DAVID MARCUS: Why Abdul El-Sayeds anti-billionaire screeds may not play in Grand Rapids

I am pleased to report that Grand Rapids, Michigan, is an absolutely thriving mid-sized American city that almost feels like walking back in time. It has sidewalks full of people, streets full of cars and big beautiful buildings filled with businesses.

When I asked locals what the secret of this success was, a surprising number of people cited a handful of billionaire philanthropic families: the very same billionaires that Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed says should not exist in the Wolverine State, or anywhere in America.

Among these wealthy families with deep roots in Grand Rapids and broader Western Michigan are the Davos, Van Andel and Meijer families, whose names can be seen on institutions all over town — owing the billions they have donated.

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Joan is a docent at the splendid Grand Rapids Public Museum, just across from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, and she told Fox News Digital of the museum and Grand Rapids success, "We have a few families that really do a lot to fill gaps and help to make things happen."

Inside the massive museum, which looks like it should be in a city with an NFL team, is a mini Grand Rapids from the 1880s with stores to poke into. It was at the chemist that I met Joan, and honestly, add a bit of glass and steel and the city today seems just as bustling.

At one point, I found myself in the museum, looking at the bones of a prehistoric mastodon. Through the window behind it, bright yellow construction machines worked along the waterfront, while beyond them stood the short, proud buildings on the other side of the Grand River, from which the town takes its name.

In this parallax, one can see a kind of continuity that most American cities lack: the past, present and future in a positive lockstep.

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Later that day, I asked a construction worker about how often he works on buildings attached to these wealthy families. He said, with that distinct Western Michigan accent, "All the time, half the big projects we work on have one of the names on it," and laughingly added, "sometimes all the names."

There are myriad reasons why Grand Rapids is doing so well, but to discount the impact of these wealthy local families philanthropy is to miss a huge plot point of the economic success story.

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This is not a new feature of American civic growth. From the Astors in New York City to the Carnegies in Pittsburgh, our cities have always benefited from the noblesse oblige of what El-Sayed, who himself owns foreign investment property, would call "the 1%."

Todays left has a very different vision of noblesse oblige, which was on display this summer as several high-ranking New York City Democratic Socialists of America members were exposed as rich kids living off of mommy and daddys wealth.

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