Former Rep. Justin Amash announces bid for open US Senate seat in Michigan
Former Rep. Justin Amash announced Thursday that he will run for the open US Senate seat in Michigan as a Republican after ditching the party nearly five years ago.
The conservative libertarian left the GOP after becoming disillusioned with party leadership under former President Donald Trump, whom he voted to impeach in 2019.
“After thoroughly evaluating all aspects of a potential campaign, I’m convinced that no candidate would be better positioned to win both the Republican primary and the general election,” Amash wrote in a lengthy X post. “That’s why, today, I’m making it official: I’m joining the race for United States Senate in Michigan.”
The former five-term congressman, who voted as an independent in his last term in office, did not seek re-election in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District in 2020 and briefly entertained a White House bid under the Libertarian Party banner that same year.
Amash, 43, explained that he decided to jump into the crowded race to replace the retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) after spending the last several years reflecting “on the experiences that have shaped my life, the principles of liberty that inspire me, and what my tenure in Congress meant to the people of my community.”
“So many times in my daily life, I’ve been approached by individuals who want me to know how much it meant to them that I did exactly what I said I’d do: that I upheld the Constitution regardless of the political consequences, that I read the bills, that I explained my votes, that I listened to the people I represented and held myself accountable to them in open town halls — giving them an opportunity to change my mind whenever we disagreed, and me an opportunity to change theirs,” he wrote.
“I feel an obligation to get back to this work, but the circumstances of this upcoming election give it urgency.”
The GOP primary field in the Great Lake State already includes two other former House lawmakers — Mike Rogers and Peter Meijer.
Rogers is backed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee – the Senate’s campaign finance arm – and considered the favorite to make it out of the primary.
Meijer, who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. was primaried out of Congress in 2022 by Trump-backed conservative challenger John Gibbs.
On the Democratic side, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) has raised more than ten times the amount of money for her campaign than her top challenger, actor Hill Harper.
The two party front-runners, Rogers and Slotkin, are locked in virtual tie, 39%- 38%, according to an EPIC-MRA poll released last week.
Amash described Rogers as “Mitch McConnell’s handpicked candidate” and argued that the former congressman has “built his career on expanding the power of the state at the expense of individual liberty,” in his announcement.
Amash, the son of a Palestinian refugee father and Syrian immigrant mother, was the first Palestinian American lawmaker to serve in the Congress.
Earlier this year, he revealed that several of his relatives were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.