US Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is Michigan’s newly elected junior senator. After serving three successive terms representing Michigan’s 7th and 8th Congressional districts, she outperformed Kamala Harris and secured the Senate seat by winning the votes of some of the same people who voted for Donald Trump. Prior to being elected to office, Slotkin served as a CIA analyst with three tours in Iraq, in both the Bush and Obama administrations, and as the Assistant Secretary of Defense. Slotkin is emerging as a rising star in Democratic politics as a candidate who has proven that she knows how to appeal to voters in red and purple districts. Live from her home state of Michigan, immediately following President Trump’s first address to Congress, Slotkin delivered the Democratic Party’s response—where she highlighted the importance of bipartisanship and called on Americans to focus on one thing that will make a difference. Senator Slotkin took the time to sit down with BPR to discuss her priorities in the Senate and the work ahead for today’s college students.
Matthew Kotcher: So I want to start with the opioid crisis. I see that you were a part of passing the bipartisan Halt Fentanyl Act last month. Supporters argue that this is a step towards public safety, but critics raised concerns about disproportionate sentencing. What is the unifying value for your support, and how do you think that value aligns with the needs of your state and your overall approach to policy making?
Elissa Slotkin: I mean, given the number of people that fentanyl is killing every week and every month in our country, it just requires significant action. And we’ve still got a tremendous amount of fentanyl coming into the country. So, you know, as someone who’s a former CIA officer and Pentagon official, I don’t want anything that’s going to kill Americans, right? I can’t stand by and support that. Now, I do think we can’t have a repeat of what happened in the 1980s where people got automatic sentences that were disproportionate to the crime. The sentence has to fit the crime. And we saw the negative effects of that with the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s. But my overall value is that, as someone who has protected the homeland my whole life, I take a national security lens to everything that I see because it’s about protecting Americans. That’s what I think my job is about and why I voted for the bill—and lots of other bills like it.
MK: In the past election, it’s very interesting that you won Michigan when the state went for Trump and it was close. But some people voted for you and President Trump at the same time. How does that help you govern and think about your role?
ES: Well, first of all, you know, there’s just a small handful of us in elected office who were able to win on the same ballot as Donald Trump. I’ve done it a few times now in the House and the Senate. And I just think it helps explain to a lot of people who come from either red states or very blue states that there are a lot of places in this country that are swing states with swing voters, and they’re often the center of gravity in deciding presidential elections and who is the leader in Congress and in the Senate. So I think it gives me some helpful credibility. I think that I was able to win in Michigan for two reasons. One, because I talked almost exclusively about economic issues. It was a pocketbook issue, and a lot of people felt like the Democrats stood for everything and didn’t know what our priorities were, and unfortunately voted for Trump because they thought he’d put more money in their pockets. Now, realistically, at this point, I think it’s becoming clear that he’s going to make you pay in every part of your life.
But in my campaign, I spent all of our TV ads, our digital ads, my speeches, my mail, my interviews, talking about economic issues. And then secondly, I think I have a few more ounces of “alpha energy” than a lot of people in my party. And I think Democrats are sorely missing that “alpha energy”—people need to know that there’s someone in the fight. They need to know that you’re going to lead with principle and purpose, but you’re going to be tough when you need to be. And I think a lot of people in my part of the world, in the Midwest, think that the Democratic Party has become the party of the East Coast and the West Coast, of the faculty lounge. And the truth is, there’s a lot of us in the middle. And we need to speak not only to the East Coast and the West Coast, but to the middle of the country.
MK: As a student-run university publication, our readers are concerned about higher education. Can you talk to me about universities losing their tax exempt status, the potential taxing of endowments, and, of course, the threat now from weaponizing federal funding to threaten universities and dependence?
ES: Yeah, I mean, it’s clear the Trump administration is trying to make an example of universities. They’re going after universities on many different levels. And I believe universities should be the incubators for our next generation, that they should allow freedom of speech of all kinds, and they shouldn’t be targeted using things like antisemitism to attack the very foundation of the university, the very livelihood of the university. I have no problem with all voices getting an airing on our campuses. That’s what universities should be. But I do not support, especially as a Jew, the use of antisemitism to go after entire institutions. And I think unfortunately, you know, we’re going to have to stand up on behalf of freedom of speech. Because clearly, Trump is attempting to make all of these high profile universities the example and instill fear in every single institution of higher learning.
MK: You worked for both former Presidents Bush and Obama. Did their different political affiliations make a difference?
ES: When you’re in the national security world, at the CIA and at the Pentagon, and you do three tours in Iraq alongside the military, I can’t explain clearly enough how politics just used to not even be in the conversation. You would work alongside someone for 15 years and have no idea how they vote. Politics just didn’t come up because it was about the mission of protecting the country, protecting American citizens abroad. So all you cared about was the mission. If I’m about to go on a dangerous convoy in Baghdad, why do I care who you voted for? I care if you’re rested and alert and if you’ve cleaned your weapon. That’s what I care about. So I worked very proudly for whoever was my commander in chief. I worked for Bush in the Bush White House, and I was there the day he left office. And the Monday that Barack Obama walked in and became our new president, I worked for two very different presidents in the same job—and I was proud of that. Unfortunately, over the years, politics has become so much more toxic. So the students at Brown and other universities have grown up almost exclusively under a time of deep polarization. That pains me because I don’t come from that tradition, and I hate it. I can’t stand it. We should be able to disagree vociferously without being nasty to each other. So it certainly colors how I approach my work as a Democratic congresswoman that represents a Republican voting state in this last election. And it just colors how I approach issues. I try to be independently minded and take every issue on its face, not coming with some ideology to every policy conversation.
MK: So now for our last question: You asked your listeners to focus on one thing for our lightning round, could you throw out several single things for our readers to grab on to and focus on?
ES: For me, the issues are twofold. Either go really deep on protecting our democracy or bringing the middle voters into the fight. There’s so much going on every single day, whether it’s election security, the separation of powers, or the Trump administration obeying a Supreme Court ruling—go deep on democracy, or go deep on bringing those middle voters—those swing voters—into the fight. That means focusing on people’s pocketbooks. Social Security, Medicare, the post office. The issues that really affect a broad brush of people. That’s how we were successful in pushing back on Trump and his first administration. The number one most effective pushback we did against Trump was against his desire to repeal Obamacare. He ran on it. He campaigned on it. He made it his signature issue. And we stopped him from doing that. And that’s because we brought the middle of the country, the middle voters, the swing voters into the fight. They learned that they were about to lose their health care. So either democracy, or bringing the middle into the fight.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.