Holly — On Sunday, May 19, U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (District 8), 42, of Holly, visited with Holly residents who are not only her constituents, but also her neighbors.
“The thing that’s great about Holly, it’s a small community, people want to live here, they enjoy the rural lifestyle,” Slotkin said.
She said she enjoys coming home to Holly for half of the week from Washington, D.C.
Slotkin sat down for a few minutes at The Bittersweet Café with husband David Moore and Oakland County Community Liaison Laura Murphy, to answer some questions.
She was elected in November 2018 into the youngest incoming class since 2011. She already has co-sponsored 78 bills and introduced or co-led 11 others, frequently working with Republicans.
She said people in Holly, and people in Michigan, are used to political differences because Michigan is a swing state. “People are used to being able to talk about political differences and not have it be vitriolic and angry and polarizing, and Washington has become very polarized,” Slotkin said.
She said people in Holly want open civil discussion. While the national stage and big headline issues tend to be divisive, she said more bipartisan work is happening than people realize. Slotkin said this happens constantly. “It’s just not on sexy headline issues, it’s on PFAS or veteran’s issues,” Slotkin said.
She talked about both topics at both community meetings on Sunday, and she has sponsored or introduced bills for both.
As a Democrat, She has worked in a bipartisan manner on many bills, which she feels is a mandate from her district. “That’s how work gets done,” she said. “I feel completely empowered to work across the aisle.”
Bipartisanship is an influence from her childhood, with a Republican father and a Democrat mother. “Michigan has a lot to teach Washington about how to act,” she said. “And I think that Washington has forgotten you can disagree with people and still respect people.”
On Sunday, Slotkin made remarks and chatted with guests at Battle Alley Coffee and the Holly Area Veteran’s Resource Center to talk about her background as a CIA analyst in the Middle East carrying firearms and wearing body armor. She talked about serving the Bush and Obama administrations and working to keep and improve access to healthcare, which was her catalyst to run for office.
She is part of a national record-breaking group of new U.S. representatives. The 116th Congress is very diverse and has the highest number of women ever, at 125, according to Politico.
At the coffee hour, she said the younger legislators are changing the culture of the way they operate already, tightening the relaxed schedules legislators had been working with.
Slotkin lives on her family farm on Tucker Road half the week when she’s not in Washington, D.C. with her husband David Moore, a retired Army Apache helicopter pilot. She represents the 8th district, which she describes as “creatively drawn.” It’s roughly rectangular, traveling from Rochester Hills to Holt, with Holly right in the middle. Slotkin said she represents 770,000 people from Oxford to Fowlerville and all of Ingham County.
Rep. Slotkin office activity in first 100 days
• Held or participated in more than 40 public events, including a public event on HR. 1, the “For the People Act,” a community discussion with sexual assault survivors and their advocates, and a healthcare-focused town hall at Oakland University with more than 200 members of the community
• Introduced or co-led 11 bills
• Co-sponsored 78 bills
• Authored two amendments, which passed in the House with bipartisan support
• Helped return $154,991 to constituents from federal agencies
• Completed 122 constituent casework issues
• Received 907 constituent calls
• Responded to 8,571 letters from constituents.
Source: Press Secretary Hannah Lindow
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