U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, right, speaks at a campaign event with U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., left, in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Oct. 10, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)
U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) called for Democrats to come up with their own long-term plan akin to Project 2025 during a campaign event in Ann Arbor on Thursday.
Slotkin, who’s facing former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake) for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, said Democrats are often too reactive in governing rather than passing policies proactively.
“It’s not OK to just play defense on our rights and our democracy, we must play more offense,” Slotkin said. “Democrats kind of wait for bad things to happen, a Supreme Court decision or a bad law out of Texas, we wait, and then we talk about it and we tweet about it, and we, you know, rub our hands together, ‘What a terrible thing to have happened,’ and then it sort of fades and we’re waiting for the next bad thing to happen.”
Slotkin criticized the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, arguing that the Trump campaign cannot distance themselves from it, before asking, “Where’s our Project 2025? How come we’re constantly reacting to them? Where’s our plans? … What are we going to do? Where are our court cases? Where are our state laws? What’s our 50-state plan?”
That gap in long-term agenda setting is most clear in the reactions to restrictions on reproductive healthcare after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Slotkin said.
“For two years after Roe was overturned, does anyone know what the five year plan is to get back to a federal right to abortion? They had 50 years to get rid of it,” Slotkin said. “They have a 50-year plan. What’s our five-year plan? Or even a 10-year plan?”
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., campaigns for U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Oct. 10, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)
Slotkin, 48, argued that a forward-looking approach is part of why there needs to be a “new generation” of leaders in Congress.
“I think what excites me about being part of that different generation is thinking about the job differently, using the convening power of the office to actually come up with our own plan,” Slotkin said.
Slotkin said fresh perspectives are also needed to tackle rapidly evolving issues in the realm of technology, including the role that artificial intelligence should play in society.
“You have some challenges that are really different than what people were working on 30 years ago when they originally got elected to the Senate,” Slotkin said. “And it’s not that the flip-phone generation can’t tackle those issues, but it does help when you’ve grown up with some of those things natively.”
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), the youngest member of the U.S. Senate at 37 years old, joined Slotkin for the event, introducing himself as an employee of the “most exclusive senior center in the United States.”
Ossoff said that Slotkin’s experience doing strategic planning as a national intelligence officer helped inform her approach to long-term policymaking.
“When I’m on the floor of the Senate, or when I’m in our caucus meetings, and I imagine this outstanding public servant being there, lending her voice to those discussions, bringing her ideas, helping to usher in a fresh generation of leadership in Congress, it genuinely excites me,” Ossoff said.
While Slotkin said she is not young, she noted that she would be the youngest Democratic woman in the Senate.
During her time in national intelligence, Slotkin said she would at times be tasked with briefing Congress.
“I used to go up and brief Congress, and I thought they were cuckoo,” Slotkin said. “I mean, I would be like, these are the people in charge of the budget? So, it was not a club I was looking to be a part of.”
But that changed when former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Slotkin said.
“For the first time, the polarization in our country was so bad that the greatest threat to America was inside the country, was the division among Americans, not some external threat, and only that could have gotten me to run for office,” Slotkin said.
Slotkin is running to succeed U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing), who has endorsed her after opting to retire at the end of her current term – a decision Slotkin praised for ensuring “a safe and responsible handoff.”
While Slotkin said that it is time for a new generation of leaders, she expressed gratitude for Stabenow’s years of service paving the way for Slotkin to lead.
“For all my years in these male dominated fields, I never felt like I had to hide my intelligence. I could be clear and straight,” Slotkin said. “In order to get men around her in the state Legislature and in Congress to do what was right for their constituents, she basically, she was open about it, she sort of made them think it was their idea. And so, at times, you walk the dog around the block, they thought it was their brilliant idea, they championed it and they were off to the races. And there’s not one day in my life I ever had to do that, and it’s because of her and the generation that came before me.”
Slotkin said when Stabenow occupied the Mid-Michigan U.S. House seat she now holds, the now-senior senator led a group of women members of Congress in fundraising for an effort to place a statue of suffragettes that had previously been stored in the U.S. Capitol’s basement when it was first donated in the 1920s on display in the rotunda, where it remains the only sculpture depicting women.
“It’s got this uncut kind of blob of marble at the back, and the original – we’re checking this with the archivist – but the original donors of that giant piece in the 1920s said they were going to leave that piece of marble unfinished, and it will be carved with the first woman president,” Slotkin said.
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