Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan announced on Monday that she will seek the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Democrat Debbie Stabenow in 2024. She is the first candidate to announce her intention to run for the seat and in a video from her campaign she stated that the nation seems “to be living crisis to crisis” but that there “are certain things that should be really simple, like living a middle-class life in the state that invented the middle class.” “This is why I’m running for the United States Senate. We need a new generation of leaders that thinks differently, works harder and never forgets that we are public servants,” Slotkin added.
Today, I’m announcing my run to be Michigan’s next U.S. Senator.
We need a new generation of leaders that thinks differently, works harder, and never forgets that we are *public servants* pic.twitter.com/L8cLgEUwnA
— Elissa Slotkin (@ElissaSlotkin) February 27, 2023
According to Up North:
Slotkin, a 46-year-old former CIA intelligence officer and third-term representative, is coming off an impressive victory in last year’s midterms, winning reelection despite having been considered vulnerable. Her contest against Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett was the third-most expensive House race in 2022.
She is the first Democrat to announce her intentions to run for a seat that will be crucial to the party’s efforts to maintain control of the Senate, where it holds a 51-49 majority. The only other candidate in the race so far is Republican Nikki Snyder, a State Board of Education member.
Slotkin, first elected to Congress in 2018 when she flipped a traditionally Republican district, has consistently won close races in the battleground state and has proved herself to be an effective fundraiser.
After narrowly winning reelection in 2020, she was targeted by Republicans in last year’s midterms after new congressional maps divided her home district. She was forced to run in Michigan’s new 7th Congressional District, where she was a new face for about a third of the district’s voters, many in rural GOP-leaning counties north of Lansing.
During her campaign, Slotkin has described herself as a moderate who is willing to work with Republicans. She comes from a Trump-voting district in Michigan serves on the House’s bipartisan Problem-Solvers Caucus. She has represented two congressional districts that experienced mass shootings, and she has called for stronger gun laws
Slotkin’s Senate run creates an open House race in the 7th Congressional District in 2024.
