Justin Amash, a former Michigan congressman who left the Republican Party, announced on Thursday he is mulling a run for the U.S. Senate.
A post to X from Amash said he is launching an exploratory committee after being “humbled” by people urging him to run for the upper chamber and compete in the already-crowded Republican primary to replace retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).
“They see what I see: contenders for the seat who are uninspired, unserious, and unprepared to tackle the chief impediment to liberty and economic prosperity—an overgrown and abusive government that strives to centralize power and snuff out individualism,” Amash said. “The people of Michigan and our country deserve better.”
I’ve been humbled in recent weeks by the many people who have urged me to run for Senate in Michigan and to do so by joining the Republican primary.
They see what I see: contenders for the seat who are uninspired, unserious, and unprepared to tackle the chief impediment to…
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 18, 2024
Amash served in the House representing a Grand Rapids district from 2011 to 2021. Toward the end of his tenure, in 2019, Amash became the lone Republican congressman to support the first impeachment against former President Donald Trump and declared in a Washington Post op-ed that he was leaving the GOP.
Since announcing his break with the Republican Party, Amash has voiced opposition to the two-party binary dominating U.S. politics. In 2020, Amash began exploring a bid for the presidency as a Libertarian, but quickly opted not to run for the White House even as he continued to argue a third-party candidate could be viable. Amash chose not to seek re-election in 2020.
The 2024 race for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat already includes former Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), another Trump critic who succeeded Amash; former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, and businessman Sandy Pensler on the Republican side. Among the Democrat candidates is Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who is considered the frontrunner. A recent statewide poll found the race to be a “toss-up” with a sizable number of independent voters undecided, according to The Detroit News.
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The winner of the election may help determine which party controls the Senate, which currently has a narrow Democratic Party majority that is made possible by three independents who caucus with Democrats, with a number of seats that could flip. The contest is also taking place during a presidential election year in which Trump is seeking another term in the White House as the GOP frontrunner, possibly leading up to a rematch against President Joe Biden, who won Michigan in 2020.
“We need a principled, consistent constitutional conservative in the Senate — someone with a record of taking on the bipartisan oligarchy, defending sound money and free speech, fighting the surveillance state and military-industrial complex, and protecting all our rights. The stakes are high: freedom, social cooperation, and human progress itself,” Amash said in his post to X. “Let me know if you’re ready to meet this challenge with me, and thanks for your continuing encouragement.”