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Peter Meijer, the one-term Republican congressman who lost his seat after voting to impeach President Donald J. Trump, announced he is running for the Senate in Michigan, jumping into a crowded primary in a key battleground.
“We live in dark and uncertain times, but we have overcome worse times,” Meijer said. said in a statement announce his candidacy on Monday.
Meijer, heir to the Meijer supermarket empire and an Army Reserve veteran who served in Iraq, joins a field that includes Mike Rogers, another former representative who served seven terms in the House and led the House Intelligence Committee, that announced his candidacy in September.
They are also running in the Republican primaries. James Craigformer chief of the Detroit Police Department; Nikki Snydermember of the State Board of Education; Dr. Sherry O’Donnell, doctor and former congressional candidate in 2022; sharon savageformer teacher; Ezra Scottformer Berrien County Commissioner; Alexandria Taylora lawyer; JD Wilson, technology consultant; and Michael Hoovera businessman.
The crowded Republican field reflects a party eager to make gains in Michigan after Democrats cruised to victory in the state in 2022. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer handily won re-election that year, part of a political trifecta in which Democrats won the complete control of the state government. .
President Biden narrowly won Michigan in 2020 and the state is considered a battleground in next year’s presidential election.
Meijer, 35, is running for the seat held by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who announced this year that she would not seek a new term in 2024. The race for the open seat is competitive, but has leaned toward the Democratsaccording to a projection by the Cook Political Report.
Stabenow’s retirement sparked a frenzy among ambitious Michigan Democrats now seeking to succeed her.
Among them is Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate and former CIA analyst who has earned a national profile and scored victories in several close races for her House seat. They are also in the race Nasser Beydoun, a Dearborn businessman; Hill Harper, author and actor; leslie loveformer state representative from Detroit; Pamela Pugh, the president of the State Board of Education; and Zach Burns, attorney and Ann Arbor resident.
Meijer was elected to represent his Grand Rapids-based district in 2020. He came into the national spotlight just days after taking office when he voted to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021. .
Only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump survived the Republican voter retaliation that followed. Meijer narrowly lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, John Gibbs, who was boosted by Democrats and who was defeated by his Democratic opponent in the general election.