May the most ‘regular guy’ win? Fight is on in tight Michigan congressional race

• Former state lawmakers compete to be most ‘regular’ in one of Michigan’s most competitive congressional races
• Democrat Curtis Hertel, Republican Tom Barrett are locked in a tight races in the 7th Congressional District
• Despite political backgrounds, both are attempting to appeal to voters ‘looking for someone who’s not a career politician’

LANSING — In one of Michigan’s most hotly contested congressional races, Democrat Curtis Hertel and Republican Tom Barrett want you to know one thing about them: how normal they are.

The pair are former colleagues in the state Senate now running to replace U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, a Lansing-centered toss-up where voters are being inundated by some of the most expensive advertising campaigns in the country. 

While quick to tout successes of their legislative careers — Barrett working to bolster veteran services, Hertel pushing to save money in the prescription drug space — neither is fixating on it.

"A lot of candidates are full of themselves. Me? I'm just a regular guy," Hertel says in a recent ad in which he sips coffee from a “regular guy” coffee mug, drinks a “regular brew” and mows his own lawn. In another, Barrett — a helicopter pilot-turned-legislator — is described as "a working class dad, fighting for us" while his children bike behind him on a run.

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The ads are designed to appeal to a general public that “is looking for someone who’s not a career politician,” said Andrea Bitely, founder of the Lansing-based Bitely Communications firm.

“They want a normal guy. They want one of their neighbors to be elected.”

I like cutting taxes, working across the aisle, smoking meats, and getting real things done for people here in Mid-Michigan. pic.twitter.com/WSZTGta8dH

— Curtis Hertel (@CurtisHertelJr) October 1, 2024

But both Barrett and Hertel, however, have much more political backgrounds than their ads would let on. 

Barrett, of Charlotte, is a U.S. Army veteran and member of the Michigan Army National Guard who previously served in both the state House and Senate. During his time in office, he represented a wide swath of the 7th Congressional District in the Michigan Legislature and was voted among the “most conservative” lawmakers of 2022 by the subscription-based Michigan Information & Research Service.

Hertel, of East Lansing, is a former state senator and most recently served as legislative director for Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a role that required him to register as a lobbyist. He comes from a political family too: His father was co-speaker of the state House in 1993 and 1994, his brother serves in the state Senate and his wife is director of the state health department. 

But as they compete to represent a politically split district in Washington, both candidates are hoping that normalcy and relatability – not their political careers – appeal to voters. 

The “regular guy” ad “captures who I am,” Hertel told Bridge Michigan. “I’m a person who worked in the Legislature to bring jobs home and cut taxes … but I also coached my kid’s basketball team and tried to make sure that I was home for dinner most nights.”

In an election cycle where Democrats have taken to calling opponents “weird,” Hertel declined to weigh in on the relatability of Barrett, saying he doesn’t do “character assassinations” and would prefer to focus on their respective voting records in the state Legislature. 

Barrett told Bridge he doesn’t “need to advertise” his normalcy, given his background as a father of four and veteran status. “Curtis is out there tattooing it on his forehead … because he can’t be a regular guy,” he said.

“I am a relatable guy, raising a family in this district and I do have this background in the Army,” Barrett added. “He’s somebody who’s been a creature of elected office from the cradle … That’s, frankly, less relatable.”

Curtis Hertel, ‘just a regular guy’

Hertel, in an interview this week, said he’s attempting to appeal to voters “looking for regular humans that will go to Washington and work for them.”

“Really, that’s who I am,” he said, “who I’ve been my entire career, and I think  people respond to that record.”

Through interactions at fairs, farmers markets and festivals, Hertel said he thinks voters in the 7th Congressional District are looking for a candidate to help lower the cost of prescription drugs, make child care more affordable, keep abortion legal and bring jobs to Michigan. 

Those aren’t just tenets of his campaign, he said, but priorities for if he makes it to Washington. His first order of business, if elected, would be to tackle prescription prices, which he called “the most easy and obvious” issue to address.

“It’s such a basic thing that is the No. 1 driver of costs for families — health care — and the No. 1 driver of inflationary cost of health care is prescription drugs,” Hertel said. “It baffles me how every other country is figuring this out and we haven’t.”

Hertel represented the greater Lansing area in the state Senate from 2015 to 2023 after serving two terms as the Ingham County Register of Deeds. During his time in office, Hertel sponsored over 220 bills or resolutions and took more than 5,100 votes on topics ranging from landfill restrictions to juvenile expungement, according to data from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. 

Even more recently, Hertel was Whitmer’s top legislative aide, leaving the position in 2023 to take a role at the Greater Flint Health Coalition.

Those positions have opened him up to attacks. 

While working for Whitmer, he helped negotiate a nearly $83 billion state budget deal that included a $1.5 million grant for the nonprofit, which he soon after went to work for, a relationship Republicans have seized on in ads to benefit Barrett.

But it’s “nonsense” to suggest he did anything unethical, said Hertel, who told Bridge he took a job with the nonprofit because it worked on issues he is “passionate” about: housing affordability and child care. 

“I don't think there's anything else there,” Hertel added. 

He also pushed back against another Republican attack ad that claims he signed a “secret agreement” and sent “millions in taxpayer money to a company controlled by China.” 

As a lawmaker, Hertel did sign a non-disclosure agreement with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to learn about potential projects, one of which would become a $2.4 billion electric vehicle battery plant being built by the Chinese-owned company Gotion, Inc.

But Hertel was no longer serving in the Legislature when state lawmakers signed off on $175 million in taxpayer incentives for the project.

Tom Barrett, ‘from cockpit to carpool’

A father of four and now-retired Army officer, Barrett said local voters he talks to on the campaign trail want to know what Congress will do to strengthen border security and tackle the rising cost of living. 

Running for the office a second time has some advantages, said Barrett, who lost to Slotkin in 2022 by a little more than five percentage points.

“People generally are a little more familiar with me, having just seen me on the ballot two years ago,” he told Bridge on Wednesday. Being recognized in public, he added, “is the first step in getting people to vote for you.”

Prior to his eight years in the Legislature, Barrett served in the Army for over two decades, including in South Korea, Kuwait, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. He formerly worked as an analyst for the state treasury department before running for state House in 2014. 

During his time in office, Barrett sponsored 173 bills or resolutions and took just over 4,800 votes on issues ranging from expanding liquor license laws for universities to banning research on aborted fetal tissue.

Barrett has centered his military experience in the congressional case, citing it as evidence for why voters should trust him on national security and the southern border. But he’s also centered his family, saying in one advertisement that “from cockpit to carpool, the mission remains the same” even if, his wife quips, Barrett’s traded his flight suit “for dad jeans.”

“A big asset to my campaign is just my background being what it is — being a dad, raising a family here and having the years of service that I had in the military,” Barrett said. 

Hertel, despite being a father who also lives in the district, doesn’t have that same relatability, Barrett argued, suggesting his opponent is “trying to force that narrative onto people instead of naturally exemplifying it.”

But as Barrett tries to position himself as the neighbor-turned-congressman, Democrats are hoping to draw further attention to past votes and positions Barrett held in office — particularly when it comes to his anti-abortion stance.

One recent attack ad claims Barrett wants to “ban abortion with no exceptions” and wrote a bill that would “put women and doctors in jail” for using the procedure. 

While Barrett did sponsor a bill to ban dilation and evacuation abortions — usually done in the second trimester due to severe medical problems or to remove lingering tissue after a miscarriage — in all but limited circumstances, a woman procuring an abortion would not be prosecuted under the bill.

“To suggest or imply that I would somehow stop women from receiving life-saving care or treatment? It’s just egregious,” Barrett told Bridge. 

Barrett co-sponsored a bill to ban abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat and opposed the 2022 ballot proposal that wrote abortion rights into the Michigan Constitution. 

But if any changes to state abortion law were to happen, “it’s going to ultimately come from the people of the state of Michigan,” and not him, if he is elected to Congress, Barrett said. 

He also defended his own voting record against a Hertel-backed ad which claims he supported keeping in place a legal shield for drug manufacturers “when they sell dangerous or defective drugs.” 

In reality, Barrett said, he opposed an unrelated Democratic amendment to a Republican bill to temporarily suspend the state fuel tax amid record setting gas prices. 

“Democrats made this attempt to just throw in a prescription drug bill into the gas tax bill,” Barrett said, “and you just can’t do that. … They were doing that just to set a trap so that they could use it as a political weapon.”

The countdown to Election Day

As Barrett and Hertel continue to push the regular guy angle, the question will be whether people have “already established who they are,” said Bitely, the Lansing-based political public relations expert. 

Given both candidates have held elected office in the area, “they’re already known quantities” and it’s “really hard to change perceptions” once a voter has established them, she said. 

But there is wisdom in continuing to push the narrative, Bitely added, as it’s mostly for the benefit of voters who only vote in presidential or midterm elections and seldom pay attention to politics in between.

“Being outside of the political class is seen as good and positive by some voters,” she said. 

While polls commissioned by Barrett’s campaigns have shown him with a narrow lead in the race, Hertel told Bridge he is not overly concerned and expects it to be a close election. 

“I feel good,” Hertel said, “and we’re going to continue to work our plan. I think we have a message that resonates with voters.”

The plan, Hertel added, is to stay the course with what the campaign’s been doing — meeting with voters and listening to their concerns. 

As for Barrett, it’s much of the same. He said the last weeks of a campaign are skewed more toward voter contact, as it’s “when voters are most engaged and the most excited.”

“Voters want somebody who will listen to what they have to say, be considerate of all the factors,” Barrett said, “and I think even when I was in the state Legislature, I was that way.”