Welcome to Politically Speaking.

I'm Elisabeth Bennion, chancellor's professor of political science and director of Community Engagement and the American Democracy Project at Indiana University, South Bend.

US Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin of Michigan's seventh House District is running for a seat in the US Senate.

She is currently the frontrunner in the Democratic primary in what promises to be a closely watched race next November as Democrats and Republicans battle for control of the Senate.

Thank you so much for being here.

Of course.

Thanks for having me.

I want to start by asking you why you decided to run for the Senate.

You are currently representing Michigan in the House of Representatives.

Why this Senate and what will be your top priorities if you're elected to the Senate?

Yeah, well, you know, look, I think it's important to have affirmative, positive reasons why you are running for anything, for any office.

I've been a member of Congress now for five years.

I actually have a national security background.

So not an elected office kind of background before five years ago.

But when I thought about running for Senate, it's really four things that are really important to me.

Three are substance, one is style.

But on substance, my son and my moon as a former CIA officer and Pentagon official is security.

And I think America always has to be a place where anyone from anywhere can get into the middle class.

So I want I spent a lot of time on those issues like job creation, jobs with dignity, health care costs, prescription drug costs, bringing those down.

Number two, I want to make more things in America, preferably in the Midwest.

Not everything, but certain critical items that are important for our economic security.

Number three, I want to I want to protect our kids from the things that are truly harming them.

What is truly harming our kids?

Number one, killer of children in America under 21 is gun violence in our communities, in our schools, by suicide and by accident.

And I became the first congresswoman in America to represent two school shootings, Oxford High School and Michigan State.

The other things of truly harming our kids are diseases of despair, mental health issues, opioid addiction and fentanyl.

And then climate change, something that will affect our kids way more than us.

And then just lastly, if I'm lucky enough to get elected, I'll be the youngest Democratic woman in the Senate.

And but more important than just age is I just think we need to bring some strategic planning and thought into protecting our rights and our democracy, that you can't just wait for the next bad decision to happen.

You have to actually play some offense, not just defense.

And my background in national security, I think is helpful.

On that score, you mentioned your background in national security.

That includes your time as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Obama administration.

I want to turn then to questions of international affairs.

How concerned are you that Iran's recent drone attack in Israeli airspace will escalate the conflict and draw the US further into that conflict?

Yeah.

So the attacks of last weekend by Iran were were pretty significant and I would note that, yes, there were I think dozens, if not upwards of hundreds of drones that were involved in that attack.

It was actually a complex military operation that involved drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

These are the kinds of of, you know, acts that are used to study in graduate school.

We have not seen that kind of state on state violence from Iran.

There's only two countries in the world that are doing those kinds of complex missile and drone attacks, and that's Iran and Russia and Ukraine.

So I would just note that this is definitely different.

And any time you have this kind of military exchange, you have a real risk of escalation, a cycle of escalation.

The Israelis are already saying that they're going to respond.

And even, you know, if you say, well, Iran kind of, you know, the attack wasn't very successful and you just never know when something in the in a military sort of scenario, you know, accidentally ends up killing people, gets through, you know.

So the risk of escalation in a cycle of escalation, a tit for tat kind of thing, is real.

And I think there are states and leaders all over the Middle East right now and all over the world that are very concerned that this is going to turn into a more serious war.

So a lot of diplomacy, a lot of stuff going on.

But it was definitely a new turn when the Iranians went ahead with this complex military operation.

We haven't seen Israel attacked with a conventional military assault like that since Saddam Hussein in 1991.

So it's definitely a sea change.

What would you advise the US government to do?

What should folks in the Senate be advising the president to do?

And what do you say to those who suggested there should be a cease fire?

Well, when it comes to Iran, again, I think what is being cautioned right now is let's just make sure cooler heads prevail.

And while the Israelis are saying that they're going to respond, I think the council is let's be thoughtful about this.

Let's be strategic about this.

You know, don't respond willy nilly and kind of get yourself and everybody else sucked into a larger exchange.

Iran certainly broke the seal again on these new military options.

So there's going to be some response is my expectation, but keeping it measured.

And so my advice to the administration is shuttle diplomacy.

Try to bring rational actors from all sides together to work on on these issues.

The Iran issue has obviously intervened in the focus that most of the world had had before.

Last weekend on Gaza, the war between Israel and the Palestinians and Hamas and the humanitarian situation, the pretty dire humanitarian situation that was going on in Gaza.

And I think there we desperately need a negotiated cease fire.

We need the return of the hostages.

We need people to be able to eat there.

And access water there.

And we were, I think, getting to a new moment on the issue of Gaza and the humanitarian situation.

When the the escalation came from Iran and kind of changed the conversation.

Now, there seems to be a real debate about the degree to which the Israeli government is acting rightly in its own self-defense versus when that crosses the line to being out of proportion to the need for security.

What are your thoughts on that broader debate?

Well, look, I mean, we're having this conversation because Hamas pulled off a really complex and gruesome attack in October, on October seven.

And the the Israelis have the right to go after the perpetrators of that attack.

I think about the United States when we were attacked on 911, you know, I happened to be in New York City on my second day of grad school when that happened.

And I think it was 14 years later was when, you know, President Obama approved the operation to go after Osama bin Laden.

So, you know, the perpetrators of these complex attacks, you know, any state has the right to go after that.

I think, you know, as someone who served three tours in Iraq alongside the military, I will just say I feel very strongly that you can't bomb your way out of an ideology, that military response has to be, like you said, in proportion to what happened.

But also any democracy have a responsibility to protect against civilian harm as much as humanly possible.

The United States had to do that in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Certainly not perfect, but that of the standards.

That's the standards that are different between a democracy and a terrorist group.

And so that's the conversation that we're having with the Israelis in Congress as we engage the ambassador, for instance, and others.

But also, I know what is happening between the administration, the White House and the is Bibi Netanyahu.

Well, speaking of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, called for Netanyahu to step down.

What is your opinion on that?

And is that an appropriate thing to ask?

Yeah, you know, it was certainly controversial.

Typically, the United States, you know, it's sort of an unspoken rule, I guess, for for governments around the world that you don't tell others kind of who should be their leaders in a democracy.

You sort of say, hey, you know, the United States elected Donald Trump and so we're going to work with Donald Trump or they elected Barack Obama or Joe Biden.

So it was definitely controversial when Senator Schumer made his announcement, I think, upon talking with him.

He has made clear that he wanted to make the point that he is someone who for his whole life has been very pro-Israel and that you could be pro-Israel without being probed.

Bibi Netanyahu.

But for the long term relationship, you can want for different leaders that might take a different tone certainly caused a lot of raised eyebrows here and in the Middle East.

But I think there's a lot of people who share that sentiment that, you know, we want good things for Israel.

But Bibi Netanyahu and the relationship that's strained between him and the president often is an a hidden and inhibiteur to making progress rather than a help.

I change topics and talk a little bit about elections here in the United States.

When Donald Trump lost election in 2020, he argued and continues to argue that the election was stolen, which caused a lot of people to question the integrity of U.S. elections.

What would you say to Americans who are concerned about the integrity of our elections and are you concerned that a similar thing will happen in 2024 where folks won't accept the results of close elections?

Yeah, it's a good question.

I mean, look, I'm someone who was in the Capitol on January six, 2021.

I you know, barricaded myself in my office when, you know, protesters and rioters and insurrectionists got into the Capitol and were using violence to try and stop the certification of the 2020 election.

So I've seen up close and personal what it means when a leader says in front of the world that an election is stolen and and that it needs to be taken back.

And you're right.

I think that, you know, I come from working in the Pentagon and alongside the military and the military always say that leadership climate is set at the top, that if the commanding general is doing something wrong, you shouldn't be surprised if the most junior lieutenants are doing something wrong.

And with January 6th and Donald Trump questioning the results, the election, it's not a surprise that, you know, elected official officials all the way down the line to mayors and local leaders are doing the same thing.

My advice to people who question the integrity of our democracy and our election system is get involved, learn about the process.

You can be a poll watcher.

You can be a poll challenger.

There are roles for people who believe that there could be problems with our elections.

There is a way to observe the vote, but educate yourself and understand the checks and balances that are inherently built into our system so that you can't have someone voting ten times in a row.

You can't have someone who's not a citizen voting in our country.

You can't stuff a ballot box or change, you know, the the the way that we count ballots.

But educate yourself before you just take hook, line and sinker the talking points that we're hearing from senior officials.

Well, thinking about close election trends might be useful to note that Democratic U.S.

Senator Gary Peters of Michigan won his race in 2020 by a very narrow margin.

You will be facing essentially or mostly the same statewide constituency as you run for election if you win the primary this August.

So how will you convince voters to vote for you, especially those who might be concerned about the state of the economy or inflation, despite some good economic indicators?

How do you convince them not to go in a totally different partizan direction and to cast their vote for you?

Yeah, well, look, I'm a Democrat that represents a Republican leaning district now, so I know what it's like to to have to get to know people who might not be naturally waking up in the morning as a Democrat or as someone who's inclined to vote for a Democrat.

So I'm used to that.

I think, look, all you can do as someone running for office is work your tail off, go visit places that maybe haven't seen someone show up in 40 years.

Introduce yourself and then listen.

Just keep your mouth shut and listen and and and absorb that and go talk about those issues and fight for those issues in Washington.

That's basically the responsibility of any reasonable candidate.

When it comes to the economy, that's I hear about it constantly.

Right.

And I think we have to acknowledge that while, as you said, there's a lot of macroeconomic data that's good and the trend lines are good.

Inflation is still too high.

And people are feeling that in their buying power in their pockets.

Right.

That's just first of all, that's a real thing.

What I try to focus on is, like any good planner is the future and how we're setting ourselves up for the future.

Inflation is not going to be fixed by anyone law or any one person.

It's a worldwide phenomenon, unfortunately.

What I can tell you is what we've been doing in Michigan and in the Midwest on bringing manufacturing back to the United States and what that means for good jobs in our communities, not just for us, but for our kids.

In Michigan, we've got 44 new factories being built from the ground up, and that's after 40 years of not having a single new factory, just kind of rehabbing the old factories that we've had for years.

There's a manufacturing renaissance going on, and that's just a data thing from Michigan to Alabama, right?

That's not a political statement.

It's just reality.

And so for the Midwest, where we care about the future of work and making sure that we and our kids will have good work in the communities where we choose to live.

That, to me, is the best investment we've made in our economy now and for the future.

As you talk about those changes in Michigan and bringing those jobs to Michigan, how much of that is a state legislature issue and how much can you actually do in Congress?

Yeah, well, so it's in a in an ideal way, the federal government, the state government and local governments work together, whether they're Democrat or Republican, whether they're elected from the same party or not.

That's the best way to serve our constituents.

So a lot of the manufacturing that's going on is a combination of, frankly, all three levels of government federal dollars.

So the CHIPS Act right where we incentivized the production of those little tiny microchips that we invented in the United States so that we make the chips that we need, or at least a portion of the chips that we may need in the United States.

And by the way, we need about 300 plus chips in a car.

Michigan, we make cars and we make 0% of the chips that go in cars.

Okay.

So the the that's about some federal money.

There's also been state money, I know, certainly in Michigan.

But I believe also in Indiana that has gone to incentivize companies to move there and to set up shop there and to enhance their their, you know, businesses there.

But then local communities, you know, you can't build a new factory without a local community getting involved.

And if it goes the wrong way, there's trouble.

Right.

So local communities, mayors, township supervisors are also working hard to attract a lot of these businesses and make sure they come in in a way that works well and seamlessly with the communities.

So it's a combination and it really depends kind of factory to factory, but in the best sense, government should work with local communities to incentivize strong businesses, American businesses to set up shop in in our states.

Now, thinking about other policies, areas besides job attraction and making things in the United States and here in the Mid West, you mentioned a number of progressive priority issue priorities such as tackling gun violence, climate change, These really large issues, mental health care.

Some Democrats have argued that the Senate should get rid of the filibuster, noting that they were unable to make big changes even when they had a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate.

Is that something that you would support or are you concerned that if you got rid of the filibuster, just as Democrats might want to institute a national protection for abortion, Republicans could do a similar thing and institute a national ban.

What are your thoughts there?

Yeah, I mean, for me, I think it's important that we as Americans are able to see our senior most legislative body legislating and voting on issues.

And not every issue is going to pass.

That's not that's not a surprise to anybody.

But people should have to own their votes.

And so what I've called for is reform of the filibuster.

Just make it so that if there's a certain group of individuals who don't want to vote on an issue or they don't want to go, they don't like something, just come to the floor of the Senate and argue your case and you can do a talking filibuster.

You can.

There's a hundred different ways to maintain some bipartisanship, which is so important in our U.S. Senate, but also allow really big issues like voting rights to be debated, to be discussed.

And so I think that it's a it's a like everything that's important.

It's not just aa1 and done little slogan.

I think we need to reform the filibuster to allow more actual debate and voting on the issues of consequence for Americans.

And look in Michigan and bipartisanship is very important, right?

I grew up my dad's a lifelong Republican and my mom was a lifelong Democrat.

In the Midwest, we tend to know just what it's like to have, you know, family members who are a different political party than us.

Thanksgiving dinner has become uncomfortable for a lot of us since, you know, the last five years where things got really nasty and so it's important that we maintain that kind of center, that sort of is reasonable and practical and wants to work across the aisle.

But I think you can do that while also making sure that the issues that are really important to Americans get their kind of day on the floor.

So no email saying this number of people plans to filibuster.

So let's table it instantly.

I'd like to see an actual discussion or you'd have to actually stand as in the olden days and truly verbally filibuster a bill.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that if you take the issue of voting rights, right, there's a piece of voting rights legislation that's basically an update to what we passed in the sixties.

It's not radical.

It's not, you know, something that's never been done before.

But if you're the average Joe citizen, you know that we voted on it in the House of Representatives.

Maybe, you know, that it passed and then we passed it in the last Congress and then we passed it off the Senate.

And then you never hear anything more about it, right?

You just don't know what's happening.

And what's happened is, like you said, an email was sent saying, well, we don't have enough votes for this.

We don't have 60 senators who care to vote on this issue.

So we're not even going to debate it.

We're not going to bring it up.

We're not going to have to defend it or promote it.

And so it kind of just feels like it dies.

And I think in a democracy, people want to know that the issues they care about are are being debated.

You may not win.

Right.

That bill might not pass, but at least allow the public to see that real debate is going on in the most senior legislative body in the country.

And another power the Senate has, of course, is to approve Supreme Court justices.

Here is another case where people are talking about and debating institutional reform as the Supreme Court is viewed by many Americans as just another political body that will make decisions based on which party appointed the majority of justices.

Do you support any changes in how justices are selected?

So I think that, you know, we all want a Supreme Court that is reasonable and makes, you know, rational decisions without regard to politics.

And that's gotten a lot dicier in most recent years.

I will tell you what I'm easily for, which is that members of the Supreme Court, Supreme Court justices need to be held to the same ethics standards as a simple member of Congress like me.

Right.

If you're receiving gifts, luxury items, homes, trips, that kind of stuff, I have to report that.

Right.

As a member of Congress, I signed an ethics pledge when I became a member of Congress so that I can't just accept that and not mention that to anybody.

Supreme Court justices should be the same.

It's the same thing, frankly, for people in the admin, in the executive branch, if you're a secretary of defense.

So let them live up to those same ethic standards.

That doesn't seem hard.

And then I'm open to other things to reform the court.

But I think that we need to be very thoughtful before we start changing things left and right.

Even though I may not like a lot of the decisions coming out of the Supreme Court right now, because you don't want it to just become another political food fight body.

And I think that there's reforms we can do.

Like I said, on ethics, that should be first on the list so that at least we we know that the justices who are on there are accountable to the people, not just to whoever bought them their last vacation.

All right.

I want to ask you in the last minute here that we have to tell voters why they should cast their vote for you in the primary election coming up in August.

What is it that you offer and what would you like them to be thinking about as they head to the polls?

Yeah, well, look, I think I would say, first of all, give me a chance to earn people's vote, whether you check us out online or you come to an event or you reach out to our campaign.

I'm a what you see is what you get.

And I want the chance to to earn your vote.

And to hear the issues that you care most about.

Number two, you know, I have the receipts.

We've worked very hard in my district to understand the most important critical issues and then to fight on behalf of my constituents.

And so look at my record on that score.

And then lastly, you know, if I manage to get elected, I'll be the youngest Democratic woman in the Senate.

And again, I don't just think it's a factor of age, but I do think we need a different generation of leaders that that think differently, that work differently, that approach the job differently.

That's what I think the era demands and that's what I'm thinking about constantly as I hope to earn people's vote in August and then again in November.

Well, thank you so much.

That is all the time we have for this week, politically speaking.

I want to thank our guests, Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin.

I'm Elizabeth Penny and reminding you that it takes all of us to make democracy work.

We'll see you next time.

This WNIT Local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.