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William Lawrence Is Running in a Purple Michigan District — on His Pro-Palestine Credentials

Democratic leaders keep backing centrists, but a Michigan progressive is trying to harness left-leaning energy on Palestine.

In key swing districts across the country, Democratic Party leaders have backed centrist candidates with carefully calibrated positions on charged issues such as artificial intelligence and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

William Lawrence is running a very different campaign.

In a purple congressional district in Michigan, Lawrence, a co-founder of the progressive Sunrise Movement, is calling for a moratorium on new data centers and labeling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide.

The approach mirrors that of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who has endorsed Lawrence.

Both men are making strong showings in the polls, and now the centrists are fighting back. A shadowy group is running misleading ads that question Lawrence’s progressive bona fides.

“We have seen this in many cases in other elections this cycle — that corporate centrists are attacking progressives for not being progressive enough.”

“We have seen this in many cases in other elections this cycle — that corporate centrists are attacking progressives for not being progressive enough.”

The line of attack is telling, Lawrence told The Intercept.

“People are sick of the status quo,” he said. “We have seen this in many cases in other elections this cycle — that corporate centrists are attacking progressives for not being progressive enough. And it shows you what voters are hungry for is change.”

An unabashed progressive, Lawrence breaks the mold of the typical candidate to run for a seat like Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, which is centered around the state capital of Lansing and the college town of East Lansing.

The district was previously represented by centrist Democrat Elissa Slotkin, who now serves in the Senate, and is currently held by Republican first-term Rep. Tom Barrett.

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The other two candidates running in Michigan’s August 4 primary hew closer to Slotkin’s mold. Bridget Brink is a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who quit in protest of President Donald Trump’s policies on the war with Russia, and Matt Maasdam is a former Navy SEAL who served as a military aide to President Barack Obama.

Unlike Lawrence, both declined to call Israel’s war on Gaza genocide at a debate.

Lawrence........

© The Intercept