Midterm results: Democrat Hillary Scholten flips Michigan’s 3rd District seat
Virginia Aabram
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Democrat Hillary Scholten won in Michigan’s 3rd District, defeating Republican John Gibbs and becoming the first Democrat elected to the seat since 1990.
The seat in the Grand Rapids-area district opened when Gibbs beat incumbent Rep. Peter Meijer (R), who was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, in the primary. The 3rd District has a history of being represented by centrist Republicans.
Scholten is an immigration attorney who ran against Meijer and lost in 2020. She characterized Gibbs as “extreme” for his anti-abortion position and for his views on the 2020 election.
The last Democrat to represent the district was elected in 1990, and the last two representatives were centrist Republicans who spoke out against Trump. Meijer’s predecessor, Justin Amash, left the Republican Party in 2019 and eventually joined the Libertarian Party. Following the 2020 redistricting process, the district slightly favors Democrats.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity that we have in the wake of redistricting, which gave us fair and competitive lines,” Scholten said recently. “We’re about to make history here.”
Gibbs was a senior official in the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration. In the primary, he was endorsed by Trump, and national Democrats spent on his behalf, betting that a candidate further right than Meijer would be easier for a Democrat to defeat in the general election.
Before entering politics, he was a software engineer and later a Christian missionary in Japan. He holds degrees from Harvard and Stanford.
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Gibbs came under fire for saying President Joe Biden could not have legitimately won the 2020 election.
“I think when you look at the results of the 2020 election, there are anomalies in there, to put it very lightly, that are simply mathematically impossible,” he said in July.