With an hour before the polls close in Michigan’s four-county 8th District. Republican Paul Junge predicted to Newsmax he would “end the Kildee Dynasty after 46 years.”
Former TV anchorman Junge was referring to his Democratic opponent, five-term Rep. Dan Kildee, and the congressman’s late uncle Dale Kildee, who represented a similar district from 1976-2012.
Following the 2021 Census, the resulting redistricting by an independent commission radically changed the lines of the Water Wonderland’s 13 U.S. House districts. The new 8th included Midland (home of Dow Chemical), Bay, Saginaw and Genesee County.
Junge, who had run in the old Lansing-based 8th District in 2020 and narrowly lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin, moved to Grand Banc in the new 8th.
“There was no Republican to take on Dan Kildee and I felt someone had to do it,” he told us.
The conservative hopeful told us that in campaigning through blue-collar Bay County, “I met a lot of union folks. They made it abundantly clear the Democrats’ policies were driving their county into the ground.”
Kildee, he charged, “votes 100 percent with Joe Biden and belongs to the House Progressive Caucus. That says a lot.”
Many Democrats in Junge’s part of Michigan, he said “are still pro-life and that is what my opponent is attacking me for.”
As to whether he can unseat the heir to one of Michigan’s most durable political names. Junge told us: “I feel pretty good tonight.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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