Question: Where do Democrats keep finding radical nominees who have to zero out their entire social-media output in order to run for office?
Answer: Michigan! To be fair, we can probably narrow the answer down to Ann Arbor and Dearbornistan.
Earlier this week, my colleague Matt Vespa published a series of Abdul El-Sayed's tweets about 9/11 that he sent to the memory hole after winning the Democrats' Senate primary in Michigan. Today, CNN's Andrew Kaczynski unearthed even more obnoxious social-media posts from William Lawrence, a Sunrise Movement radical who won the Dems' House primary for MI-07 to challenge first-term incumbent Republican Tom Barrett.
Michigan's 7th CD is a dead-even district in the Cook index, and had been seen as a prime pick-up opportunity ... as long as no nuclear families live in it. Democrats' ambitions for this seat may run into the same problems as their ambitions for the Senate seat, as the K-Files reporter's research reveals Lawrence's true nature:
William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee in one of the country’s most competitive House races in Michigan, deleted hundreds of old social media posts in which he embraced police and prison abolition, called for nationalizing fossil-fuel companies to end their production, attacked moderate Democrats and argued for a “fundamental overhaul” of the Constitution.
Other deleted posts show Lawrence writing “f**k” the nuclear-family home and calling it an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society,” envisioning “a world of free and open migration,” and calling to “Abolish the Senate.”
Lawrence even wrote a song inspired by moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s resistance to Democrats’ climate agenda: “Our generation says f**k you for everything,” Lawrence wrote in lyrics he posted in December 2021. “Hurry up and die so that we can get started.”
The deleted posts, most of which have not been previously reported and came under a previous Twitter handle, stretch back years to when Lawrence, now 36, was building his career as a progressive organizer as an original co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, helping propel the Green New Deal into Democratic politics in 2018.
Well, let's talk about the Sunrise Movement for a moment. A year ago, the Department of Justice reportedly opened a probe into George Soros' funding of potentially violent radical groups as part of its investigation into Antifa and its funding. The New York Times reported on the effort without mentioning the Sunrise Movement, but the Capital Research Center released its own report into Soros' ties to the violent and radical Left a week prior to the NYT's report, and immediately after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Ryan Mauro's investigation claimed that Soros' funding went to the Sunrise Movement, a group that fits the FBI definition of "domestic terrorism," as I wrote at the time:
Mauro identifies $23 million in Soros funding that went to groups that participate directly or indirectly in domestic political violence, according to the FBI's definition of the term. Those include:
- Center for Third World Organizing / Ruckus Society / BlackOUT Collective
- Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
- The Sunrise Movement
- Movement for Black Lives & Dream Defenders
- Dissenters
- U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights
The recent declaration by Trump of Antifa as a terrorist organization may have given the DoJ even more interest in this report. Mauro links Sunrise to Antifa activities in Atlanta, specifically Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest.
It's not clear what Lawrence did within the Sunrise Movement, but his affiliation with the radical action group speaks volumes. So too does his previous membership in the Democratic Socialists of America. The NYT noted both of these problems after Lawrence won the nomination in a three-way race a month ago, while suggesting that the GOP may have given Lawrence an Akin-esque push to get there:
He does not identify as a democratic socialist, he told The Times, but his campaign has confirmed that he was previously a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The group has not endorsed him. ...
Mr. Maasdam said that a shadowy super PAC’s ads attacking him and promoting Mr. Lawrence were evidence that Republicans would rather face him than a moderate in the fall. The PAC, called Sunrise Michigan, has not disclosed its donors, but Republican PACs have meddled in a series of Democratic primary races this year. Sunrise Michigan uses a little-known South Dakota bank that has been linked with Republican operatives.
During the campaign, Mr. Lawrence faced backlash over a comment he made in 2024 that an older generation of Black Democratic leadership “defangs the white left.” He said he regretted the remark.
I'll bet he does. Don't expect that comment to help El-Sayed in Detroit, either. And while Maasdam has motives to deflect responsibility for his primary loss, he may not be wrong, either. Democrats pulled this same stunt in 2012's Missouri Senate race by attacking everyone in the GOP primary except Todd Akin, who got set up as an easy foil for Claire McCaskill's surprise reelection. To a certain extent, Democrats and the Protection Racket Media employed the same strategy in 2015 by promoting every move Donald Trump made, carrying his rallies live, and highlighting his attacks on Republican primary opponents. Hillary Clinton believed Trump would be easier to beat, and ... well, let's hope things work out better in MI-07 for the GOP.
On that point, Republicans can be hopeful. As noted above, party affiliation in this district is about even, and so are its electoral results. In 2024, the district barely went in Trump's favor, 50/49, while it also narrowly supported Democrat Elissa Slotkin over Mike Rogers in the Senate race, 49/48. Trump won it in 2016, 49/45, but Joe Biden edged him 5-/49 two years later. In the 2022 midterms, without the effect of Trump being on the ballot, the district trended more Democrat, but Democrats didn't put radicals like El-Sayed and Lawrence on that ballot, either.
In this election, with El-Sayed at the top of the ballot and Lawrence nominated for the House, Republicans can hope for a big turnout and a revulsion at the radical nature of both nominees. Barrett has the advantage of incumbency, albeit muted as a first-term Congressman, but the foul-mouthed DSA alum provides the starkest contrast between a relatively normal status quo and a Marxist revolution as the only other option. Barrett better stick the landing, and Rogers too.
