In a fight between local residents and one of the richest people in the world, one Michigan legislator put her seat on the line to protect the health of her constituents.

12th District Representative Rashida Tlaib represents part of downtown Detroit, and her residents have long suffered health problems and traffic jams caused by the Ambassador Bridge, linking Detroit to Canada. The bridge’s owner, billionaire Manuel Moroun, wants to build a second bridge nearby, but he’s refusing to do an environmental impact study to find out if vehicle fumes from the new bridge would worsen asthma and other health problems in the area.

Twenty percent of children in the neighborhood have asthma, including Rep. Tlaib’s four-year-old son, and local activists are convinced the new bridge would worsen the problem. Moroun, however, doesn’t seem to care one way or another, as he made clear in a meeting with Tlaib:

Despite rumors that she and Moroun were personally close, she said she has only met him once, at a meeting with another legislator. She asked him why he was resisting an environmental impact study for his proposed second span — a project the government of Canada opposes.

"I don't come in and tell you what to do in your back yard," he said.

She was repelled by the arrogance, not to mention what increasing truck traffic would do to her people's health.

Despite Moroun’s influence, his money, and his long history of political involvement (including donations to Republican committees in over a dozen states since 2004), Tlaib stood firm and threw her support behind a competing project to build a publicly-financed bridge a mile downriver. With better spacing, Tlaib reasoned, both the traffic and health problems would be reduced for everyone.

Tlaib’s stand won heavy praise from district residents, but Moroun was furious. So he did his best to destroy the duly-elected Representative. One of his political allies launched a series of recall petitions against Tlaib, seeking to remover her from office over her support for the competing bridge project. Tlaib still refused to back down, and the Wayne County Election Commission ultimately struck down the recall petitions as unlawfully vague.

Throughout the fight, Tlaib has remained wildly popular in her district, which she won with 90 percent of the vote in 2008. Nearly a hundred Tlaib supporters converged on the Wayne County Election Commission offices on the day of the recall hearing – a huge turnout for a regular municipal meeting.

But most importantly, Tlaib appears to be winning the fight for her constituents. The rival bridge project she supports continues to move ahead, with the Canadian government purchasing land for the project downriver from the Ambassador Bridge in Tlaib’s district. And the billionaire Moroun, for now at least, has been stymied.