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Paul Junge

Two more candidates have lined up for the Republican nomination in next year’s primary election for Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, currently held by first-term Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D-Rochester, Rochester Hills, northern Oakland, Ingham and Livingston counties). Republican Paul Junge is a former Lansing-area television anchor and East Lansing attorney raised in California and now living in Brighton. He filed as a candidate on November 12. Junge served as investigative counsel for U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, and most recently was an external affairs advisor for ICE. Junge, who identifies himself as a “Pro-Trump leader,” said he hopes to “restore conservative leadership” to the 8th District, and has labeled Slotkin as a liberal “creature of Washington” aligned with radical liberals, despite Slotkin’s moderate public policy stances. Lansing-area lawyer Kristina Lyke, who said in October she was planning to enter the 8th District Republican race, formally filed on November 13, citing Slotkin’s support of the impeachment inquiry. The two candidates join freshman State Board of Education member Nikki Snyder (R-Dexter), a registered nurse and lactation specialist; and Republican “patriot” Mike Detmer, of Howell, who suspended a short-lived state House campaign to run in the congressional primary.