Winning In MI-7 Is Difficult.

Brink Says She’s Done Difficult

Bridget Brink has tackled difficult things before. A few times.

Being named the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine two months after Russia’s 2022 ramped up invasion of the country was difficult.

The lifelong diplomat walked into a previously closed embassy without a functioning computer, let alone equipment.

She and her team spent countless hours huddled in a bunker as air raid sirens blared. Getting a comfortable, unbroken night of sleep was a luxury. She spent months away from her family.

She stood up to President Donald Trump — the president who appointed her U.S. ambassador to Slovakia in 2019 — when she felt he was appeasing Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s aggression. Those were all difficult things.

Now Brink, 55, is taking on another difficult task: running for Congress in the mid-Michigan-based 7th District.

She’s returning to Michigan after a 29-year career in D.C. and overseas as a diplomat to run for a partisan office in a district she’s never lived in.

For the first time in her life, she’s bought property in Michigan for her husband and boys to call home. She’s seeking a job that, prior to Trump’s second term, was never on her radar.

If that wasn’t hard enough, she’s running in one of the country’s most expensive and competitive congressional districts against an incumbent … and that’s only if she wins what is shaping up to be the first high-dollar Democratic primary in a Lansing-area congressional district in a lifetime.

Brink is not entering the 2026 race against first-term U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett as the Democrats’ anointed candidate. In fact, now-U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s former aide is helping another Democrat, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, run for the same nomination.

Yet, in May, public records show Brink closed on an historic house in the Moores River neighborhood. She’s excited about fixing it up while she runs for Congress full-time.

“If you’re going to run for Congress, you have to be committed,” she told City Pulse. “I’m all in.”

What’s the reason for embarking on this new difficult task?

After a career of solving problems overseas, she sees a host of problems in her country that need addressing. Risks to Medicaid. The dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education. Seemingly arbitrary tariffs. Picking fights with our international friends like Canada. Inflation.

“Something is deeply wrong in our country right now,” Brink said. “People feel like they’re not getting a break, that they’re being left out, that government is not delivering, that the system isn’t fair.

“They’re right.”

So, who is Bridget Brink? Why is she up for the job?

She grew up with her single mother, Gwen, in Spring Lake, outside of Grand Haven. As a schoolteacher, Gwen Brink didn’t make a lot of money. She did have great health benefits to care for Bridget and her sister, though, for which Bridget is grateful.

When Bridget was in middle school, the family moved into her grandparents’ modest house in the East Grand Rapids School District.

Bridget Brink attended Kenyon College in Ohio, where she fell in love with international relations. She got into a study abroad program at the London School of Economics and joined the State Department in 1996. From there, she had a career that filled up her passports.

Nearly all of her work was in the Russia-dominated world. She’s studied at least six different languages outside of English. She worked in then-Yugoslavia, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Slovakia before President Joe Biden named her the ambassador to war-torn Ukraine.

“For me, it was an honor of a lifetime and a culmination of everything I had done,” Brink said. “It was, really, the hardest job. Harder than I thought it would be.”

Operating an embassy during war time is unusual, in itself. But what Brink was charged with doing was reopening an office on the fly with no U.S. military presence protecting the embassy or Ukranian air support.

Outside of their security crew and Ukrainians, Brink’s team tried to be effective in stopping Russia from taking over a middle European nation.

When Trump came into office, she disagreed with Trump’s approach of “appeasing an aggressor.” It’s a policy that historically doesn’t work in Europe, she said. Her belief in a free, peaceful Europe working in the interests of the United States is what “Putin is trying to undermine and destroy.”

It was time to go. And she did, on April 10, roughly three months ago.

Then what? Her husband, Nicholas Higgins, had served for 25 years as a foreign service officer, but he’s set to retire with Trump all but shutting down his agency — the U.S. Agency for International Development

She said she felt she needed to stay involved. She made a career in serving her country.

She feared the Trump administration’s foreign strategy would be “detrimental to our influence overseas.” On domestic policy, she said the “reckless tariffs” are increasing costs for Michiganders and the Republicans’ budget is “taking away health care for hundreds of thousands” of Michigan residents.

She feared the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE’s) “slash and burn” approach was hurting services to seniors and other constituencies.

The best way Brink said she felt she could make a difference was to run for Congress.

“This kind of goes to why I’m running,” Brink said. “I’m worried about what’s happening here at home.

But where’s home? Living abroad since college, Brink never had roots of her own. She used her mother’s.

Her mother’s great, great, great, great-grandfather from England settled in Eaton County. Her grandfather was born in Grand Ledge and grew up in Charlotte. He met Brink’s grandmother at a Lansing ice cream shop.

It’s a link, but a flimsy one that Republicans are already exploiting. The conservative-driven Michigan Freedom Fund has called her a carpetbagger.

Republican consultant Scott Greenlee wrote on Facebook that Democrats don’t have anyone who actually lives in the mid-Michigan-based 7th District who can beat Barrett, so “they import someone … (with) a ‘flashy’ title to try and take him on.

“Yeah, it’s OK,” said Brink about the line of attack. “I mean, people have questions. That’s the American way. I think that’s what we want and need.”

As it turns out her only announced opponent, former U.S. Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam, doesn’t live in the 7th District at all. Public records have him moving back to Ann Arbor five years ago. The Constitution only requires members of Congress to live in the state they are seeking to represent, not the actual district.

While interesting, Adrian Hemond of Grassroots Midwest, said he hasn’t seen a major-party candidate’s residence in a Michigan congressional race matter.

Slotkin hadn’t lived in Mid-Michigan since her youth when she moved back to run against U.S. Rep. Mike Bishop in 2018. She won anyway.

“I’ve been trying to use the carpetbagger tag for more than 20 years, and it doesn’t work,” Hemond said. “Fifty years ago, it might have worked when it was common to stay in a community your whole life, but people move around so much now, I think that line of attack has lost all of its steam.”

It doesn’t hurt to have the type of supporting cast Brink is bringing to town.

Her lead adviser is nationally known political consultant John Lapp from Ralston Lapp Guinn, the longtime counselor to gubernatorial candidate and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

Brink has also brought in Deliver Strategies, which has worked with the House Democratic Caucus, the Michigan Democratic Party and Voters Not Politicians, to help with the direct mail. Her pollster is Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, who has polled for Slotkin and fellow U.S. Sen. Gary Peters.

New Blue Interactive is doing her digital. It’s worked for various members of Congress along with abortion access ballot initiatives and the Democratic-nominated Supreme Court candidates.

Brink also has a launch manager and campaign manager.

She and Maasdam may not be the only candidates in the race, either. Josh Cowen, a Michigan State University education professor, is putting feelers out there, as is former Michigan House Minority Leader Donna Lasinski, who also doesn’t live in the district.

As far as local political figures, folks would love to see state Sen. Sarah Anthony or state Sen. Sam Singh get into the mix, but they may end up both running for state Senate leader in 2026.

U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten, whose 3rd District includes Grand Rapids, said she was not endorsing now. She found it “exciting and energizing” to have such “gifted and capable” possibilities step forward in what is shaping up to be a highly competitive race.

“Bridget Brink brings an incredibly impressive background in public service that would serve her — and all of us — well in Congress,” Scholten said.

The Lansing area last saw a competitive Democratic congressional primary in 2014 when then-Ingham County Treasurer Eric Schertzing beat Susan Grettenberger and two others in a spirited-but-low-dollar effort.

The last competitive, high-profile Democratic congressional primary Lansing saw pre-dates the late U.S. Rep. Bob Carr, dating back to the end of the 1970s.

That changes this year with a candidate like Brink who brings a “big-league resumé to the plate, said John Sellek of Harbor Strategic Public Affairs.

“If she doesn’t raise a ton of money, it’s going to be a big disappointment for the Democrats, because that has to be what they’re counting on,” he said.

Given that she’s a new political candidate, putting her through a competitive Democratic primary may be good for Brink, Sellek said. Folks will see if she’s “any good at this.”

“She’s not going to coast to victory just because she was an ambassador to another country,” he said.

Brink is drawing parallels to Slotkin at the national level. Slotkin moved into the district for the 2018 cycle to defeat an incumbent Republican. They both have compelling international stories. Slotkin served three times in Iraq as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst then held a high-up Defense Department post.

Brink, like Slotkin, is an attentive listener who comes off as relatable one-on-one.

Whether she can raise Slotkin-like money and create the same type of magic is impossible to say at this point, Hemond said.

“Slotkin turned out to be an unbelievable fundraiser and great at losing by less in conservative areas,” he said. “We don’t know how Bridget Brink is going to connect in those areas. Will she be spending a lot of quality time in Livingston County like Slotkin did?

“On paper, it looks like Slotkin Redux, but there’s a lot we don’t know about her as a candidate,” Hemond said.

Sellek added that Brink can’t make her entire campaign about Ukraine. Trump’s victory in 2024 and Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City this summer show that economic security is top of mind.

“After she uses the international credentials of being an ambassador in Ukraine and the importance of that war for Western Civilization, she’s gotta turn and start talking about the stuff that people are really worried about,” Sellek said.

Democrats nationally are already betting on Brink (or Maasdam or whoever) to be a top-shelf candidate. The Protect My Jobs Coalition of progressive agitators have spent $600,000 so far this year in an attempt to soften Barrett in the 2026 election.

Campaigning in competitive seats like MI-7 has become a 365-day-a-year enterprise. Making this seat even more expensive is the fact that it sits in three media markets.

A strong majority of it is in the Lansing media market, but around 30% of constituents live in the expensive Detroit viewing area and 8% in the Flint market.

Breaking through will be difficult. Brink said she’s confident she’ll be able to do difficult. Again.

“It’s important for representatives to represent everyone,” Brink said. “You represent by giving the best to your district, and I believe my strength is that I have a proven record of being able to do that over a very long career at very high levels, and on very, very tough issues.”

(Kyle Melinn is editor of the Capitol news service MIRS.)