Republican Paul Junge and Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet were victorious Tuesday night in their respective primaries for the open mid-Michigan seat in the U.S. House being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee.
Junge of Grand Blanc Township won with 74.8% of the vote, while former Dow executive Mary Draves of Midland was pulling 15.1% and small businessman Anthony Hudson of Grand Blanc Township had 10.1%, with 86.9% of the votes counted, according to unofficial returns.
“I am grateful voters responded to my commitment to secure the border, rebuild our economy and take on the many failures in Washington, D.C.,” Junge said in a statement. “Our country is headed in the wrong direction, and I will use my experience in the Trump administration securing the border, as a criminal prosecutor, and business owner to fight hard for the people of mid-Michigan.”
McDonald Rivet of Bay City had 53.4% of the vote, ahead of former Flint Mayor Matt Collier with 26.3% and state Board of Education President Pamela Pugh of Saginaw with 20.3% with 85.3% of the vote counted, according to unofficial results.
“Now, we move forward to November, and the choice is clear,” McDonald Rivet said. “While I have deep roots in our communities and a proven, bipartisan record of lowering costs for mid-Michiganders, Paul Junge is trying for a third time to use his trust fund to buy our U.S. House seat. He doesn’t know us, and he does not understand families who work hard to make ends meet.”
Collier conceded the race and endorsed McDonald Rivet early Wednesday: “I look forward to working with her and Democrats up and down the ballot to defeat Paul Junge and keep MI-08 blue in November,” he said in a statement.
More: Here are all the 2024 Michigan primary election results
The three Republicans and three Democrats were vying for their respective party’s nomination in the 8th, which covers Genesee, Saginaw and Bay counties and part of Midland County, encompassing the cities of Bay City, Flint, Midland and Saginaw.
The closely watched contest for Kildee’s seat in Congress is expected to rank among the most competitive and expensive U.S. House contests nationally this fall, with political handicappers rating it a tossup. Outside groups poured over $9 million into the 2022 faceoff between Kildee and Junge, who lost by more than 10 percentage points that year.
“It will be tight and expensive, for sure,” Genesee County GOP Chair Jay A. Fedewa said.
“It’s the first time this seat has been open for 50 years or better,” Fedewa added, referring to the decades that Kildee and his uncle, Dale Kildee, had represented the region.
President Joe Biden would have won the 8th District by 2 percentage points in 2020 over Trump under the district’s new boundaries.
In Grand Blanc, Teresa Rogers was working at the polls but cast an absentee ballot three weeks ago and voted for McDonald Rivet.
“I liked what she had to say about abortion and women’s rights,” said Rogers, 68, of Mundy Township. “Everybody has a choice. Women have a choice.”
Grand Blanc resident Steven Rolph voted in the Republican primary and cast a ballot for Draves, he said. “I’m just here to try and get all the Democrats out of here because I think they’re crazy,” Rolph said.
Amanda Southard, another Grand Blanc resident, voted for Junge in the GOP primary.
“When I was doing my research, he ran on a lot of things I believe in like our borders not being safe,” said Southard, 44. “I saw that he worked with Trump in the past, and he did get beat last time but I decided to give him another shot.”
A few miles away at Atherton Elementary School in Burton, Marcia Miller voted in the Democratic primary for Pugh because, “she talked to me.”
“She sounds honest and sincere,” said Miller, a 63-year-old retiree living in Burton. “I’m tired of crooked politicians and not being who they really are.”
Jeff Hickson, a precinct delegate, and his wife, Christina Fitchett-Hickson, both cast ballots in the GOP primary and voted for Hudson.
“He’s a truck driver. Grassroots. A constitutionalist. And believes in the Second Amendment,” said Hickson.
Fitchett-Hickson, who serves on the Burton City Council, added: “He cares about the people. I notice his heart. He talks about fighting for people and their rights.”
“He’s tired of the Democrats taking advantage of the people,” said Fitchett-Hickson. “And he wants to be the voice of the people.”
GOP candidates
Junge, 57, has previously worked as a TV anchor, a Capitol Hill staffer, an assistant district attorney in California and for the Trump administration as part of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in external affairs in 2018.
He has benefited from a name ID advantage after having previously run in the district in 2022. He is self-funding his bid, having put $2 million from his own pocket toward his campaign, and is already running an attack ad against McDonald Rivet, the Democratic frontrunner.
“I think people in the 8th District here in Genesee County and throughout the district are ready for a different voice representing them in Washington ― a conservative voice that will secure the Southern border, make our communities safe from crime in our streets and push for an economy that works for working families,” Junge told The Detroit News on Monday.
“The balance of the House is probably going to be determined right here in the state of Michigan, and this is going to be a key battleground. I’m going to work hard every day and, as I say, get out and talk to voters.”
More: Volley of attack ads marks GOP primary contest for Kildee seat
Draves, 55, of Midland has pitched herself to voters as the GOP candidate with a strong sense of service to the community who supports Trump’s America First agenda and understands the 8th District because she’s from it.
She retired from Dow in 2022, with her last post serving as chief sustainability officer and vice president of environment, health and safety, where her responsibilities included reporting Dow’s environmental, social and governance performance and ensuring it was in compliance with permits.
Draves and Junge have traded attack ads, with him claiming she’s not a true conservative and her arguing Junge is a “carpetbagger” and opportunist from California who only moved to the district to run for Congress.
“It has been nasty. I don’t like it,” Fedewa said of the GOP primary. “I like Reagan’s 11th Commandment: Never say anything negative about a fellow Republican.”
Draves’ campaign had help from an outside group dedicated to electing Republican women, Winning For Women Action Fund that put nearly $384,700 behind an ad to boost Draves.
“When we go out and talk to people on the doors, what we hear is they don’t like negative ads. They don’t like someone who’s lost twice, they don’t like someone who’s not from here, and what they want is something different,” Draves said Sunday. “So the only poll that I will pay attention to is Tuesday, because that’s the only poll that really matters.”
Hudson, 47, of Grand Blanc Township was also Tuesday’s GOP ballot. He is originally from Texas and owns a small trucking company that hauls general freight and commodities.
Hudson’s campaign was criticized this summer for posting a video that used artificial intelligence to alter the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech: “I have another dream! Yes, it is me, Martin Luther King. I came back from the dead to say something … Anthony Hudson will be Michigan 8th District’s next congressman.”
The video ended with a voiceover by Hudson saying he approved the message. He later claimed that he had given his social media password to a volunteer whose friend posted the AI video without his knowledge.
Democratic candidates
McDonald Rivet, 54, is a first-term state senator and former Bay City commissioner who has led the fundraising race in the 8th, hauling in nearly $1.69 million since her January launch. The mom of six with a background in education policy has garnered high-profile endorsements from Dan Kildee, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers union and has had help from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Collier, a former district director for the late U.S. Rep. Dale Kildee, is attempting a comeback after spending years outside of partisan politics and out of state. He’s a former Army airborne ranger who went into the private sector after his mayoral term in Flint and later did a stint at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs during the Obama administration. He’s endorsed by the Michigan Democratic Party’s Veterans Caucus.
Pugh is a scientist with a background in public health, serving as Flint’s chief public health adviser during Flint’s lead-tainted water crisis. She is pitching herself as the Gaza “ceasefire” candidate who would represent the district’s diverse communities and wants to ease the high rates of poverty in cities like Flint and Saginaw. She’s endorsed by progressive U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit and Ro Khanna of California.
Collier and McDonald Rivet have traded barbs in recent weeks, with Collier airing a TV ad that claimed the state senator is “bankrolled by a close ally of Betsy DeVos, a billionaire founder of shady for-profit charter schools that have put profits before kids.”
The reference was to Grand Rapids businessman J.C. Huizenga, founder of the charter school management company National Heritage Academies, who gave $1,000 to McDonald Rivet’s state-level campaign a year ago.
McDonald Rivet’s campaign in response criticized Collier for personally donating to GOP U.S. House candidates who oppose abortion and for moving back to Flint in February after 25 years on the coasts to run for Congress after Kildee announced he’d retire.
Kildee waded into the primary last week by calling out a digital campaign ad that uses a photo of Collier with the late Dale Kildee that says in bold type that he “served as Congressman Dale Kildee’s District Director.”
The Kildee family and some former staffers were irked by the Collier ad because he had publicly contemplated mounting a challenge to Dale, his former mentor, as a Republican back in the 1990s after Collier had lost his reelection as mayor.
“I can’t speak for my Uncle Dale. He’s no longer around,” Dan Kildee, who in 2013 succeeded his uncle representing the greater Flint area in Congress, said last week.
“But I know he was personally pretty decently disappointed and hurt when Matt made some indication back in the ‘90s that he was considering running against Dale as a Republican, given that Dale gave him this incredible opportunity to be his district director that put him in a position to run for mayor. So it sparked a bit of a reaction in me when I saw that ad.”
mburke@detroitnews.com
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Publish date : 2024-08-06 14:55:00
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