Democrat Elissa Slotkin to seek Michigan’s open Senate seat

Elissa Slotkin, a current member of Michigan’s House of Representatives and a Democrat, has announced that she would run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Debbie Stabenow in 2024. She is the first major candidate to enter the campaign in this swing state.

The United States “seems to be living crisis to crisis,” Slotkin says in a video introducing her campaign, but “there are certain things that should be fairly straightforward, like living a middle-class life in the state that founded the middle class.”

Slotkin says in the video, which was posted on Monday morning, “This is why I’m running for the United States Senate.” Leaders of the future must be creative in their approaches, diligent in their efforts, and mindful of their role as public servants.

Slotkin, a former CIA intelligence officer in his forties now serving in Congress for the third time, won reelection in the 2018 elections despite being seen as a political underdog. Her battle against Republican state senator Tom Barrett for the House of Representatives in 2022 was the third most costly of that year.

She is the first Democrat to publicly declare her candidacy for a seat that is essential to her party’s quest to keep its 51-49 majority in the Senate. Nikki Snyder, a Republican and current member of the State Board of Education, is the only other person running.