After the 2020 census, when the new maps were drawn in Michigan, southern Macomb County (and some of Oakland County)— the new 10th district— came into existence without an incumbent. It includes Sterling Heights, Warren, Rochester, Mt. Clemens, Roseville, Center Line, Utica, Fraser… and has an R+3 PVI. The partisan lean is even worse— R+6. Haley Stevens and Andy Levin chose to fight it out in the Democratic 11th district next door, leaving the 10th open. Former judge Carl Marlinga was the best known Democrat to enter the race and he won the 5-way primary and faced Republican carpetbagger John James.
Marlinga was gigantically outspent by James— $6,091,441 to $1,043,911. On top of that, McCarthy’s SuperPAC spent $1,428,319 bolstering James and the NRCC spent another $103,000. The DCCC spent zero— the same amount Pelosi’s Super PAC spent. The Democrats wrote off MI-10 and Carl Marlinga entirely. They considered it an unwindable race.
And then Election Day came around. It was one of the closest races in the country.
John James (R)- 159,202 (48.80%)
Carl Marlinga (D)- 157,602 (48.31%)
Another 5,905 votes (1.81%) went to a woman running on the Working Class Party line and the Libertarian took 3,524 votes (1.08%).
James has been a MAGA-robot, voting for every extremist proposition the GOP has put forward. And Marlinga, now 77, has just filed paperwork to run and says he is making a final decision about a rematch, although 3 other Democrats are running— Emily Busch, Brian Jaye and Diane Young, all 3 to the left of Marlinga. On top of that, local union leaders and progressives have been trying to draft former Congressman Andy Levin who currently works at the Center for American Progress where he is working on the kind of projects that have motivated his professional career— climate change, clean energy, workers’ rights…