Anil Kumar, not Marlinga, leads fundraising among Democrats challenging John James
Democratic former Macomb County judge and prosecutor Carl Marlinga may have run one of the closest U.S. House races in the country two years ago in ultimately losing to now-U.S. Rep. John James, R-Shelby Township.
But it's not Marlinga — who is running again — who has put the most funds in his campaign coffers to date among the group of Democrats vying to take on James this fall. Instead, it's Dr. Anil Kumar, a surgeon, urologist and member of the Wayne State University Board of Governors who doesn't even live in James' district.
Campaign finance reports filed last week by the candidates showed Kumar, who lives in Bloomfield Hills, having raised just over $901,000 for the election so far, compared with about $333,000 for Marlinga. To be fair, most of that — $538,500 to be exact — is in loans Kumar has made to his own campaign.
But money is money when it comes to paying for campaigns and the advertising, voter contact, polling and other costs necessary to run and Kumar has raised about $360,000 from individuals who are not himself, which is more than anyone else in the race.
So far, the other two Democrats who have raised any substantial sums are Emily Busch, of Oxford, a first-time candidate who also doesn't live in the district and is running on a gun control message after her son was one of those who survived a deadly shooting in 2021, and Warren financial planner Diane Young.
Busch, who raised about $107,000 in the last three months of 2023, had a total of about $266,000 for the election as of Dec. 31 and, after expenditures, about $85,000 left in the bank. Young raised just over $83,000 in the last three months of the year for $249,000 total — $20,000 of which was in a loan to herself, made earlier in the campaign — and ended the year with about $74,000 on hand.
And Marlinga — who came within 1,600 votes, or about one-half a percentage point, of beating James in the newly drawn 10th Congressional District two years ago — raised about $148,000 from October through December, for a total of about $333,000 and about $161,000 left on hand after expenditures.
Compare that, however, to Kumar, who, in the last three months of 2023 raised about $324,000 — again, including a $137,500 loan to himself — to bring his total to over $900,000 and leave him with about $756,000 in the bank.
Certainly, Kumar's campaign wealth doesn't guarantee anything: Young is well known in Democratic circles in Macomb County, where the 10th District is based, and Busch has picked up support from gun control groups, including Brady PAC, a leading activist organization on the issue. And Marlinga, who lives in Sterling Heights, enjoys extraordinarily high name recognition in the county. (The district also includes a sliver of Oakland County around Rochester and Rochester Hills, by the way.)
Still, Kumar — who lost the Democratic primary in 2014 in Michigan's 11th Congressional District, then won it in 2016 but lost to then-U.S. Rep. Dave Trott, R-Birmingham, in that year's general election — has party support as well and the fact that he lives outside the district may be of limited concern to voters, given that James lived outside the district in Farmington Hills before his election two years ago.
All that said, it may be tough to unseat James — a businessman who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate, greatly increasing his name recognition before switching to the House seat two years ago. James has already seen help from mainstream Republicans in Washington and, as of Dec. 31, had more than any other candidate in the race to wage a campaign, having raised nearly $3.6 million so far for the election and with $2.3 million left in the bank.
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Looking to challenge John James, Kumar leads Democratic fundraising
