President Obama is endorsing Democratic candidates for Congress, and a Michigan candidate is among them.
The president publicly endorsed 30 Congressional candidates Monday, including the 8th District’s Suzanna Shkreli.
Shkreli was a late addition to the ballot after actress Melissa Gilbert withdrew for health reasons in late May. She is hoping to unseat incumbent Republican Mike Bishop.
Shkreli says she thinks her focus on working class families grabbed the president’s attention.
“It’s the fight,” she said. “The fight for middle class families. I think he’s taken notice of, you know, our hard work in this campaign and the lack of the current representation’s fight for middle class families.”
The 8th District runs from Ingham County to Oakland County and has gone to Republican candidates since the early 2000s. TJ Bucholz is a Democratic communications consultant and the president of Vanguard Public Affairs. He says Shkreli has a fighting chance in the Republican leaning district, but this endorsement might not move the needle.
“An endorsement like this is not as powerful as drawing votes as it is in a fundraising email to your supporters,” he said. “That’s probably the real value here in a Barrack Obama endorsement.”
President Obama’s endorsements come on the heels of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s falling poll numbers. FiveThirtyEight – a group that uses polling and demographics data to predict election outcomes – has recently shown Clinton’s chances of winning Michigan to be in the 90’s.
