Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin won her first reelection in Michigan’s 8th Congressional District against challenger Republican Paul Junge, according to a call made by the Associated Press Wednesday afternoon.
Slotkin, 44, a former Defense Department official and intelligence briefer for the Central Intelligence Agency, faced off against Republican Paul Junge, a former news anchor and attorney, who was also a Trump appointee at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The district, which the Cook Partisan Voter Index rates as “R+4,” is located in southeastern Michigan and includes the suburbs and exurbs between Detroit and Lansing, along with Livingston and Ingham counties and a part of Oakland County.
Slotkin first came to office in 2018 after she defeated two-term Republican incumbent Mike Bishop by 4 points. In 2018, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won the district by 4 points over her GOP opponent, 50% to 46%, and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow nearly tied her 2018 Republican challenger John James, who is now Sen. Gary Peters’s opponent, in the district.
Slotkin served as a national security aide to former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. During her first term in Congress, she became a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Homeland Security.
Junge is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, but he was also raised in California. Following his graduation from law school in California, he became a deputy district attorney in the state. He later returned to Michigan to help his family’s contracting business. From there, he switched careers and became a broadcast news anchor on Fox47 in Lansing before joining the Trump administration.
