"My Story" - Senator Mike Reichenbach

Charisse and I often get the question asked, “what made you decide to run for the State Senate?”

It's really a two-fold reason. There's a head reason and there's a heart reason. The head reason is frankly, I believe in limited government. I believe that with a business acumen and accounting background, we need to be really fiscally responsible because government doesn't have money; it's the taxpayer's money. That's the head reason.

The heart reasons are a little bit more intimate to me. In 1971, there was a 14-year-old girl named Beverly, and she gets pregnant by her 15-year-old boyfriend. And she comes home, tells her Mom: “my boyfriend left, and I'm pregnant.” And the mom gives her three choices: (1) Abort the baby, (2) birth the baby, and put the baby in foster care immediately, or (3) birth the baby - and you can keep him, but you can't come home if you keep him because you're 14, you're pregnant, you're alone, you're an embarrassment.

She had a lot of reasons to abort me, including her family and friends, telling her that was the cleanest way to get rid of this problem. But she felt something in her that said, give this baby life. So she birthed me, put me into foster care, and I was eventually adopted by an incredible couple, Ed & Shirley Reichenbach. They loved me. They taught me hard work and discipline and faith, and that my identity would be determined by God, and my faith in God and my work ethic and by the decisions I made. But they also taught me that as an adopted black child - in a white family with the last name Reichenbach - in an all white town, that although I didn't look like them and my hair was a lot nappier than theirs, I was no less a ‘Reichenbach’ than their biological child.

I understand the beauty of adoption. We adopted our son as well, and he's no less our child than our biological daughter. So adoption has given me a sense of purpose to give back to Florence. We respect the third and fourth generation Florentines, but as an adopted family into Florence, I feel a responsibility to give back. So when the opportunity came to serve through the State Senate, we knew it was a chance to change a focus from being a focus on “success” to a focus on “significance,” and how to be significant in the lives of Florentines to help them.

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