AP: Michigan Dem retirements dooming House majority dreams 😴

AP: Michigan Dem retirements dooming House majority dreams

According to the AP, Elissa Slotkin and Dan Kildee's decisions to hang it up on their highly competitive congressional districts could doom the Democrats' chances of a majority in the House.

"Swing-seat Democrats Elissa Slotkin and Dan Kildee left behind a golden opportunity for Republicans to pick up their open seats and grow our majority. National Democrats know they're doomed." - NRCC Spokesman Mike Marinella

Departures In House Create Crucial Republican Targets In The Fight For Majority Control
The Associated Press
Stephen Groves
October 4, 2024

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Both Republicans and Democrats have had their fair share of turnover - with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, the most prominent - but Democrats are also losing prodigious fundraisers who have successfully held off GOP challengers in recent years. With fierce competition raging over just a couple dozen seats, that's left Democrats relying on fresh faces to hold their ground, while Republicans sense openings in four races in Virginia, Michigan and California.

[…]

Regardless, it will be a tough task to make up the fundraising hauls and political skills of the prominent Democrats in the three states.

Democratic Reps. Katie Porter of California, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, and Elissa Slotkin and Dan Kildee, both of Michigan, raked in a combined fundraising total of over $50 million in the last election cycle. Slotkin, Spanberger and Porter all entered Congress in 2018 as part of a wave of female lawmakers who flipped seats and delivered House control to Democrats.

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Central Michigan has been represented by either Kildee or his uncle, former Rep. Dale Kildee, for almost five decades. And Kildee said it's important to him that he hands his seat off to a Democrat.

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But Paul Junge, a Republican who lost to Kildee in 2022, said Kildee's retirement also made his decision to run again much easier.

"Incumbency is powerful for a reason. People know the name. They feel like they know that representative," said Junge, who is a former prosecutor and TV anchor. "This time I don't face that. And in fact, for me, as a second-time candidate in this district, I was reaching out to people who already knew me."

Junge also chalks up 2022 as a difficult year for Republicans in Michigan because voters were coming out to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution as well as reelect a popular Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer. He has self-financed his campaign, pushing him towards a cash advantage this year.

So Junge has crisscrossed the district in his Ford F-150, working to win over the union members and blue-collar workers who once made Michigan a blue wall of support for Democrats, but who have slipped towards Republicans in recent years.

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He's facing a former statehouse colleague. Tom Barrett, who previously served in the state senate, is running for the seat again after losing to Slotkin by 5 points in 2022. Barrett was heavily outspent that year, but so far has been able to keep a closer pace to Hertel's fundraising this year.

Barrett argued that a host of problems - illegal immigration, a cost of living crisis, crime in Lansing, the district's largest city, as well as global threats - have only grown in the last two years.

"I feel like there's unfinished business there," he said.

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Read the full piece here.