2018 Primary Won 27 – 22
2018 General Election Elected 57 – 43
The best defense is a good offense.Often used as a football phrase, Wikipedia cites George Washington and Mao Zedong for making similar statements.
We want to go on offense. The Republicans are vulnerable. One event after another makes them more vulnerable. The Republican House passing AHCA has been eclipsed by Trump firing FBI Director James Comey. However, if the goal is to support that candidates who will defeat Republicans, we want to know for sure who is running to flip Republican seats. After filing deadlines or primaries or just the practicalities of time passing we will know who the Democratic nominees will be. It is tough to wait. Writing now runs a risk that the identified Democrat will not actually be the nominee. We all want to give money or time or energy to a candidate who is actually running against a Republican and could beat him (For the most part it is a him.)
This note is a taste of the future. It is a little bit of offense. Here is a candidate for the 2018 election running against a Republican incumbent who voted for the AHCA in a district in which Trump won, but did not get 50% of the vote. Haley Stevens https://haleystevensforcongress.com/ will probably be the only Democratic candidate for Michigan’s eleventh Congressional district. She returns to the Oakland County, Michigan suburbs of Detroit with great credentials to run for Congress in Michigan. Winning Michigan 11 is, nevertheless, enough of a long shot so that it will probably not attract a list of candidates.
More than in other parts of the country, people in Michigan remember that Mitt Romney suggested that the auto companies should have been allowed to go bankrupt. Many of those same people remember that President Obama saved the US auto industry through an $80 billion loan.
President Obama’s Auto Task Force returned Chrysler and General Motors to financial stability. That return to stability may have saved over 200,000 jobs in Michigan. Haley Stevens was the Auto Task Force’s Chief of Staff. She was responsible for making the task force effective. The plan was so effective and she was so effective in leading its implementation that most of these, at the time tenuous, corporate auto loans have been repaid with interest.
Recently, Haley Stevens has been saving and creating jobs in other ways. She worked as director of workforce development and manufacturing engagement for the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute in Chicago. She led a national workforce development program and created the country’s first online training program for digital manufacturing. Now, she speaks frequently about job creation through new technology. She has launched a STEM education program to introduce middle and high school students to digital manufacturing through hands-on teaching.
Haley Stevens has a BA and MA from American University. She studied public policy and will have had to have learned a lot to win this election. This is not one of the districts that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. But it is one in which there is a chance that a strong Democratic candidate can win.
Stevens’ opponent, incumbent David Trott, first won election in 2014 — winning a primary against a Republican incumbent who focused his criticism of Trott on Trott’s family law firm, which is one of the largest foreclosure firms in the country. Trott won in 2014 and again in 2016 — by ten points. That is a lot to make up. Nevertheless, the contrast between Stevens whose career has been focused on creating jobs and Trott whose career and family has been devoted to foreclosures is a telling one.
Haley Stevens https://haleystevensforcongress.com/ is the kind of candidate whose victory is crucial to gaining the 25-30 seats that are needed to make the House solidly Democratic in 2018. Assume that she will be the nominee for Michigan 11. Give her some support.
