Rep. Elissa Slotkin ’98 (D-Mich.) defeated her primary challenger, Good Doctor star Hill Harper, to advance to the general election in November for the Michigan Senate seat.
Slotkin, currently a representative for Michigan’s 7th congressional district, will compete in what will likely be a close congressional race for the senate seat vacated after the retirement of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). She faces former Michigan representative Mike Rogers, a Trump-endorsed Republican.
Slotkin is polling slightly above Rogers, and she has a considerable financial edge, having raised more than three times more funds than her opponent by mid-July.
However, like many Democrats on the ticket this fall, Slotkin’s Senate bid is complicated by the party’s internal divisions over the Israel-Hamas war.
Slotkin, who is Jewish, holds pro-Israel views that are largely in line with those expressed by the majority of elected Democrats. She may face challenges appealing to voters who are turning away from the party over its support for aid to Israel amid heavy Israeli bombardment and poor humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
Over 13 percent of Democratic voters in Michigan selected “uncommitted” in the presidential primaries. The uncommitted movement was first organized by Arab-American and Muslim voters in the state to protest Biden’s handling of the war before becoming a nationwide trend.
Slotkin, in an interview with the Michigan Advance, expressed support for a negotiated ceasefire and said that while Israel had the right to “go after the perpetrators” of the Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages, they also have a “responsibility to do better on civilian casualties.”
Over 39,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the outbreak of war, according to the Gazan Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.