Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI-08) made a public appeal for impeachment hearings in the pages of The Washington Post, but now the freshman Democrat is “undecided” on the articles of impeachment.
Slotkin joined six Democrats—all with national security backgrounds—in calling the allegations against President Donald Trump “a threat to all we have sworn to protect.”
“This flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand. To uphold and defend our Constitution, Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election,” Slotkin and her colleagues wrote in a September 25 op-ed. “If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense.”
Slotkin told reporters this week, however, that she has not yet decided how she will vote on the articles of impeachment that Democrats officially announced at a Tuesday morning press conference.
“I think that there are some decisions that leaders are asked to make that are often controversial and difficult and hard to understand for lots of people, but the leader has to make it because they know it’s the right thing to do,” Slotkin, a former CIA officer, told The Post. “And I am very comfortable in doing that because my world is national security.”
She acknowledged that her district is “overall not supportive of impeachment.” In fact, Slotkin was booed at a town hall shortly after she announced her support for the impeachment inquiry.
She told CNN that she’s still “undecided” and said her “phones are ringing off the hook.”
Elissa Slotkin, freshman Democrat from swing district, told me she's hearing "constantly" from voters about impeachment. "The phones are ringing off the hook. We literally can't pick up the phones fast enough — and it's people on both sides of it." She says she's undecided pic.twitter.com/pCSaDWKHNH
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 11, 2019
President Trump won Slotkin’s district by seven percentage points in 2016. Slotkin is one of 31 Democrats representing a district the president carried, along with Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI-11).
Her support for the impeachment inquiry has motivated four Republicans to challenge her in the 2020 elections.
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
