This Michigan Democrat cruised to victory in a Trump district. Here's how. - Tumuly WaPo

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SAGINAW, Michigan — When Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Michigan) had breakfast recently with a dozen beet farmers from her state, she knew without having to ask that most of them had voted Republican. Though the agenda for this meeting was the federal sugar program, she turned the conversation to how Medicaid would be devastated under the GOP-passed House budget. More rural hospitals could go under in a state where many people already have to drive two hours to get to one, she told them. And she noted that close to half the births in Michigan are covered by Medicaid.

The farmers leaned forward in their chairs, she recalled, and “we spent the rest of that breakfast talking about the Medicaid cuts.” Kristen McDonald Rivet is probably not a name you’ve heard, given that she has been a member of Congress for fewer than 12 weeks. But Democrats desperate for a way out of the wilderness, and bickering about how to get there, would do well to acquaint themselves with what McDonald Rivet did last year — and how she did it — in this House district about 100 miles north of Detroit.

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Her biography is both impressive and relatable. McDonald Rivet, 54, is the mother of six and grew up the daughter of a construction worker who cleared snow in the winter to make ends meet. Before being elected to the Michigan Senate in 2022, she was executive director of the state’s Head Start program and chief of staff of its Education Department.

Ask her how she won, and she will tell you she did it by talking about “real things” — a phrase she uses often. Take tax cuts, an issue you don’t often hear being touted by Democrats. In the state Senate, McDonald Rivet led the effort that quintupled the state’s match of the federal earned income tax credit, which added an average of $603 to the pockets of low- and moderate-income working families. In one memorable — and hilarious — campaign ad last year, McDonald Rivet was filmed driving a car and declaring: “You know, I could talk about cutting taxes all day.” At which point, her exasperated husband is shown hurling himself out the passenger side. (A stunt double took the actual bounce off the curb.)

Meeting with about 20 neighborhood leaders here last Friday evening, McDonald Rivet noted that the most vulnerable Michiganders are already feeling the effects of what is happening in Republican-controlled Washington. Her office has been getting calls from food banks whose federal assistance has been frozen. The Agriculture Department is also slashing a program under which schools buy local produce for their cafeterias, and House Republicans are considering a $230 billion reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more familiarly known as food stamps.

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2. The Republicans nominated a problematic candidate.