Candidate Timing for the Michigan Senate Senate in 2024: The Challenge of a Newcomer’s First Call to Public Service

Stabenow’s decision comes just months after Democrats held on to control of the Senate in the midterm elections. The Senate Democrats will have a difficult map in 2024 because Stabanow is leaving and another seat is up for election in a swing state.

Stabenow, who previously served in the Michigan state House and state Senate, first won election to Congress in 1996, winning a swing seat in Central Michigan. She won election to the Senate in 2000 after two terms in the House. She became the top Democrat in the Senate when she became the chair of the Policy and Communications Committee. She also currently chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Democrats will be trying to hold on to 23 of the 34 Senate seats up for reelection next year, with three seats in states that voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

Slotkin is the first Democrat to announce a run for Stabenow’s seat, which is in the battleground state.

Potential candidates include Huizenga, James, Kildee, and McMorrow. James narrowly lost his bid for the state’s other Senate seat in 2020 but won election to the House from a swing seat north of Detroit.

A spokesman for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was reelected to a second term in November, confirmed that the Democrat will not run for Senate in 2024.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee will aggressively target this seat in the next few years, according to Mike Berg, communications director.

“We need a new generation of leaders that thinks differently, works harder and never forgets that we are public servants,” Slotkin said in her announcement. There is no problem we cannot solve if we are both engaged citizens and principled leaders.

Even though she’s the only Democrat to announce an official bid, she’s the third candidate to officially file for 2024. Two Republicans have already declared their candidacy. Hoover is a businessman who is now running for office as a political newcomer while the other is on the State Board of Education.

In her announcement video, she says her call to public service came on Sept. 11, 2001, when she was just two days into grad school in New York City. “After the smoke cleared, I knew I wanted a career in public service protecting my country,” Slotkin said.

Slotkin was recruited to serve overseas as analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency under two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.