The Saginaw River district backed Trump in 2024 while electing a Democrat
Thomas Smith, a Flint native and retired General Motors engineer, won the Republican nomination for Michigan’s eighth congressional district on Tuesday despite having withdrawn from the race last month. A US House candidate must withdraw before April 24 for election officials to remove the name from the ballot, according to the Guardian. Smith withdrew after that deadline, and his name remained on it.
Unofficial results show him with more than 50% of the vote, according to the Associated Press, defeating both the candidate he endorsed and the candidate Trump endorsed.
Trump endorsed Amir Hassan in June. Hassan is an African American navy veteran who worked for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Transportation. The president appeared with Hassan at a campaign event in Michigan. Hassan said during his campaign that he had recently converted to Christianity from Islam. Social media commentary following the primary suggests Republican voters did not view the conversion as authentic and were apprehensive about nominating a Muslim candidate.
Hassan acknowledged the loss in a video posted to X and Facebook. “It was a tough race, but over the last year I’ve had some incredible dealings with people across the entire district,” he said. “The biggest conservative value is that we don’t make excuses.”
Smith also defeated Al Lemmo, whom the Guardian described as an anti-abortion activist. Smith, who did little campaigning, posted on social media in July to endorse Lemmo and described Hassan as a “crypto-Republican.”
The Federal Election Commission has no electronic campaign finance filings from Smith. It does have a handwritten letter dated July 12 declaring $1,850 in fundraising. “I could not file this electronically because I have had no success logging in and have not been able to get a response from the helpdesk,” Smith wrote in a postscript on the letter.
In a statement Wednesday, Smith said he was “humbled and honored that Republicans have chosen me to take the fight to Kristen McDonald Rivet.” “I look forward to working with Speaker Johnson and the entire Republican team to expand our House majority and advance President Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda to lower costs for working families and make America affordable again,” he added.
Smith made a brief appearance at a Republican unity event in Macomb county hosted by Mike Rogers, the party’s newly minted US Senate candidate. There, Smith said he intended to “unseat communist comrade Rivet.”
The district stretches along Michigan’s Saginaw River, connecting Flint to Saginaw Bay. It was one of 13 districts nationwide that voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election while also electing a Democratic representative to Congress.
Rivet is one of 10 House Democrats who have joined Promise to America, a congressional initiative led by Representatives Tom Suozzi of New York and Adam Gray of California. Smith’s victory came on the same day Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan.