Mark Grebner

Mark Grebner (born 1952) is an American politician, attorney, political consultant, and psephologist from the state of Michigan.

Grebner is a resident of East Lansing, Michigan. He enrolled at Michigan State University as an Alumni Distinguished Scholar in 1970, completing a bachelor's degree in urban policy through MSU’s James Madison College in 1981. He earned a juris doctorate from the University of Michigan Law School.

He became active in voter registration efforts in East Lansing in 1971 following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution's 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. He was an elected Ingham County Commissioner from 1977 to 2012, except 1981-84, and was selected by board colleagues as Chairperson of the Board of Commissioners in 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2011. Grebner's work as Ingham County Commissioner included drafting a comprehensive county ethics policy and support for public transit initiatives.

A Democrat, he represented a district on the Board of Commissioners that included a substantial portion of the MSU campus. In 2012, instead of running for re-election to the county board, Grebner challenged incumbent Ingham County Drain Commissioner Patrick E. Lindemann, alleging fiscal mismanagement and cronyism, while Lindemann touted environmental protection and cost-savings. Lindemann defeated Grebner in the primary election and won re-election in the November general.

In 2016, Grebner again ran for Ingham County Commissioner, this time as a resident of district 8, including precincts on the western edge of East Lansing. He was elected to a two-year term with 70 percent of the vote.

Grebner is the president of Practical Political Consulting, a voter list and consulting firm which works mostly for Democrats in Michigan. In 1999, the firm expanded its operations to include Wisconsin. In an article about local and national campaign consultants in the early years of electronic data science, The Wall Street Journal described the work necessary to transform raw voter data into a mailing label targeted to specific voters: "Mr. Grebner painstakingly gathers lists of local voters from hundreds of Michigan township and municipal clerks, many of whom don't have computers and keep only hard-copy records. He enters the names in his battery of desktop computers, then matches them to addresses and other data."

...
Wikipedia