Michael and his wife, Heidi, raised their four children in Wilmington. Like families across New Hanover County, they understand the pressures people feel around the kitchen table: the cost of living, insurance bills, schools, access to health care, traffic, clean water, public safety, and protecting the quality of life that makes this place home.

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Those concerns guide Michael's work in the North Carolina Senate. He has voted for every income-tax cut since joining the Senate and helped cut billions in taxes. He has worked across party lines to expand health coverage. He has backed major investments in teacher pay, early literacy, UNCW, Cape Fear Community College, water infrastructure, PFAS response, and public safety. And he has championed Wilmington's film industry for more than a decade.

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Michael believes education must be judged by student outcomes, and must prepare students for the world they will actually live in. He co-authored the law that put the Science of Reading in every elementary classroom, helped create SparkNC's competency-based, high-tech learning labs, and sponsored the expansion of Access to Achievement, the community college program that trains students with intellectual and developmental disabilities for real careers. He co-chairs the bipartisan Hunt-Lee Commission on the future of education, and he is leading the push to fund schools through a modern formula that follows each student.

Michael is an attorney who founded his own firm, and he has served New Hanover County and North Carolina through a range of public and community roles, including the North Carolina Board of Transportation, the North Carolina State Ports Authority Board, the University of North Carolina Wilmington Board of Trustees, and local nonprofit and civic organizations.

Today, Michael serves as Senate Majority Leader and represents District 7, which includes New Hanover County. As a chairman of the Senate's budget and education committees, he helps write the state budget itself. Those responsibilities give him a seat at the table when decisions are made, and he uses that position to make sure this county's needs are heard.

Michael's approach is straightforward: listen first, study the facts, work across differences, and deliver practical results. He is running for re-election to keep lowering costs, strengthening education, expanding access to health care, protecting clean water, investing in infrastructure, and supporting safe communities.