Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) is projected to win reelection in what turned out to be one of the intense and expensive races anyplace within the nation, in accordance with the Related Press.
Slotkin, first elected to Congress as a part of the 2018 backlash towards former President Donald Trump, was working towards Tom Barrett, a Republican state senator, who nonetheless does not recognize that Trump misplaced the 2020 election fairly and cleanly.
Each had backgrounds in nationwide safety, together with service abroad ― Slotkin as a former intelligence officer, Barrett as an Military helicopter pilot. However that’s the place the similarities ended, because the marketing campaign made clear.
An early, ongoing conflict was over reproductive freedom. Slotkin helps abortion rights, whereas Barrett opposes them, though he tried to downplay that position following polls exhibiting that even many Republican voters in Michigan opposed the U.S. Supreme Courtroom choice overturning Roe v. Wade.
The economic system was additionally an enormous difficulty within the election, with Barrett attacking Slotkin for her help of Democratic laws that, he mentioned, was answerable for excessive inflation. Slotkin defended her votes, touting her work on a brand new program to scale back prescription drug costs that has been a longtime priority of hers.
Within the closing weeks, Slotkin centered her assaults on Barrett’s refusal to acknowledge the end result of the 2020 election, and secured an endorsement from Rep. Lynn Cheney, the Wyoming Republican whom the GOP exiled from get together management due to her outspoken criticism of Trump and his efforts to overturn the final election.
Cheney visited the district for a joint look on Nov. 1, interesting to Republican and impartial voters to help Slotkin for the sake of democracy, even when they didn’t agree together with her a lot of Slotkin’s difficulty positions.
That enchantment was necessary as a result of the district in play, Michigan’s seventh, is a basic swing district that polls confirmed might go both approach ― and that attracted many millions of dollars of ad spending by the candidates, events and out of doors teams.
And though Slotkin had excessive title recognition, most of the voters within the seventh had not been her constituents earlier than, as a result of redistricting redrew the entire state’s strains.
However her outdated district was, if something, much more Republican leaning. She received two phrases in that district by winning over independents and Republicans, and it seems she has now accomplished it once more.
A method Slotkin has appealed to those voters is by staking out an impartial place, and bucking management now and again.
Slotkin mentioned in October that the get together management wants “new blood.” And though she burdened afterwards that continues to be a supporter of President Joe Biden, she has twice voted against holding Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, as speaker.
However that’s the type of dissent Democratic leaders are more likely to settle for as the value for holding such a crucial swing district.