DETROIT — A state senator and a former Trump administration staffer are locked in a bruiser of a fight for the mid-Michigan seat of retiring Democratic U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee in Congress this fall, with concerns over jobs and the economy taking center stage.

The contest between Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet of Bay City and Republican Paul Junge of Grand Blanc Township is among four competitive open U.S. House seats around the country that will be decided in the Nov. 5 election, according to tracking by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

The Junge-McDonald Rivet race is one of two rated tossups among the open seats. The other tossup is next door in the district anchored by Lansing, where Democratic former state Sens. Curtis Hertel and Republican Tom Barrett are facing off for the seat held by Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Holly Democrat who is running for U.S. Senate.

“Across the board, these are two of the most competitive districts in the country. Most polls show Harris and Trump are effectively tied in both districts, which puts Democrats in a much better position for holding these seats than if (President Joe) Biden were still at the top of the ticket,” said Erin Covey, a House analyst for Cook Political Report.

“Republicans certainly have more opportunity here than they would if the two incumbents were running for reelection. But it's not like Republicans have this major advantage in either seat. It's going to be a close race.”

McDonald Rivet, 54, said the choice between her and Junge is “stark.” The first-term state senator and former Bay City commissioner said she’s raised six kids, managed a family budget and cares about the high cost of groceries, while Junge has “relied on his trust fund.”

“I have spent my life doing big things that helped our community, helped our schools and helped the economic stability of families,” she said. “He has been jumping from district to district trying to buy a seat in Congress.”

Junge, 58, a former TV anchor and lawyer by training, is pitching himself in ads as a former prosecutor and political outsider who will stand up to Washington elites who have been “selling us out” for 60 years ― an apparent reference to the Kildee family that’s held the Flint-area seat for decades. He’s trying to tie McDonald Rivet to Biden-Harris’ record on the Southern border and the economy.

“I share with people that five of the top seven counties in the United States of America for average income are all in and around Washington, D.C.,” Junge said. “To me, that's an indicator that money flows to Washington and then stays here, instead of either not flowing to Washington, or having it be in places like Michigan's 8th District.”

Biden would have won the 8th District by 2 percentage points in 2020 over former President Donald Trump under the district's new boundaries. But the district seems to be trending more Republican, with Trump improving his performance there from 2016 to 2020, Covey noted.

“It’s really going to come down to organization and turnout,” Michigan pollster and consultant Ed Sarpolus said about the contest. “Junge has got to out-work the Rivet and Kildee families.”

The candidates are scheduled to debate Oct. 22 at Saginaw Valley State University.

Libertarian Steve Barcelo of Fenton, US Taxpayers nominee James Allen Little of Flint, Green Party nominee Jim Casha of Ontario and Kathy Goodwin of Dearborn, representing the Working Class Party, are also on the ballot. Candidates for U.S. House are not required to reside in the district for which they’re running.

The landscape

Michigan's 8th District covers the Tri-Cities region of Bay City, Midland and Saginaw, plus Flint.

Roughly half of all registered voters within the district reside in Genesee County, though the 8th includes swingy Saginaw ― the only Michigan county to have voted for the winning candidate in the last four presidential elections ― Bay County and parts of Midland County.

Both parties are targeting the district. Surrogates visiting in recent weeks include House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson, who leads the House GOP’s campaign arm.

Republicans see a generational opportunity to flip the 8th District this year because it will be the first time without a Kildee on the ballot for U.S. House since 1976, when Dan Kildee’s uncle Dale Kildee was first elected.

The popular Kildee family stayed in office for decades thanks in part to GOP voters who would cross over to support them, said Ann DeLisle, chair of the 8th District Republican Party. She’s anticipating that ticket-splitting era now ends.

“No matter your income bracket, the current economy is affecting everyone,” DeLisle said. “They are trying to paint (McDonald Rivet) as a moderate Democrat, and she's anything but. I talked to Democrats just last week when I was door-knocking: They feel like the party has left them.”

Local Democratic leaders, however, are confident that McDonald Rivet, who is backed by the retiring Kildee and is benefiting from his donor network, is putting in the work needed to hold the seat. One task has been building her name identification in Genesee County, where she was less known because her Senate district covers areas to the north, Genesee County Democratic Chairwoman Ashley Prew said.

“Dan Kildee’s support behind Kristen McDonald Rivet is really key. It helps build her credibility,” Prew said. “She’s been in Genesee County a lot. She has come to a lot of our events and has been campaigning herself a lot here, so word is getting out there of who she is and what she stands for.”

Outside groups are on track to exceed the $9 million poured into the 2022 faceoff between Kildee and Junge, who lost by more than 10 percentage points that year.

Hudson’s House GOP group is already spending big on the race, with about $800,000 in spent or reserved overall to run ads to help Junge. The Congressional Leadership Fund, which is endorsed by House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has spent about $500,000 already and has another $3 million reserved in the Flint market, adding $180,000 this week.

On the Democratic side, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has spent nearly $600,000 to date, and the House Majority PAC, with ties to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, has reserved nearly $3.7 million to boost McDonald Rivet, according to ad tracking data.

The self-funding Junge has outspent McDonald Rivet on ads by about 2.5 to 1, pouring in $2.6 million to her $1 million. She has reserved roughly $646,000 of airtime for the last six weeks of the race.

Junge’s third bid

Junge has not previously held elected office but is making his third bid for Congress after challenging Slotkin in 2020 and Kildee in 2022. He is endorsed by Trump.

“I'm talking about common sense solutions that work for regular working class, everyday people who are going to work, going to church, going to school, trying to live their lives and get ahead,” Junge said. “I'm determined to listen to them and be a voice for them.”

Voters tell him they’re worried about economic security, grocery prices and energy costs, he said. His proposal to ease prices is an “all of the above” energy approach that would expand U.S. energy production, including new drilling leases on federal lands.

His priorities in Congress would be securing the Southern border and eliminating regulatory hurdles for oil pipelines. He supports Trump’s plan for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants but said the focus for removal should be on individuals who have committed crimes or any history of violence.

“After two to four years and we've gotten 5-9 million (undocumented immigrants), at some point you just say, hey, look, the number is now much smaller, and we're confident that this is mostly people who are hard-working, who are trying to live the American Dream and can assimilate into the country,” Junge said. “Maybe you stop there.”

The Republican candidate also backs Trump’s proposals to end taxes on tipped wages, overtime pay and Social Security, though he didn’t have specific ideas for how to pay for the tax cuts.

“We just have to take a very hard look at every department and spending that isn't directly benefiting the American taxpayer,” Junge said.

He’s wary of further security aid for Ukraine but would not support the U.S. leaving the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, he said. He's skeptical of clean energy tax credits and subsidies, including those for electric vehicles.

Junge has lived all over and held an eclectic series of jobs. He spent his early years in Ann Arbor until his father moved the family around the country for work, later graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of San Diego Law School.

He was a deputy district attorney in Ventura County, California. He worked for his dad's business and later took a series of TV reporter and anchor jobs, including in Lansing. In Washington, he worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2015-16 and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in external affairs for seven months in 2018. He moved back to Michigan in 2019.

“I care about public policy and about the future of the country,” Junge said. “That’s what motivates me.”

Her historic bid

If elected, McDonald Rivet would be the first woman to represent Flint and the Tri-Cities in the U.S. House. She has pitched herself as a pragmatic leader who can work with GOP lawmakers to get "real" work done without drama.

“When I talk to voters, I talk about getting things done for families, lowering prescription drug costs, lowering the cost of housing, being able to strengthen our schools,” McDonald Rivet said. “And when I say that, I say that with some credibility, because I've actually been able to make those things happen in my short time in the state Legislature.”

She introduced a bill that was enacted to expand the state's Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor from 6% to 30% of the federal credit. She also got passed a firearm storage bill and introduced a package of bills that seek to make child care more affordable.

McDonald Rivet supports student debt relief, ethics reform for the U.S. Supreme Court and a public option that would allow individuals to buy into Medicare or other government insurance. On immigration, she said she supports a pathway to citizenship only for people who came to the country legally.

McDonald Rivet grew up in Portland, Michigan, and has a background in education policy, previously serving as executive director of the Michigan Head Start Association and as an education adviser to Democratic former Gov. Jennifer Granholm. She also worked for nonprofit organizations including the Skillman Foundation, Greater Midland and the Michigan Health Improvement Alliance.

Her priorities in Congress would include restoring the expanded child tax credit that helped cut childhood poverty during the pandemic, codifying abortion rights at the federal level and tackling the cost of prescription drugs ― she wrote a bill to cap drug prices in the Legislature.

Abortion rights is “an incredibly motivating issue” this cycle, she said. She referred to a TV ad about her four daughters in which she says it’s "unacceptable to me that they're now living with fewer reproductive rights than I had."

In another ad, her husband, former state Rep. Joe Rivet, tumbles out of the family car in a tongue-in-cheek effort to get away from his wife’s 24-7 talk about cutting taxes. McDonald Rivet said the idea was to make people laugh amid negative attacks and “awfulness.”

“What you see in those ads is who I am," McDonald Rivet said. "I don't have a lot of tolerance for this gamesmanship and scaring people in order to get votes. We need to be serious about what's got to get done. I don't want to engage in those kinds of things that Paul Junge does. It demeans everybody.”

Attack ads

McDonald Rivet was referring to the millions of dollars spent on negative ads by Junge and his GOP allies since late July.

One spot calls her an “American Last politician” in targeting her 2023 vote in committee for $175 million in taxpayer incentives for the controversial battery parts manufacturing plant that China-linked Gotion Inc. is pursuing in the Big Rapids area.

The ad claims McDonald Rivet “cast the deciding vote to build a Chinese factory in Michigan." The 10-9 tally in the Senate Appropriations Committee was indeed decided by one vote, though any of the 10 Democrats who supported the incentives package that day could be considered the deciding vote.

“That project was vetted through the Michigan Strategic Fund, and it was put in a part of the state where people are desperate for jobs,” McDonald Rivet said of the Gotion project.

“At the end of the day, I am going to vote in a way that will raise our median income, bring jobs to areas that do not have access to high-wage jobs and have Americans working on American soil. The rest of this was political showmanship. Still is.”

A few Junge ads go after McDonald Rivet on the border, claiming she opposed tougher penalties for fentanyl dealers and supported funding lawyers for “illegals.” Her campaign said the ads are mostly referencing votes she took against amendments to add unrelated or “non-germane” legislation to an underlying bill, saying the Junge spots are "highly" misleading.

Another ad claims that McDonald Rivet backs allowing transgender girls to compete in girls youth sports. Junge’s campaign pointed to a 2022 questionnaire in which McDonald Rivet said the decision should be left up to local school districts and sports governing boards.

Junge is also under fire from attack ads. Several focus on his past comments opposing "made up" abortion rights, as well as his time spent outside of Michigan and his decision to rely on money he inherited to fuel his campaigns.

“He’s from California, I’m from Michigan. … Paul Junge has a trust fund. I have a Costco card,” McDonald Rivet said, holding up her Costco membership in one spot.

GOP allies noted that Democrats ran the same playbook against Junge in 2022 after he moved to Grand Blanc Township to challenge Kildee. “At this point, everyone knows,” DeLisle said. "I don't think it will be as effective this time around."

Junge has long bristled at the claims that he’s not from Michigan, noting he was born in Ann Arbor. And while his family moved around and he lived in California as an adult, he always considered Michigan home, he said.

“I was always from Michigan,” Junge said.

He also pushed back against Democratic claims that he would support cuts to Social Security, tax breaks for companies sending jobs to China and a national abortion ban without exceptions for rape and incest.

“All three of those charges are totally false without any foundation in evidence or fact,” Junge said.

While he is anti-abortion, Junge has said wouldn't support federal restrictions in Congress that conflict with Michigan's 2022 constitutional amendment protecting access to abortion.

“I will respect that decision and not try to alter it or change it from Washington, D.C.,” he said.

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