If the Michigan Republican runs for Senate, it will be a welcome indication that toxic forces, left and right, can’t keep all good people out of public life.
Yesterday, I bemoaned (with one caveat) the prospect of another Blake Masters campaign for Senate in Arizona. That Masters, a failed (and weird) 2022 candidate, would want to run again so quickly is, among other things, further evidence that in modern politics bad people are seeking power shamelessly while good people so often stand by.
Maybe not all good people. Peter Meijer, who represented Michigan’s third congressional district (Grand Rapids and some of the surrounding area) for one term, confirmed to the Detroit Free Press that he has formed an exploratory committee for a possible 2024 Senate run. He said he was “honored by the many Michigan conservatives who are encouraging me to run.” As for why he might enter, he elaborated:
Winning in 2024 is the only way we can stop Biden’s ruinous economic policies and mass weaponization of government. It will take someone who can’t be bought and is willing to be bold, and I am considering running for Senate to do my part to get us out of this mess.
Meijer’s short time in elected office marked him as a thoughtful legislator. It also made him a target for two insidious political forces: the power-obsessed Left and the Trumpy Right. Meijer angered the latter when one of his first congressional votes was to impeach Donald Trump over January 6. But he also became a target of the former because Democrats thought they’d have an easier time winning his district against a Trumpier opponent. So, in one of the most civically cynical dirty tricks in recent memory, Democrats ran ads supposedly critical of John Gibbs, Meijer’s Trump-backed opponent in last year’s Republican primary, that served only to highlight Gibbs’s MAGA views. Meijer predicted this very thing would happen.
Unfortunately for Meijer and for our public life, the dirty trick worked. Gibbs narrowly won the primary, then was beaten soundly in the November election by Democrat Hillary Scholten. Last November, when this failure became manifest, I judged it one of the most counterproductive exercises of conservative political discretion in recent memory. Those who promoted Gibbs yielded a seat held by a Republican they weren’t totally happy with to a Democrat. They let loyalty to Trump become their paramount criterion for elected office. They did so even as Democrats were making it clear that they believed — correctly, in this instance — that this criterion was an electoral loser.
It is encouraging that Meijer may not let this setback deter him from political life. He would face other difficulties, however. The seat being vacated by Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow, who is retiring in 2024, has thus far attracted many Republican contenders and may well attract more. Some candidates may take on the (at times literally) self-destructive character of the state’s Republican Party, which is caught in a death spiral of electoral impotence and Trump toadying that discourages anyone from seeing the connection between the two, or escaping it. Even if Meijer won the Republican primary, he would face a Democrat (likely announced candidate Elissa Slotkin, who represents Michigan in the U.S. House) in a state that has been trending blue again after a period of Republican success from 2010 to 2018.
It would be difficult. But it is worth a try. Assuming Meijer goes through with it, he will deserve credit, at the very least, for acting when so many others like him fail to, leaving the field to inferior candidates by default. It would be a welcome indication that toxic political forces, left and right, can’t keep all good people out of politics.