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.”
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.
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 also comes from a starkly different background: While Brink and Maasdam traveled the corridors of power in Washington, Lawrence focused on building grassroots power, first through his role co-founding the youth-led Sunrise Movement, which backed the Green New Deal, and more recently helping found the Michigan Rent Is Too Damn High coalition.
Mutual Endorsements
On July 7, Lawrence and El-Sayed announced that they were endorsing each other. Like Lawrence, El-Sayed is running in the progressive lane in his primary while arguing that it will not hurt his electability in the general.
“We have a lot of people who want to back both of us,” Lawrence said. “Given that the two of us both prioritize having a very robust, grassroots campaign rather than just relying on tens of millions of dollars in dark money like our respective opponents, it is especially beneficial for us to be able to integrate our grassroots operations.”
Although no independent polls of the race have been released, Lawrence’s campaign commissioned one showing him leading the pack. Another commissioned by Brink’s campaign showed her ahead.
Now that Lawrence has demonstrated that he has a shot at winning, the attacks have begun.
The Congressional Black Caucus is targeting him over a podcast episode in which Lawrence remarked to a Black anti-war activist during a conversation on organizing that he was frustrated with the position of some older Black political leaders backing “capitalist, imperialist American power.”
Lawrence says his comments have been misrepresented while apologizing for his choice of words.
Meanwhile, a super PAC called the Crush MAGA PAC is targeting Lawrence, rather than the Republican holding the seat. The group has plowed more than $500,000 into a highly misleading ad that accuses Lawrence of investing in “Wall Street, big oil, and data centers” and campaigning against Democrats for supporting the 2024 Uncommitted movement, which sought to pressure party candidates over Israel’s war on Gaza.
The investments highlighted in the anti-Lawrence ad make up a small portion of the $11,000 Lawrence has invested in a mutual fund; the mutual fund, not Lawrence himself, chose them. And, for his part, Lawrence eventually supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
The source of the ad campaign against Lawrence is unclear, but he has speculated that it may be powered by pro-Israel donors.
Crush MAGA PAC is affiliated with another group called the Save Democracy PAC, which has received money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC, United Democracy Project. United Democracy Project, however, denied getting involved in the Michigan congressional race. (Neither Crush MAGA PAC nor Save Democracy PAC responded to requests for comment.)
If Lawrence succeeds in the primary, he will have to win in a general election in a purple district. He believes he can show that progressive candidates can win in split districts, pointing to the election and reelection of Congressional Progressive Caucus member Rep. Chris Deluzio in a swing district in Pennsylvania.
“He’s not throwing people under the bus, and he has joined the progressive caucus, and he has now turned that into a more comfortable district. He has been winning with healthy margins,” Lawrence said. “That is what I hope to be able to do as well.”