Free Press endorsement: Paul Junge in 8th District GOP primary for retiring Kildee's seat
The road to control of the U.S. Congress lies through Michigan; in particular, Michigan's 8th Congressional District.
The Republican Party, seeking to solidify or even expand its thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, has its hopes pinned on the open 8th District seat created by the retirement of Democratic U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township.
Kildee has held the seat since 2013; before that, his uncle Dale Kildee had held the office since 1977.
But it would be a mistake to view this as a safe seat for Democrats. The politics of this sprawling district — which includes Saginaw and Bay counties, and most of Genesee, Midland and Tuscola counties — have shifted to the right during the Kildees' long tenure, and Republicans are hoping to convert this long-blue seat to red.
The top vote-getter in the Aug. 6 primary will face a Democratic general election opponent. The Free Press will make a separate endorsement for the general election.
In the race to replace Kildee, Paul Junge of Grand Blanc appears to be the inevitable GOP nominee. Junge ran against Kildee in 2022 and lost by about 10 percentage points. In a Federal Election Commission filing at the end of March, Junge reported $1.1 million, comprising $1 million in loans and roughly $99,389 from contributors.
His primary opponents include Mary Draves of Midland, a former Dow executive who runs a consulting company, and Grand Blanc resident Anthony Hudson, a trucking company owner.
Hudson has extreme and nonsensical beliefs that are a poor fit for even a Republican-tilting district, including effectively disbanding the U.S. military; his campaign came under fire for a bizarre TikTok post using the AI-generated voice of late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Hudson says another person with access to his social media created and posted the video. He reported $29,237 at the last filing deadline. Draves cancelled a scheduled endorsement interview with the Detroit Free Press two hours before the agreed-upon time, and did not respond to attempts to reschedule. At the end of March, she had not reported any campaign contributions.
PAUL JUNGE is our pick for Republican voters in the Aug. 6 primary.
Editorial:1 tip to change the outcome of elections
Conservative representation
Junge is hoping to give right-leaning swaths of the district conservative representation for the first time in years. His beliefs are in line with the mainstream Republicans of his district.
A former criminal prosecutor and TV news anchor, Junge worked in external affairs for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a media relations position, under President Donald Trump.
He has familiarity with issues at the southern border and believes requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting hearings would ease many of the problems that come with mass migration into the U.S.
“A lot of what becomes illegal immigration is people who seek asylum,” Junge told the Free Press Editorial Board. “But once people get an asylum hearing ... the problem is if the hearing isn’t set for two years or five years later, if they’ve come into the country, they frequently don’t show up for their hearing, or they get established and it becomes a feeling of ‘Well, this is where I live now.’”
Junge's stance on immigration elides its complexity, the danger asylum seekers face in their home countries, and the value of new residents to a state with declining population.
And Junge, a largely unconditional supporter of Israel, must work harder to understand the concerns of Muslim and Arab Americans in the 8th District, particularly the mounting death toll and ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Junge also advocates curbing government spending as a means of easing inflation.
“With $34 trillion in federal debt, the interest payments on that are going to begin to crowd out everything else in the federal budget,” he said. “We’re going to have to control federal spending. We’re going to have to do things to encourage a free-market system to adjust its price levels, continue, hopefully on a pretty strong employment grounding and get the price levels back in place so we don’t have continued inflationary pressures.”
He does not dispute the results of the 2020 presidential election, and says he would defend voters in any instance where there was an effort to undermine an election, a marked departure from the president in whose administration he served.
How to vote
Local clerks will mail absentee ballots to Michigan voters on June 27. Registered voters may cast ballots early, in person, from July 27 to Aug. 4 — check with your local clerk for the location of early voting sites and ballot dropboxes. And, of course, you can vote — and register to vote — in person on Aug. 6, Election Day.
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