As this story begins, Tom Barrett is kicking off a game of Clue with his wife, Ashley, and three of their four kiddos.
It’s a hot summer afternoon, and pool time at the Barrett household is right around the corner. For now, the kids are hoping Dad doesn’t win (again). The 22-year U.S. Army veteran is Col. Mustard, of course. Barrett was a warrant officer in the service, not a colonel, but close enough.
When we last checked in on the 42-year-old former state senator, he was enveloped in the nation’s most expensive congressional race. The 2022 7th Congressional District bid was his first electoral loss, but he came away with his head held high.
Sure, he lost by five points (51.73% to 46.32%), but he and his side were dramatically outspent.
On Nov. 15, 2021, the day he announced his campaign, his opponent, Elissa Slotkin, had $4 million banked, more than the $2.7 million Barrett raised the entire 12 months of his campaign.
Barrett outperformed the rest of the Republican ticket in this new mid-Michigan-based district. Considering the bath Michigan Republicans took in 2022, Barrett didn’t do all that badly.
If the abortion-legalization ballot proposal hadn’t been on the ballot to draw out scores of new young-women voters to the polls, who knows? Maybe Barrett could be talking about reelection.
Instead, Barrett retreated to his rural Charlotte home off a dirt road after his 20,185-vote loss. He declined some full-time job offers and stuck with various consulting gigs. The law degree his spouse earned after the two first wed helped keep things afloat financially. Neither he nor her is independently wealthy.
In his heart, he kind of knew this day would come. President Joe Biden taking the country on the wrong track, in his view. Heavy inflation. A crisis at the southern border. A nation hopelessly in debt. He didn’t have faith Democrats would take security issues seriously.
As he sees it, his fears have all come to pass.
On top of that, China is more aggressively postured. It’s taking up more Michigan farmland outside of places like Mt. Pleasant and Marshall.
Michigan needs another member of Congress to stand steadfast against it all, he said.
“Frankly, I feel like I have a bit of unfinished business to do,” Barrett said.
A thin Republican bench, particularly in mid-Michigan, makes the former Apache helicopter pilot the most logical choice to win the nomination in MI-7. With his online, long-expected formal announcement on Monday (July 10), he entered the race as the sole candidate for the nomination in the August 2024 primary election.
It’s hard to see anyone coming in with Barrett’s name ID, connections to local and D.C. money or fire in the gut.
His family is “unanimously in” for another run. His kids are so used to politics at this point that none of them know what it’s like to watch a parade from the street. They’ve only walked in parades … and lots of them.
“I try to involve my kids in this with my wife,” he said. “I want them to know this is important, we’re doing it for a reason and that it matters.
“A lot of people think running for office is a glamour thing, and there are certainly elements of that, but really it is a sacrifice from the standpoint of time away from your family.”
He jokes that he doesn’t want his kids to forget what he looks like. The kids know work and the military take Dad away, at times.
Most recently, it was for a tour along the Mexican border, 100 feet from the Rio Grande. The guy who runs the water pumping facility there says the drug cartels routinely threaten his workers.
The border wall inexplicably doesn’t connect at this Texas location, apparently. One administration stopped building one piece of the wall before connecting it with another section of wall built under a previous administration.
In short, the walls don’t connect, and everybody knows it. At night, if water pumps aren’t working, his workers won’t go out without security.
A border agent told him there’s talk about putting more security cameras and sensors, but Barrett says the country doesn’t need more Ring doorbells. It needs more security agents.
“The Biden administration has been terrible derelict in this,” Barrett said. “I feel strongly about the issue.”
That’s not the only one. He earned the most conservative state senator moniker from MIRS News in 2021 because he takes strong, principled stances, arguably to a fault.
His reasoning against state-issued corporate subsidies for the General Motors plant less than a half hour from his house doesn’t fit nicely on a billboard.
The Democrats’ screams on Barrett’s no vote certainly did. One could argue it cost Barrett votes.
Still, Barrett didn’t apologize for it today and won’t tomorrow.
Taxpayers didn’t get a good return on their money when “corporate welfare” went to what amounts to $160,000 a job, as was the case with the Delta Township Assembly Plant.
They certainly aren’t getting a good “return on investment” at the planned Ford electric battery plant outside of Marshall, either, he said. The Mackinac Center is estimating each job costing $680,000. And they’re not necessarily union jobs, either, he said.
“Those jobs are going to cost taxpayers four times more than the salary that job will pay,” he said.
Barrett rattled off the numbers like he was ready to rattle off more.
As if he’s been reciting them in his head since he announced his ill-fated 2022 congressional candidacy back in 2021.
Get ready to hear them a few more times until Nov. 5, 2024.
Support City Pulse - Donate Today!
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here