FLINT, MI — Kristen McDonald Rivet has received what may be the biggest endorsement in the race to succeed Dan Kildee in Congress — the blessing of the incumbent from Flint Township who she hopes to replace.
Kildee, who announced in November that he would not seek re-election in the 8th Congressional District when his current term ends at the close of this year, delivered his endorsement on Tuesday, July 2, at the UAW Region 1-D headquarters.
Although the endorsement came just a month before the August primary election, it wasn’t exactly a surprise.
A quarterly fund-raising report in April showed $14,000 in campaign donations from two Kildee campaign committees to McDonald Rivet, a state senator from Bay City seeking the Democratic Party nomination in the 8th District.
The Cook Political Report has identified the general election in the district as among the 22 most competitive congressional elections in the country.
“I said I’d do everything I could to elect common sense, principled, results-oriented leaders,” Kildee told union and campaign activists on Tuesday. “That’s why I’m speaking out, supporting and endorsing Kristen McDonald Rivet to be your next member of Congress.”
UAW officials hosting the announcement have also endorsed McDonald Rivet, who faces fellow Democrats Matt Collier and Pamela Pugh in the Aug. 6 primary election with the winner facing the top vote-getter among Republicans Mary Draves, Anthony J. Hudson and Paul Junge in the November general election.
Kildee used words like pragmatic and bipartisan to describe McDonald Rivet, whose voice he said is needed in a political climate “consumed by partisanship, by personalities, by performative nonsense that doesn’t necessarily do anything to improve the lives of people we pledge to work for.”
McDonald Rivet said her agenda if elected includes lowering the price of prescription drugs, creating jobs that keep pace with the cost of living, and “fighting extremists who are set on taking away our rights.”
There are “too few Dan Kildees and far too many partisans” in Washington, she said Tuesday.
Kildee spent more than $6.3 million in 2022 to hold the congressional seat, which was redrawn following the 2020 census, fending off Junge, who won the Republican primary two years ago while capturing 42.8% of the vote in the general election.
The redistricting left Flint in the 8th District but added parts of Midland County, including the city of Midland, which leans Republican.
The Kildee name is among the most recognizable and longest-lasting in Michigan politics and this year marks the first time since 1962 that there won’t be a member of the Kildee family on the ballot in the Flint area.
The congressman was first elected to the U.S. House in 2012 and his uncle, the late Dale Kildee, represented the area in the Congress during the previous 36 years.
In November, Kildee announced he would retire from Congress after having been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, a serious but curable form of cancer earlier that year.
The congressman has said a surgery removed a small tumor in one of his tonsils, leaving him cancer-free, but giving him a new perspective moving forward.
