Meet the 9 Democrats vying to win the 13th U.S. House district seat – MLive.com

July 15, 2022 News Editor

The Democratic field in the 13th U.S. House district is the most heavily populated of any congressional race in Michigan with the number of candidates sitting at nine.

And that’s after the Board of State Canvassers disqualified two candidates, with a third dropping out of the race before the filing deadline.

The current list of candidates vying to be the district’s next congressional representation includes Sen. Adam Hollier, D-Detroit; Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Detroit; former Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo; Michigan Civil Rights Commission Chair and CEO of Focus Hope Portia Roberson; lawyer and educator Michael Griffie; former Detroit City Council member and attorney Sharon McPhail; Political Director of the Michigan National Action Network Sam Riddle; small business owner Lorrie Rutledge; and John Conyers III, co-founder of the Next Generation board of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services and son of former U.S. Rep. John Conyers, Jr.

Voters will get the chance to choose their favorite of the lot Aug. 2 during the primary election. Whoever wins here will go on to face off against Martell Bivings, the lone Republican in the race. He will not see a primary this August due to his other two competitors, Articia Bomer and R. Vance Patrick, being disqualified from the contest earlier this year.

MLive has partnered with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Michigan to provide the Vote411.org voter guide with information about candidates. Bivings, along with five of nine Democratic candidates, did provide their questionnaire responses, discussing issues such as education, economic security, elections, the environment, energy, social justice and guns.

Bivings is an employee with the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation as a Business Liaison City Council District 4. If elected, he told Vote411 that he would seek to have a federal health care system that is a free and competitive market, push for the United States to tap into its own oil supply to start exporting its own oil and that he would push to make Election Day a federal holiday “to give citizens more opportunities to participate.”

Given the makeup of the new 13th U.S. House District, however, chances of Bivings falling to a Democratic challenger are high. The district encapsulates portions of Wayne County and spans from Romulus on the west side to Hamtramck and Grosse Point to the north and east. The district is virgin territory for lawmakers and challengers alike, completely new territory from what any one congressperson represented pre-finalized redistricted maps.

Who Bivings will take on remains to be seen.

Roberson, Hollier and Thanedar have immerged on the Democratic side as potential front runners for the role with a wealth of fundraising and endorsements between them. And with the latter two already being sitting lawmakers from the Detroit area, its a leg up they potentially will receive for name recognition in that area of the state.

On the whole, the three – and by further extension, the Democratic field at large in this race – have remarkably similar stances on the topics of health care, the economy and social inequities.

Hollier is a captain in the U.S. Army with a bachelor’s degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University and a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Michigan. He has voiced support for the federal Build Back Better, calling it a “transformational investment,” while encouraging boosting economic growth at the family level.

“If, at a baseline, our country does not have families and individuals that have their basic needs met, we certainly should not be in a position where we are spending money on other programs and issues that do not affect this root cause,” Hollier said in a statement.

To address racial, economic health and educational inequities in Michigan, Hollier describes himself as a proponent of unions as means to push back against systemic racism while paving the way for Michiganders to make a living wage. He also supports uniting the country’s electrical infrastructure grid to move clean energy from where its produced in rural areas to where it can be further utilized in urban areas.

In the most recent fundraising period, Hollier reported bringing in roughly $513,012 and ending the April reporting period (which spans from Jan. 1 through March 31, with the filing deadline being April 15) with just under $453,278 still left on hand. He has been endorsed by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and the Detroit Regional Chamber, the latter of which is also backing Roberson.

However he additionally sports endorsements from the Michigan Chamber of Commerce as well as multiple sitting Democratic legislators including Sen. Jim Annanich of Flint, Sen. Erika Geiss of Taylor, and Sen. Dayna Polehanki of Livonia.

Roberson, by contrast, raised about $267,539 during that same time frame and ended the period with just under $253,482 still left on hand while Thanedar fundraised $180,758 and ended the quarter with a whopping $5.04 million on hand – a large chunk of which is due to his own personal wealth.

Roberson is a graduate of Wayne State Law School and has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Michigan.

She believes health care should be a fundamental right in the United States and is pushing to have the country’s health care system reformed so that “basic, preventative care is available to every family.” Roberson is also a proponent of increasing the minimum wage “to a living wage,” which she contends would help address rampant poverty rates both in and outside of Michigan.

In addition to raising the minimum wage, Roberson also supports creating university health care, protecting social security, making the Child Tax Credit permanent and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

She sports endorsements from the Detroit Chamber of Commerce as well as U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Detroit, who is retiring from Congress after decades in office. Parts of her current districts is encapsulated in the new 13th. She also has endorsements from Emily’s List and Michigan’s American Federation of Teachers chapter.

Thanedar, similarly, has also championed raising the minimum wage along with supporting free early childhood education, the Housing in Infrastructure Act, developing the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act and investing “in people, not special interests and corporations.”

“It’s time America focuses on empowering workers, instead of the rich. … We need to help people obtain generational wealth,” he said.

Thanedar has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Akron, a post doctoral degreed from the University of Michigan and a master’s in business administration from Fontbonne University, a private, non-profit four-year institution in Missouri.

Regarding endorsements, Thanedar has a few, most notably from the Indian American Impact Fund.

Gay-Dagnogo has a bachelor of science from Wayne State University with a master’s degree of education in instructional technology, also from WSU. Prior to serving on the Detroit Public Schools Board of Education, Gay-Dagnogo was also a state representative from 2016-2020 and was the legislature’s Detroit Caucus chair during that time.

During the most recent fundraising quarter, she brought in just under $221,333 (though loaned $80,000 of personal funds to her campaign) and ended the period with $217,826 still on hand.

On the topic of health care, Gay-Dagnogo believes in having government fund a mechanism to enable all Americans have affordable, single-payer health care. She also is a proponent of student loan forgiveness, free community college, expanding fully refundable child tax care credits and increasing the minimum wage.

Gay-Dagnogo is also an advocate for criminal justice reform, wanting to ensure that ex-offenders “have a fair chance to make a viable living and contribute to the communities impacted by their past criminal actions.”

Rutlidge has an associate’s degree in business administration from Henry Ford Community College. Her most recent campaign finance reports were not made available on the Federal Election Commission’s website so it is unknown how much money she raised during the most recent quarter.

Like others in the field, she supports reforming the country’s health care system, saying that she doesn’t believe the U.S. has one. Instead, Rutlidge said, “we have a sickness care system.”

“Our system needs reform in the areas of food quality standards, nutritional education and environmental improvements in poverty stricken areas where there’s a heavy population of minorities and/or working poor,” she said. “If elected I plan to introduce domestic legislation that raises the standards of agencies we now trust and rely on to protect our food quality and supply.”

Rutlidge additionally supports domestic policy reform to address “decades-old food and economic insecurities,” using the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the standard to maintain fair voting rights policies and pushing for affordable energy production.

Griffie, Riddle, Conyers and McPhail all failed to respond to questions from Vote411 in time for publication. Their online presence, however, suggests the quartet share many of the same views and values as others in the race.

Griffie is a Wayne State University graduate with a degree in English. He believes in codifying a woman’s right to choose in federal law while righting to increase safe, equitable access to contraceptives for all Americans, paying a living wage and investing in training programs to help lift Michiganders out of poverty and reducing classroom sizes while increasing teacher pay, “ensuring they are paid what they deserve.”

Out of these four, Griffie reported fundraising the most after ending the period with $307,090 and still possessing just under $252,905 in cash on hand. He also reported loaning $15,500 to his own campaign.

Conyers attended Morehouse College and The New School, majoring in philosophy. If elected, he would push to reduce prescription drug costs, increase the minimum wage to $20 an hour with scheduled increases directly linked to inflation and cost of living adjustments, make permanent the expanded Child Tax Credits and cancel all federally held student loan debt.

Additionally, Conyers supports passing the Green New Deal, empowering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy to impose maximum penalties on emissions violators, passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and passing the Women’s Health Protection Act in order to enshrine a patient’s ability to receive abortion care.

He did not have a current campaign finance statement readily available in time for publication.

McPhail is a graduate of Northeastern School of Law and has served as a lawyer for 26 years, being the fourth ever woman president of the National Bar Association. As a candidate, McPhail wants more police officers within the 13th U.S. House district with training and counseling experience so as to better keep crime off the streets.

She also believes in parental control in schools and reducing barriers to access for those looking to become small business owners. In the most recent campaign finance reporting period, she indicated raising $35,065 and ending the quarter with $33,330.

Riddle did not possess a candidate website, though is somewhat active on Twitter. He is a graduate of Michigan State University with a juris doctorate from the University of Michigan. As a candidate, he is in favor of legalizing marijuana at the federal level and opening the marijuana industry to all financial institutions.

In an interview with the Metro Times, Riddle said the theme of his campaign is “jobs, justice and peace.” Like Conyers, Riddle also did not have campaign finance data readily available in time for publication.

All responses in the voter guide were submitted directly by the candidate and have not been edited by the League of Women Voters, except for necessary cuts if a reply exceeded character limitations. Spelling and grammar were not corrected. Publication of candidate statements and opinions is solely in the interest of public service and should NOT be considered as an endorsement. The League never supports or opposes any candidates or political parties.

Information on state, county and local primary races can be found at Vote411.org.

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