Elissa Slotkin Thinks Her Party Is Missing Something in the Midwest — And That She May Be the Answer

INDIANOLA, Iowa — Sharp bob, dark denim jacket and Midwestern accent intact, Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan sat in a local burger joint and asked a group of five swing voters a pointed question: Which politicians are your “favorite”?

“Tulsi Gabbard,” a woman, who was a human resources consultant from Jasper County told her. “I feel like she’s objective and she has a good intention to help, and I don’t feel like she’s party loyal. She’s people loyal.”

A younger man, who said he only started voting in 2016, told Slotkin, “Ron DeSantis. I think he’s all of Trump’s good” [parts].

Throughout the conversation, these voters, who maintained their anonymity as part of a focus group, detailed their concerns about a variety of issues, including affordability, immigration enforcement, health care and politicians’ “authenticity.” Slotkin never shared the fact she was a Democrat until the end.

“People aren’t looking for radical things,” she told NOTUS in an interview Tuesday. “They want a secure community, a secure border. They want to be able to have a good job and make money. They want health care that they can afford.”

“Sometimes, Democrats have a million priorities, and therefore people don’t really know what we’ll go to the mats on, and I think that’s a real problem,” Slotkin said.

The roundtable was part of a series of discussions with voters in the Midwest that Slotkin has been doing, partly in partnership with the Majority Democrats PAC, a group that supports predominantly moderate candidates. She’s visited Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Kansas and now Iowa as part of a tour.

The only prerequisite for the participants of this specific group, who were recruited by a Facebook advertisement that paid each of them $200, was that they were swing voters in past presidential elections. Slotkin told NOTUS in an interview after the conversation that the stark difference between Washington’s political reality and what voters actually see and hear is why she wanted to go to Iowa to meet with voters.

But the visit to the state that has long been the nation’s first presidential battleground raised an obvious question for the first-term senator, who is 49. She made it clear to NOTUS that she isn’t ruling out a 2028 presidential run.

“The minute you set foot in Iowa, people start creating narratives for you,” Slotkin acknowledged. “But there’s no doubt that I want to be a part of the next generation of leadership, helping to shape and reshape the Democratic Party and winning in places like the Midwest, where we’ve lost ground.”

But, she stressed, “I’m focused on the midterms, because if we can’t win in the midterms, it’s certainly a tougher sell in the presidential year.” But she was quick to leave the door wide open, saying, “After the midterms, if I truly felt like there weren’t other people who were ready to put in the work and be able to lead and win, then I might take a look at it.”

Slotkin is a relative newcomer compared to colleagues already eyeing 2028. She spent most of her career at the CIA before returning to her family’s Michigan farm, flipping a Republican-controlled House seat in 2018 and serving three terms before winning a Senate race in 2024. When she showed up in Iowa this week, it turned heads nationally.

Her explanation was straightforward: Democrats need to actually listen to Midwesterners, who broke heavily for Trump in 2024, if the party wants to win them back.

“We need different leaders running and winning in different states, and what works in New York City won’t necessarily work in Virginia and vice versa,” she said.

“My entire time as an elected leader, my leadership has either been a Californian or a New Yorker,” she added. “I would never say I know how to do politics in California or New York, but it’s real different than doing it in the Midwest.”

Her pitch during her several stops during the day, which included the focus group, a town hall focused on health care with Democratic state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott — who’s working to unseat GOP Rep. Zach Nunn in Congress — and closing remarks at a Polk County Democrats spring dinner, was simple: Democrats’ agenda and message isn’t reflecting the concerns of those living in red or even purple states in the Midwest.

In her home state, a test is taking place in the competitive Democratic Senate primary to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters. Rep. Haley Stevens, the party establishment’s pick to replace Peters, is currently in a dead heat with two progressives, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed.

Slotkin declined to endorse in the Senate primary, citing to NOTUS what she called a long-standing state tradition.

“I’m following in the tradition of Debbie Stabenow, my senior senator, who I replaced,” she said. “It’s more or less our tradition in Michigan that elected Democrats don’t tend to endorse in primaries.” She noted that Stabenow herself withheld a formal endorsement until the day of Slotkin’s own primary.

“I ran against a very progressive candidate in my primary, and we won,” she said. “The average primary voter in Michigan, if I had to draw them on a piece of paper, is like a 60-year-old woman. What works in New York City doesn’t always work in the middle of the country.”

Despite her background serving in the CIA and expertise in foreign affairs, she said she cares more about the economic issues that she heard about again and again on the ground in Iowa.

“The existential issue is not China, Russia, Iran,” she said. “It is, how are we going to ensure the next generation can get in and stay in the middle class and beyond?”

Her visit may have already yielded one future Slotkin voter. Ed Klavins, who voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election and participated in the roundtable, told reporters after speaking with her, “If I saw her name come up, I’d consider it.”