Why I’m Running – Feb. 27, 2023

For me, Michigan is where it all started. No matter where I've gone in my life, no matter who I've met, nothing is more important to me than this place.

My call to public service started on 9/11. It was my second day of grad school in New York City, and by the time the smoke cleared, I knew I wanted a career in public service, protecting my country. I was recruited by the CIA to be a Middle East analyst, and sent overseas to do three tours in Iraq alongside our military. I came back to work in the White House under two presidents, one Republican and one Democrat.

But no matter what crises I've lived through, nothing tested me more than when my mom was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer, and she didn't have health insurance. She had let it lapse after many years of being gouged by the insurance companies because she happened to have a pre-existing condition.

It was like a grenade went off in our lives. I took a leave of absence, came home to Michigan, and the same week and the same month that we're desperately trying to get her life-saving care was the same week and the same month that we filled out the paperwork for her to declare bankruptcy. We lost her in 2011, but her enduring gift to me was the way the community came together for us—friends, family, strangers—in our hour of crisis.

But that's what we do in Michigan. Those are our values.

I learned those values on my family farm in Holly. I'm a third-generation Michigander, and my family has lived the American dream. My great-grandfather came through Ellis Island, started a meat company, moved it to Michigan, and built that company into a Michigan icon, producing the ballpark frank that Michiganders have enjoyed for 60 years.

Look, we all know America is going through something right now. We seem to be living crisis to crisis. But there are certain things that should be really simple, like living a middle-class life in the state that invented the middle class, like making things in America so that we're in control of our own economic security, like protecting our children from the things that are truly harming them, and preserving our rights and our democracy so that our kids can live their version of the American dream.

This is why I'm running for the United States Senate. We need a new generation of leaders that thinks differently, works harder, and never forgets that we are public servants.

Look, our country is going to get through this. It's hard work, but that's what Michiganders do. We need engaged citizens and principled leaders because together, there is no problem we cannot solve.

Elissa.slotkin. (2023, February 27). Elissa Slotkin for U.S. Senate: Why I'm running [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyKJF10PUfA