GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — FOX 17’s Doug Reardon sat down with Hillary Scholten, who’s running to represent Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District.
Scholten lost the race back in 2020, but a lot has changed since the lines were redrawn.
The heavier-leaning GOP counties where Scholten vastly underperformed in 2020, including Ionia, Barry and Calhoun, are gone.
Meanwhile, southern Muskegon County and northern Ottawa County are new to the district.
“It picks up Muskegon, Grand Haven, Grand Valley State University…It’s a district that Joe Biden won by nine-points, Governor Whitmer in 2018 won by seven, so it’s a democratic-seat trending even more democratic,” said Scholten.
Additionally, Scholten kept the part of the old district where her race against Peter Meijer was the closest.
She lost the 2020 race by six points, but only lost by two points in the Grand Rapids metro area, which remains in the new district.
Scholten is a fourth-generation west Michigander, former Department of Justice attorney and current immigration rights lawyer.
She says she’s running for liberal voters, but also for conservatives who feel left behind by the republican party.
“That type of moderate, common sense republican candidate feels politically homeless right now,” Scholten explained. “What we hear on the campaign trail every single day is, you know, ‘I didn’t leave the republican party. The republican party left me.’”
The democratic candidate says she’s deeply Christian, but also pro-choice.
“I believe, when my faith teaches me to love my neighbor as myself, it means loving and trusting women to make these decisions for themselves,” Scholten said.
In one of her campaign ads, Scholten makes a promise to cut spending in Congress and she criticizes the recently passed multibillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act; however, she told FOX 17 that she would have voted for the bill anyway because it aims to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Scholten, who said she was not raised a democrat, hopes to court voters on both sides of the aisle.
“In fact, I didn’t even know a democrat until I was a senior in high school,” she told FOX 17. “To me, this is not about blue versus red.”
Scholten is going up against GOP challenger John Gibbs, who beat incumbent Peter Meijer in the August primary.
WATCH our full interview with Scholten:
