The four Democratic candidates who have announced plans to vie for former Republican Justin Amash’s 3rd Congressional District seat reflect the new diversity of the Democratic coalition in terms of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Former President Barack Obama’s legacy will also be felt in the Democratic primary for the seat, as two of the candidates, Hillary Scholten and Nick Colvin, served in the Obama administration.
Asked about their key issues, the candidates generally agree that access to health care and the environment are priorities. Doug Booth, a gay Latino activist and health educator who has a master’s degree in healthcare policy, pledges on his website to support Medicare for All. Amanda Le'Anne Brunzell, a genderfluid Navy veteran, told Daily Kos in an email that “because of intersectionality,” her top issues are grouped together and include “veterans/military/foreign policy,” “human/civil rights,” and the environment.
In the press release announcing her candidacy, Hillary Scholten, an immigration lawyer who served in President Obama’s Justice Department, said that she is running “to fix our broken immigration system, make health care affordable and accessible for all Michiganders, ensure everyone has access to clean drinking water, and work to pass commonsense legislation to end the gun violence epidemic.”
A spokesperson for Nick Colvin, who was a former aide to President Obama, told Daily Kos that the candidate’s top priority will be “taking on special interests and standing up to big drug and insurance companies to ensure that health care is affordable for all.”
Three of the four Democratic candidates told Daily Kos they believe that Speaker Nancy Pelosi should begin impeachment hearings against Donald Trump. The same three also made a commitment not to accept corporate PAC donations, while the spokesperson for one candidate, Hillary Scholten, said the campaign hasn’t yet decided.
All of which still begs the question: Can a Democrat win the 3rd, which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. House since the mid-1970s? The answer, increasingly, seems to be that the 3rd district is definitely on the table.
Amash’s decision to leave the Republican Party earlier in July is part of the reason that the 3rd, which according to this July 10 article in Inside Elections “will elect a Republican under nearly all conditions,” is now rated by the organization as only “Leaning Republican.” In May, Amash was the only Republican member of Congress to call for Donald Trump’s impeachment after seemingly also being the only Republican who bothered to read the Mueller report.
According to the article, “With the threat of a GOP nominee and a former GOP congressman running as an independent on the same ballot in a district where Trump received just 52 percent, a Solid Republican rating no longer fits.”
The Cook Political Report agrees, saying in a July 8 piece that the district is now a “toss up.”
But while Amash’s defection (and possible run as a Libertarian, either for his current job or for the presidency) is part of the puzzle, it’s far from the whole picture. The 3rd Congressional District has been changing over time and is no longer quite the bastion of conservative Republicanism many Michiganders and others have come to expect. According to the Cook piece, Trump took the district with 52%, which is less than Mitt Romney’s 53% in the previous cycle. Not only that, but in the most populous county in the district, Kent County, Trump barely squeaked past former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with 48.3% of the vote—a significant drop from Romney’s 53.4% victory in the county in 2012.
Amash has also been losing the district’s support over time. In 2016, he was returned to office by a resounding 59.5% of voters. By 2018, that number had shrunk to 54.4%. “The district is changing rapidly. There's a lot of growth in Kent County, and the kind of people that are moving here are educated people who are fitting the profile of a more Democratic-leaning voter,” said former state Democratic Party chair Brandon Dillon.
Not only that, but Donald Trump has also become “a slight liability” to whoever wins the Republican nomination. “I do think (that) whoever the Republican nominee is in this district is likely to be a very pro-Trump candidate,” Dillon told Daily Kos, “and I don't think that kind of candidate is going to be viewed very favorably, except with hardcore Republicans.”
At least two of the Republicans who have announced their candidacies so far certainly seem to fit that “very pro-Trump” mold. According to this July 6 post by the area’s local ABC affiliate, current State Rep. Jim Lower called himself a “Trump-based candidate.” Tim Norton, a former area village president, said that the 3rd District deserves “real representation” from someone who “support(s) the president of the United States.” The other Republicans in the running so far are State Rep. Lynn Afendoulis and Peter Meijer, a member of the family that founded and owns the Meijer chain of big box department stores in the Midwest.
Facing a strongly pro-Trump candidate in a not-so-pro-Trump district won’t be the only thing in the eventual Democratic candidate’s favor. Dillon told Daily Kos that the Democratic Party also has “a pretty strong” infrastructure in the 3rd, “particularly in Kent County, where the vast majority of the vote is going to come out of, and the Third Congressional District Committee, which has really strong leadership now.”
In 2018, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won Kent County with 50.47% of the vote to challenger Bill Schuette's 46.32%
“The infrastructure here [has] been developed around getting out the vote for candidates at the top of the ticket because we haven't usually had a competitive congressional race,” Dillon said.
The outlook for flipping the 3rd District is also good because of the strength of the Democratic candidates who have joined the race. While Dillon is one of several Democrats who have endorsed Scholten, he told Daily Kos that he has met almost all of the Democratic candidates so far and is “very impressed, to varying degrees.”
“It's encouraging to see really qualified people step up and try to run for the seat,” he added.
Democratic state party communications director and press secretary Paul Kanan didn’t reply to Daily Kos’ request for comment.
Help Flip the 3rd District!
Michiganders and others who want to help flip Michigan’s 3rd District don’t have to wait until a Democratic candidate is chosen. Here are organizations you can contact right now to get involved:
Kent County Democratic Party
Michigan's Third Congressional District Democrats
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.