LANSING, Mich. — The Democratic Party establishment is on the verge of another big problem ahead of November’s midterm elections.
In Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, party leaders believe either of two candidates running — former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam or onetime Ukraine ambassador Bridget Brink — could win the battleground district.
The problem? There’s a third candidate. And Maasdam and Brink have attacked each other relentlessly while drawing from the same pool of supporters — giving a progressive activist a chance to win instead.
Democratic strategists in Michigan and Washington are deeply worried that the party is on the verge of nominating William Lawrence, co-founder of the climate activism group Sunrise Movement. Doing so, they fear, would be an electoral disaster in a swing district — held by Republican Rep. Tom Barrett — that narrowly backed Donald Trump in 2024.
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The situation has left some Democrats frustrated at the inability of its centrist and establishment-friendly factions to unify behind one candidate, in the joint goal of blocking a candidate whose unabashedly progressive politics they agree are a poor fit for the district.
“It’s a mess,” said Emily Cherniack, founder and CEO of New Politics, which backs candidates with a service background and has endorsed Maasdam. “People aren’t coalescing to say, ‘This is going to be the candidate because, mission first, we gotta win. That’s not happening.”
Cherniack, in an interview last week, said she expected Lawrence would win, even if he gets far less than 50% of the vote.
On Wednesday, a pro-Maasdam group released a poll showing Lawrence leading the primary field with 38% support, followed by Maasdam in second and Brink in third. Other recent surveys have shown Brink in second place.
Michigan’s 7th District, a mix of suburban and rural communities that includes Lansing, is rated a “toss-up” by The Cook Political Report, and Democrats have targeted it as one of their best chances to flip a GOP-held district in November.
“It’s an insane thing to say about what should be a top-5 pickup opportunity this year, but I think we might be about to shoot ourselves in the head on this one,” said one Democratic strategist in Michigan, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
It’s the latest instance of the Democratic Party’s sometimes stumbling efforts to block progressive candidates from winning races in key states or districts, one that threatens to complicate its efforts to win congressional majorities in the House and Senate this fall.
In Maine, for instance, progressive newcomer Graham Platner toppled a sitting governor in the state’s Senate primary, before being forced from the race after being accused of sexual assault. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, meanwhile, has faced setbacks in places like California and Arizona, where its preferred candidates lost their primaries.
The DCCC has not publicly expressed a preference in the 7th District race. But other centrist Democratic leaders say the party needs to be able to better navigate races like these, whether led by party committees or the candidates themselves.
“It’s vital that in winnable but tough swing districts, mainstream Democrats take their cues from Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg and step aside to avoid a more extreme candidate from winning,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left Democratic think tank Third Way.
In interviews this week, neither Brink nor Maasdam gave any indication they were planning to step aside, each calling themselves the candidate with the best chance to win a primary and general election.
“It seems a little awkward to have the person who’s in the lead of that group drop out of the race to give it to the person who’s not in the lead,” Maasdam told NOTUS in an interview, reflecting his campaign’s belief that he has pulled ahead of Brink and sits within striking distance of Lawrence. “I would say, the person who’s not in the lead should drop out, but that would just be my opinion.”
Brink, whose campaign maintains she leads Maasdam in the polls, said in an interview with NOTUS that it’s a sign of weakness for her opponent’s campaign that outside groups have spent millions of dollars backing his candidacy.
“I am the strongest candidate to win both the primary and the general election,” she said.
The two candidates have continued to attack each other publicly, while outside groups working on their behalf have also launched negative ads against their opponent.
Lawrence has also been the recipient of attack ads from at least one outside group, part of a significant, if belated, effort to siphon support from his campaign. He’s also been the beneficiary of more than $1 million in ads widely believed to be funded by a Republican group, Michigan Sunrise PAC — an effort to meddle in Democratic primaries that the GOP has undertaken in a handful of key districts this year.
Brink and Maasdam have also split the endorsements of local power brokers: Maasdam has the support of Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who held the 7th District seat before running for Senate in 2024 and took the unusual step of appearing in a pro-Maasdam ad. Brink has the support of an array of local Democratic leaders, including former Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
Lawrence has campaigned explicitly on the acrimony between Maasdam and Brink and the deluge of outside spending trying to assist their campaigns. On Tuesday, he said he spent much of the day walking more than 12 miles through Lansing in an effort to talk to voters and business owners about policies that could help make life easier.
“I think the voters are sick of it, and we’ve been running a positive campaign all along, fighting hard for what we believe,” he told NOTUS in an interview. “Not afraid to draw a contrast but keeping it focused on policy rather than baseless, personal attacks, like my two opponents have been throwing at each other.”
Lawrence ended his walk Tuesday at a campaign rally in Lansing, sharing a stage with Abdul El-Sayed, an ideological ally who is himself on the ballot next week as a Senate candidate. Like El-Sayed, Lawrence backs single-payer health care, denounces Israel’s treatment of Palestine, and argues that he represents a fresh start from the failed status-quo politics of yesteryear.
He’s also campaigned aggressively against data centers, an issue he said would help him win over Republican voters in November. Lawrence denied he would be the weakest candidate to face the Republican this fall, saying his opposition to the establishment in both parties will make him an attractive candidate for a wide array of voters.
“The Democrats have let us down so many times, and they also participate in the cover-up of the Epstein files, and they’ve also voted for these endless and pointless wars over the last 25 years,” he said. “And so, I’m not here to play partisan games. I’m not here to play Team Red against Team Blue. I’m here to represent the people of these districts.”
Brink and Maasdam allies say they think their preferred candidate still has at least an outside chance to win, if they’re able to muster a late surge in momentum. But each side is also deeply frustrated with the other.
Maasdam and his allies think he has the late momentum in the race, driven by his military background (Maasdam carried the “nuclear football” for President Barack Obama, a biographical fact supportive groups have cited in ads) and the perception he’d give Democrats a formidable nominee to back in the fall. At a campaign event Wednesday in Williamston, he also made an explicit electoral argument against Lawrence, saying his radical approach to politics won’t sit well with many voters of the district.
“I want work within the bounds the Constitution provides. I think he wants to burn that down,” he said to an audience of about 20 voters. “He’d rather burn it down and start with a new system than to work within the bounds of what we have created in America. And I think that’s the wrong way to go.”
Brink and her allies see the race differently. They believe Maasdam is only competitive because of a relatively late surge of millions of dollars in outside spending, much of which ultimately did more to boost Lawrence’s candidacy than his own.
“What’s happening in our race is that there’s a ton of dark money in this race — it’s a kind of super PAC money, and it’s unaccountable,” said Brink, who added that $5 million of the $6 million spent in the primary by outside groups had gone toward helping Maasdam’s campaign. “It’s not transparent.”
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