan Kulkarni, and Dave Kelly who led cyber command for the Michigan State Police. SensCy is a cybersecurity start-up focused on helping small and medium-sized organizations improve their cyberhealth. Snyder's firm invented the SensCy Score, a numeric representation of an organization's cyberhealth. It is based in Ann Arbor.
Non-profit service
Snyder serves on the boards of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village (a National Historic Landmark), the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy, and several boards associated with his alma mater the University of Michigan. He was also first chair of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in 1999 under Republican governor John Engler and was also the chair of Ann Arbor SPARK.
Gubernatorial elections
2010
Snyder competed with Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, state Senator Tom George, United States Congressman Pete Hoekstra, and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox as candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Bill Ford Jr., chairman of the Ford Motor Company, endorsed Snyder for the Republican nomination for governor. He campaigned as "pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, [and] pro-family," with a focus on the economy. His campaign emphasized his experience in growing business and creating jobs in the private sector, saying that his opponents were mainly career politicians. Snyder favors the standard exceptions on abortion for rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother (he signed legislation banning partial birth abortion in October 2011); he opposes federal funding of abortions; he would not ban embryonic stem cell research; is opposed to same-sex marriage but would allow civil unions.
In August 2010, Snyder won the primary to secure the Republican nomination with a plurality of 36% of the vote. In the general election in November, Snyder faced Democratic nominee Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, and three minor party candidates. In October 2010, Snyder's campaign total exceeded $11.6 million, outpacing his opponent. Snyder released his tax returns for 2007 and 2008. Snyder won with 58% of the vote. With Snyder's election in 2010, Republicans gained a majority in the Michigan House and increased the Republican majority held in the Michigan Senate. Snyder was the first Certified Public Accountant (CPA) to be elected governor of the state and at the time, the only CPA to serve as a governor in the United States.
2014
In January 2014, Snyder launched his campaign for a second term as governor. He was unopposed in the Republican primary and faced Democratic former United States Representative Mark Schauer for the general election. Snyder was considered vulnerable in his bid for a second term, as reflected in his low approval ratings, however, Schauer suffered from a lack of name recognition. Snyder garnered approximately 51% of the vote in the November 2014 election, defeating Schauer and earning a second term.
Governor of Michigan
Tenure
His first executive order as governor was to divide the Department of Natural Resources and Environment into two distinct departments as they were a few years before: the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Environmental Quality. On January 7, 2011, Snyder announced he was appointing Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura D. Corrigan to head the Department of Human Services and appointed Michigan Appeals Court Judge Brian K. Zahra to fill the resulting Supreme Court vacancy. Snyder delivered his first State of the State address on January 19, the earliest Michigan State of the State since Governor John Engler's 1996 address on January 17. He endorsed the Detroit River International Crossing for the first time publicly in the address, which was received favorably by Republicans. Snyder appointed Andy Dillon, a pro-life Democrat, and formerly Speaker of the House, to serve as state treasurer in his administration.
Snyder presented his first budget to the legislature on February 17, 2011, calling it a plan for "Michigan's reinvention", and saying it would end Michigan's deficits. He described the budget as containing "shared sacrifice" but added that his budget plan would create jobs and spur economic growth. The $46 billion budget reduced $1.8 billion in spending, raised taxes by eliminating tax exemptions on pensions, while at the same time abolished the state's complex business tax, replacing it with a significantly reduced flat tax on the profits of C corporations. This shift in tax burden led State Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer to criticize the budget, saying that it did not involve "shared sacrifice", but instead was balanced "on the backs of our kids, working families, and our seniors" and "picks out who he's willing to leave behind." Snyder supported the government backed rescue of the American auto industry. This reflected the view of a 56% of Americans in 2012 who supported the 2009 auto bailout according to a Pew Research Center poll (63% support in Michigan). On March 16, 2011, Snyder signed a controversial bill into law that gave increased powers to emergency managers of local municipalities to resolve financial matters. The bill was repealed by voter initiative in November 2012. However, weeks later in December 2012 Snyder signed a revised version of the bill back into law.
On December 22, 2011, Snyder signed into law The Public Employee Domestic Partner Benefit Restriction Act, which prevents the same-sex domestic partners of public employees at both the state and local level from receiving health benefits. In January 2012, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Snyder and the state of Michigan in federal court on behalf of five Michigan same-sex couples, each with one spouse working for local public schools or municipalities in Michigan. The suit alleged that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. On June 28, 2013, a federal judge struck down the law. He has also engaged in trade missions to Europe and Asia, focused on attracting attention on companies such as Chrysler.
Flint water crisis
From 2011 to 2015, Snyder appointed several individuals as Emergency Managers for Flint, Michigan. In 2014, emergency manager Darnell Earley was responsible for changing the source of drinking water for the city to the Flint River, which has trihalomethanes (TTHM) in it. It was later discovered that the water was too corrosive, and leached lead out of the service lines that was then ingested by the people of the city. In September 2015, a study by the Hurley Medical Center found that the community's children were being poisoned by the lead. While Flint transitioned back to its prior source of water in October 2015, lead levels in the city's water remain above the federal action level. Amid allegations that the Michigan Health Department was stalling water treatment expert Marc Edwards's effort to obtain public records, journalists have asked when the State of Michigan knew about the lead poisoning. Details were released by the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News on February 26, 2016, that Valerie Brader, Snyder's senior policy adviser and deputy legal counsel, and his chief legal counsel Mike Gadola had expressed concerns to him about Flint's water in October 2014, nearly six months after Flint had begun using the river water to save money, despite Governor Snyder claiming he was unaware of the issue until very recently.
A petition from Angelo Scott Brown, a Flint pastor and former Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate, to recall Snyder was denied by the Board of State Canvassers. Filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore called for Snyder's arrest on charges of corruption and assault and launched a petition on his website. On November 13, 2015, four families filed a federal class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit against Snyder and thirteen other city and state officials, including former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling and ex-emergency financial manager Darnell Earley. The complaint alleges that the officials acted recklessly and negligently, leading to serious injuries from lead poisoning, including autoimmune disorders, skin lesions, and "brain fog".
On December 15, 2015, Mayor Weaver declared the water issue as a citywide public health state of emergency to prompt help from state and federal officials. Snyder apologized for the incident. Snyder declared a State of Emergency on January 5, 2016, for Genesee County, Michigan. On January 16, 2016, Snyder requested that the federal government declare a state of emergency in Flint. According to The Detroit News and NPR, "...in March 2016 Snyder released a new 75-point action plan to address the contamination crisis, calling for a "much higher standard" for drinking water regulations but stopping short of advocating for complete replacement of all underground lead service lines in the city. The plan included short-, intermediate-, and long-term goals, including making infrastructure improvements; creating a data-sharing agreement with state and federal environmental agencies; and setting up a protocol for a "drinkability declaration" for Flint water."
Subsequent career
Just before leaving the governor's office, Snyder formed a new Ann Arbor–based company called RPAction LLC whose staff consists of former officials of the Snyder administration. On June 29, 2019, Snyder accepted a soon-to-be appointment at Harvard to share his knowledge of state and local government. On July 3, he tweeted that he was "turning down" the offer: "It would have been exciting to share my experiences, both positive and negative; our current political environment and its lack of civility makes this too disruptive. I wish them the best." Snyder endorsed Democrat Joe Biden during the 2020 United States presidential election, alleging that "President Trump lacks a moral compass. He ignores the truth" and that the president "also demonstrated that he does not fully appreciate policy matters, including public health, the economy and foreign relations, nor does he seem to want to learn."