Promise of EV battery plant jobs brings death threats

Being supervisor of Michigan's Green Township wasn't a particularly stressful job for Jim Chapman until last year when plans for a $2.4 billion Chinese electric-vehicle battery factory turned the small community 200 miles northwest of Detroit into an ideological battle zone.

Gotion Inc.'s plans for what state officials say will be the largest economic development project in northern Michigan set off geopolitical controversy that's rippled from Washington to Beijing. Chapman, who became supervisor after his predecessor Bob Baldwin died, never thought he'd be part of a project so big or that his support would make him so many enemies.

"Feels like you're on the wrong end of a microscope," Chapman told Crain's Detroit Business, an affiliate of Automotive News.

In the past eight months, he has been targeted with death threats, a recall campaign and accusations of being a communist. Chapman said he shares many of the concerns and demands answers from Gotion before giving approvals.

The company acquired 270 acres of land in August, marking its first major commitment to the plant, expected to create 2,350 jobs.

Chapman has tried to remove himself from plant politics. The supervisor, who called himself a "rather adamant Republican," looks at the project as an economic savior for one of the poorest parts of the state, plagued by job and population loss.

At an average wage of $24.50 an hour, payroll at the plant will come out to roughly $4.5 million every two weeks, Chapman said. "My God, do you know what that's going to do to this community? To the region?" he said.

The trouble he's experienced is hardly worth the $25,000 annual salary of supervisor, but he feels duty-bound to see the project through.

"I am not going to allow them," he said, "to destroy the greatest economic opportunity this community has seen since the 1800s."