Most expensive House race, most doors knocked: How William Lawrence won

In a news conference Wednesday outside of his Michigan Avenue election offices, William Lawrence said he took a concession call from U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett early in the morning and is getting ready to take office.

Lawrence won a tight race, which he said was the most expensive House race in the nation, against U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett. Secretary of State results show Lawrence winning with 51% of the vote to Barrett’s 47.7%.

“We showed that you can beat an incumbent Republican in a hotly contested frontline race without taking a dime of corporate PAC money,” Lawrence said. He said getting money out of politics would be one of his priorities.

Inn a Facebook post Wednesday afternoon, Barrett acknowledged disappointment in the loss and also cited the spending in the race, “the most spending against me of any Republican member of Congress in the nation, we came closer than any competitive district in the country.”

Lawrence said his campaign knocked on more doors than any other in the nation – 250,000 in the general election and 100,000 in the primary – and he credited more than 1,000 door-knockers with pushing his message across the finish line.

“They spent more against me than any House campaign in the country,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence’s campaign rejected PAC funding, which he said – in a later conference call with the Congressional Progressive Caucus – was another key.

Data centers erupted as an issue during the campaign, Lawrence said.

“Because we weren’t taking any corporate tech money from PACS, we were able to respond to residents and make it a cornerstone of our campaign,” Lawrence said.

Several data center proposals came up during the campaign, including for downtown Lansing and Mason as well as a Delhi Township proposal that was floated a week before Election Day. Lawrence made an appearance and spoke at a crowded town meeting on Friday, days before the election.

Lawrence will be joining a progressive caucus that swelled in the Tuesday vote.

U.S. Rep. Greg Casar said, on a call with newly-elected candidates including Lawrence, that the progressive ranks will grow by at least 25 House members and end up with more than 100.

Casar said progressives leveraged good positions but, critically, did tremendous outreach and he cited Lawrence, who recognized the biggest door-knockers. Casar said Lawrence’s father was #2 and Lawrence said the top door-knocker went to an average of 60 doors a day for 90 days.

Casar said progressives won big and led the way in the national election results by forcing votes on a war powers resolution, which more moderate Democrats leveraged as well, and bringing wildly popular issues like controlling AI and opposing data centers to the forefront.

“This is a mandate for dramatic change,” Casar said. “But it is not a sign that all of Democrat’s problems are solved. This is not an endorsement of tinkering around the edges. This people is giving Dems a shot to show them. We’ve seen how a party can go from a big victory to crushing defeat if they sell out and refuse to deliver.”

Lawrence said one of his priorities will be constituent services and setting up an office. He said he plans to keep the campaign office on Michigan Avenue, but will need to sign a new lease.

Asked if he thought Tuesday’s vote was a mandate against Trump or for Democrats, Lawrence said the president is clearly unpopular and has done many things to make life more difficult for Americans.

“All he’s done over the last two years is make things more difficult, diminish our national standing around the world, set us at odds with each other while making everything more expensive. We have work to do to bring people back together, here from the bottom up, who have been torn apart. We’ve got a mandate to deliver on affordable housing and health care and ending the war to lower the cost of all of our commodities.”

In the CPC call, he gave a similar answer:

“We have a sweeping mandate around the entire country and we have a duty to pass bills in the House and Senate, to end the distarous war and invest in housing we can afford and protect Social Security.”