WASHINGTON —Ten months out from next year’s congressional primaries in Michigan, it’s almost certain U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, will face at least one Democratic challenger who will be trying to make the argument to Wayne County voters that she’s too controversial and that she has been more worried about Palestine than her own district.
Who will challenge her? It’s entirely unclear. But whoever steps up to do so is facing the fight of their lives — on the campaign trail and on the facts.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib talks about relentless attacks from Trump
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib sat down with the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board for a conversation about her first term.
Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press
In Tlaib, they’ll be facing an incumbent who not only can raise scads of money and is known for tireless campaigning, but whose name recognition — thanks in large part to attacks on her by President Donald Trump over her stances on Israel and an impeachment effort she has led since January — has gone from local to international.
In many cases, that has led to people in southeastern Michigan and elsewhere rallying around her. And while some — especially those outside her district, Republican opponents and some in the Jewish community — have labeled her as too divisive, there are others who have come to her defense, considering her a progressive icon. Establishment Democrats in Detroit are unlikely to mount a concerted challenge to her.
“Conventional wisdom would have it that it’s more than likely that she would be challenged,” said Jonathan Kinloch, who chairs the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party Committee that Tlaib represents. “But there is no way in the world that the (group) won’t endorse the sitting member of Congress. She’s given us no reason not to stand with her. She’s only shown courage and commitment. … There is no reason why we wouldn’t support our sitting congresswoman.“
Metro Detroit politics being what they are, however, a challenge is almost guaranteed.
Dee McBroom, a Detroit political consultant who helped run Westland Mayor Bill Wild’s unsuccessful campaign for the seat last year, said questions about human rights conditions in occupied Palestine — an issue Tlaib has raised herself or been asked about repeatedly — didn’t come up at all during her 2018 campaign. And she said she’s heard from some Detroiters “who feel like Rashida is spending their political capital in Washington and not on their behalf.”
Noah Arbit, who founded the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus to advocate for candidates Democratic Jews in the state feel represent their interests, said while many Jews are supportive of her, more moderate members of southeastern Michigan’s Jewish community do have “concerns about Congresswoman Tlaib,” her comments and her stances on Israel.
“It is possible,” he said, that could lead some of them to cast around for another candidate.
And while he doesn’t believe her comments have been as troublesome as some others — Tlaib is a Muslim whose family comes from what is now the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories — he worries that animosity toward her in the suburbs could lead some Jews to reject Democrats. He hopes Tlaib reaches out to the community.
“I know intimately what it’s going to take in 2020 for this community … to beat Trump,” he said.
I can tell you, I’m engaging my residents in a way that’s actually resulting in legislation. That means the world to them …
Tlaib not only knows there could be a challenge, she expects one. And if you challenge her on the question of what she has or hasn’t done in the district, she’s prepared to pepper you with evidence to the contrary, delivered in her distinctive rat-a-tat style:
- More than 40 meetings with district residents in eight months’ time
- More than 9,000 constituent letters answered
- More than 260 bills cosponsored and 11 she introduced herself, including those banning facial recognition technology in public housing, fighting unfair credit reporting and creating a $3,000 tax credit for lower-income families
- An impeachment effort that was finally launched this week amid allegations Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I can tell you, I’m engaging my residents in a way that’s actually resulting in legislation,” Tlaib said. “That means the world to them, they feel like they finally have a voice.”
Eddie McDonald, a veteran political consultant in Detroit, said if someone does take her on, she won’t be a pushover.
“She’s never quit campaigning. I mean she’s out, she’s got a good constituent ground game, she’s here every weekend,” he said. “And the harder Trump goes at her, the stronger her support will become.”
As of June 30, she had more than $600,000 in the bank, an indication of her fundraising skills. In last year’s election, she raised about $1.7 million — compared with about $270,000 for her chief rival, Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones.
She’s never quit campaigning … And the harder Trump goes at her, the stronger her support will become.
This past July, Ed Sarpolus, of Lansing-based Target Insyght, did a poll for MIRS, the Michigan Information and Research Service. The poll found Tlaib leading Jones — a possible candidate in 2020 who lost a close race for the Democratic nomination to Tlaib in a crowded field for the full two-year term in 2018 and then mounted an ill-advised write-in campaign after that — 56% to 19% in a hypothetical head-to-head race. The poll had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
His take? A year ago, he said, Tlaib was “an unknown quantity running against people who were known quantities.” After months of Trump bashing her, however, it has only helped her.
“She’s a rallying cry, ‘You’re picking on our congressperson,’ ” he said.
And that’s not just the case in her district.
Judy Neal, 51, of Redford Township, is a Tlaib supporter who came into her camp after initially supporting someone else. She says she has been moved by the passion Tlaib, a former state representative, social justice lawyer and activist, has shown for local issues — as well as her commitment on human rights in occupied Palestine, recognizing that it’s a family issue for Tlaib.
Recently, Neal said she was vacationing in Jamaica, and met two women from England who were talking about Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “These women knew who Rashida was and they thought she was amazing,” said Neal. “When people find out you live in the 13th (District), it tends to come up.”
Meanwhile, there are plenty of supporters of Tlaib who push back against claims that she is anti-Semitic because of her criticism of Israel. Rabbi Alana Alpert, who is both the rabbi at Congregation T’chiyah in Oak Park and a community organizer with Detroit Jews for Justice, said Jews who adopt conservative complaints of Tlaib as an anti-Semite are not only misguided but “do Trump’s dirty work for him.”
“Targeting Rashida with false accusations of antisemitism is a right-wing strategy to distract from the fact that the political movement behind Trump is responsible for emboldening the worst wave of violent antisemitism in American history,” she said in an email to the Free Press.
“Rashida stood with us after the massacre in Pittsburgh (where 11 people died in a shooting at a synagogue), and we will continue to work together on the countless issues we face.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib addresses how to take on hate: ‘We will prevail’
U.S Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Tlaib, talks about the challenges of public service in the current political environement at a “Take on Hate” rally in Dearborn.
Wochit, Wochit
Less than a year before the Aug. 4, 2020, Democratic primary, no one has stepped forward to start raising money and meeting voters, though Tlaib is doing both.
Wild isn’t expected to run again. Former state Sen Coleman A. Young II of Detroit, who ran for the open seat won by Tlaib last year, says he’s not running. Neither is former state Sen. Ian Conyers, whose great uncle — John Conyers — held the seat for decades before retiring in 2017.
Other prominent possible candidates — Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon and former Detroit City Council member Sharon McPhail among them — appear, for now, out of the running. No other contenders have publicly stepped up.
And while Jones is said to be weighing another run, if she launches one, it will likely be without the institutional support she had last year, when Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and others supported her.
But there is still plenty of time to launch a run — and a challenge, from someone, is almost guaranteed.
If Tlaib wins a second term, it will make it that much harder to beat her in the future. And congressional seats — which an officeholder can keep for as long as he or she keeps winning every two years — are valuable political commodities. Conyers held his for 52 years before retiring.
Tlaib’s detractors, however, say if a viable candidate comes forward, he or she could find financial support from outside the district.
Hannan Lis, of Farmington Hills, is an active member of southeast Michigan’s Jewish community who considers statements Tlaib has made in support of an Israeli boycott movement “an affront and very offensive to Jews.” He says those concerns could result in support for another candidate.
Meanwhile, Virginia Williams, a Romulus City Council member, argues that Tlaib and other progressives, including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., need to stop focusing on the president.
“The more attention that they give Trump, the less likely you have people pay attention to what you’re doing,” she said. “You already know he’s a maniac, but you can’t convince people to use common sense when he don’t have it. We have to stop trying to highlight who Trump is, and show us who you are.”
Given the animosity between Tlaib and Trump — who has called her violent and crazy on Twitter — there are also those who wonder whether her name, attached to a request for funding or a grant in her district, might be turned back, though there haven’t been any specific examples of this.
She’s still a lightning rod for comment and controversy, however, and there are complicated arguments both for why she’ll see a challenge and why she’ll be so hard to beat.
If Michigan has ever had a member of Congress who has become as well known nationally and even internationally as Tlaib has — in just eight months in office — we’re unaware of it.
On the night after the former state representative was sworn in, she made news telling a group that Democrats were going to impeach Trump and referring to him as a mother-f—-r, causing him to attack her repeatedly on Twitter. Later, she would make remarks —including those in support of people’s rights to boycott Israel and understating the historical violence and hostility that Jews faced in the creation of Israel — that led some to call her an anti-Semite. Tlaib, however, has also said Jews deserve a safe haven while at the same time decrying human rights abuses in occupied Palestine, where her grandmother still lives.
In August, she sharply criticized Israel after that country refused to let her visit the occupied West Bank unless she promised not to promote any boycott during the trip, a stance pushed by Trump. Then she caught criticism herself for at first saying she would make such a promise, then declining to do so.
Through it all, she has become a progressive icon, along with Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the so-called “squad” of new Democratic women of color in Congress: Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who, with Tlaib, is one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress. In July, Trump was chastised for posting a racist tweet in which he told all four to “go back” to their home countries if they were going to criticize his administration — even though all four are U.S. citizens and, with the exception of Omar, who is from Somalia, were born in this country.
But Tlaib’s victory in the August 2018 Democratic primary — the winner of which was virtually assured of victory in the general election in a predominantly Democratic district — was anything but a given. She beat Jones by a mere 900 votes, 27,841 to 26,941, in a field of six candidates — all of them former or current officeholders — running for the full two-year beginning in January 2019.
But it was Jones — despite raising far less money than Tlaib and running a far less intense campaign — who beat Tlaib by 1,648 votes in a four-person race to serve out the remaining two months of Conyers’ last term, suggesting that if the vote hadn’t been split, she might have won both.
Anyone thinking that makes Tlaib vulnerable, however, needs to consider how tough she might be.
The first major political problem for taking on Tlaib if you’re a would-be challenger is the fact that, as was the case with Jones in 2018, you’re unlikely to be the only one running against her.
The 13th Congressional District includes a decent part of western Wayne County — Westland, Redford, Romulus — but it’s still predominantly compromised of Detroit’s Midtown and west side. And there’s an unspoken rule about Detroit politics, if not politics in general, that if one person has a decent shot of winning a seat he or she doesn’t have, expect a lot more people to jump in as well.
The larger the field, the better the chance an incumbent has of winning, and that’s especially true for a candidate like Tlaib whose name recognition has skyrocketed, especially considering that Trump — who lost her district with only 18% of the vote in 2016 — has been the one attacking her.
Even Joe DiSano, a Democratic consultant who has been sharply critical of Tlaib and who believes she can be beaten in a smaller field, thinks that’s unlikely. “I don’t think in Detroit you’re going to get it down to one candidate.”
It’s also worth noting that Tlaib, who is a civic and social activist at heart and a self-described “girl with a bullhorn,” not only enjoys a well-earned reputation as a strong campaigner, knocking on thousands of doors herself, and showing up at community events. She also has used her newfound celebrity to bring attention to local issues — such as this month when she brought a congressional subcommittee chairman in to talk about environmental issues, including a recent chemical leak at Marathon’s refinery in southwest Detroit — and she is also able to raise plenty of money.
There is anecdotal evidence, however, to suggest that if a viable alternative to Tlaib surfaced — and he or she had a clear path to beating her — that there would be funding and support to sustain a challenge.
“If there is a good candidate who can demonstrate their ability to win, who can show they are moving the needle, the funding will be there,” Sarpolus said.
Lis, too, sees there being support for such a candidate “if that kind of candidate was there,” believing that Tlaib’s perspective on the occupied territories and reluctance to support the creation of separate Israeli and Palestinian states has alienated some Jews.
But he said he didn’t “see anyone in the (Jewish) community taking on the mantle of finding another candidate.” He also added that he doesn’t see Tlaib as a drag on more moderate Democratic candidates in the suburbs who support a two-state solution in Israel.
Ultimately, though, Tlaib is going to be very tough to beat.
Why? Because it’s impossible to argue that Tlaib — love her or hate her — doesn’t wear Detroit on her sleeve.
When she referred to Trump as a “mother-f—-r,” in January, she noted that using that word in Detroit, where she grew up in the southwest, wasn’t quite as uncommon as maybe it is in the halls of Congress. And if you hear her talk about the legislation she’s pushing — to improve access to affordable auto insurance, say — you hear about Detroit.
When she doesn’t have votes in Washington, she says, she’s back at home, with her two young sons.
She reminds people in the nation’s capital, often, that she’s fighting for one of the most impoverished congressional districts in the nation.
And in late July, when politicians were lining up around the Fox Theatre for interviews on CNN at the time of the Democratic debate, a Free Press reporter, saying hi to her, got only a quick wave, as she talked intensely to a man on Woodward Avenue. She later told the reporter that she knew the man, that he has a mental illness. “He feels like he’s being followed sometimes,” she said. “And I was worried he’s not on his medication.”
So, if you’re going to run against Tlaib, that’s what you’re going to be running against — those kind of stories, that kind of activism. A campaign machine that can potentially raise millions, and a candidate who believes fervently on the power of knocking on doors and leading civic causes. One who has opened four neighborhood centers across the district to help get services to constituents and who regularly attends local political and neighborhood meetings.
TJ Bucholz, a political consultant and old friend of Tlaib’s who worked on her 2018 campaign, acknowledges that she can get sucked into divisive issues, that she’ll talk to anyone, about anything, and she doesn’t hold back her views.
“She’s not afraid to swing at a pitch,” he said. But he also said that anyone who tries to argue that she’s not concerned first about her district either isn’t paying attention or is just trying to get elected.
There’s still time for someone to get in the race, of course, though as Sarpolus notes, if you plan to beat Tlaib, you need to be out there raising money, knocking on doors, now. And nobody is.
Tlaib says it’s the last thing on her mind, a challenger which she is sure she will get.
“I don’t worry. I know you don’t believe me,” she said. “I’m one of those people that no matter if I’m elected or not, I will be doing exactly what I’m doing now.”
Read more:
How Detroit’s Rashida Tlaib will make history in Washington
Rashida Tlaib consulted family on Israel trip: ‘We all decided I couldn’t go’
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.
