GOP Senate Candidate Takes A Shot At His Incumbent Challenger: Being Unknown ‘Is Not A Badge Of Honor’

Republican Senate candidate John James responded on Wednesday after his incumbent challenger Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) criticized the combat veteran for his frequent television appearances. 

“I’ll tell you what, being unknown by 40 percent of the electorate, after 30 years as a career politician and 10 years in Washington is not a badge of honor,” James responded to host Dana Perino during an appearance on Fox News. “I plan on using every resource at my disposal, whether it be an Apache or a camera, to shed light on the dark spaces in Michigan that have been under represented and neglected by Senator Peters and his like.”

James announced in June that he was officially launching another bid for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat in 2020. He had previously run in 2018 to unseat long-time incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), losing in a closer-than-expected race.

“We had to start off from absolutely nothing. We started off on a wing and a prayer,” James said. “We started off with a campaign that knew we wanted to bring glory to god and help our neighbors and love our neighbors ourselves.” 

“We had to use a strategy of earned media, social media and word of mouth,” he continued. “We had to put the work in, we had to put the hustle in, and that included using every single resource.”

Michigan is expected to be a top-tier battleground state going into the 2020 election cycle. Then-candidate Donald Trump edged out Hillary Clinton by just over 10,000 votes during the 2016 presidential election — it was the closest presidential race in the state’s history. Prior to 2016, Michigan had not voted for the Republican presidential candidate since 1988. 

“I wasn’t the establishment favorite [in 2018],” James said. “But because our grassroots army — who understood that a message of faith and family and god and country and service before self, who understood someone who is a combat veteran who understood national security from a firsthand perspective defending this country abroad, but also a business leader who understands what it takes to grow a company and create jobs in Detroit — that’s who we need representing us on the floor of the Senate.”

James, 38-year-old Army combat veteran, was considered one of the strongest Republicans in 2018 despite losing his race, according to an elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight.

Peters’s Senate seat is particularly vulnerable going into 2020 for a variety of reasons, including his lack of name recognition. A Morning Consult poll revealed that Peters is the country’s most unknown senator with only 40 percent of Michiganders knowing enough about the junior senator to have an opinion on his performance.

“We need to have people who are able to reach across the aisle, reach across the state, understand where people are coming from and melting into Washington is not an option,” James said. “We need to have somebody who’s going to use every single resource at their disposal to bring resources, money, and attention back to Michigan, back to Detroit, and back all over this wonderful state.”