Kalamazoo Democrat Jessica Swartz announces bid for Fourth House District
WEST MICHIGAN — A political newcomer will throw her hat into the ring for Michigan's Fourth Congressional District.
On Wednesday, July 19, Kalamazoo attorney Jessica Swartz kicked off her campaign, running as a Democrat for the U.S. House in November 2024. The seat is currently held by Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland.
A former attorney for Western Michigan University and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Swartz launched her campaign pledging to bring commonsense solutions to the challenges facing West Michigan communities.
"I think we just need to help the hardworking, honest people of Southwest Michigan who play by the rules," Swartz said in an interview with The Sentinel. "We need to stop the gridlock in Congress. And the way I want to do that is to work on the issues that most of us agree on — and those are the economy and the environment and extreme attacks on women."
Swartz was born and raised in West Michigan. Her mother was a public school teacher, and her father was a small business owner. She said those honest Midwestern roots instilled in her a strong work ethic.
"I had my first job at 13, so I learned early on how to work hard."
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She's a graduate of Michigan State University. She earned a law degree from the American University Washington College of Law and went on to be an appellate attorney for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Swartz said her approach will stand out because she's not interested in continuing partisan politics.
"I'm gonna sit down at the table and listen to all points of view," she said. "I'm going to approach it as, 'OK, what's the problem? And how can we solve it?' ... I'm putting our country over everything."
A self-described pragmatist, Swartz said she wants to first focus on issues where most people can find common ground, such as protecting the Great Lakes and ensuring clean drinking water for communities.
"We can all agree that we need clean drinking water for our kids and that we need to protect Lake Michigan," she said. "And all it takes is someone who's willing to have those conversations."
Swartz also said she supports a woman's right to choose, and pointed to Michigan's passing of Proposal 3 in 2022, which enshrined the right to abortion, birth control and other forms of reproductive healthcare in the state constitution.
She said a majority of voters supported the measure last fall in the Fourth District, a new seat created after congressional districts were redrawn in 2022. The current district contains much of Michigan's old Second District, and includes all of Allegan and Van Buren counties, as well as the southern half of Ottawa County and portions of Kalamazoo, Calhoun and Berrien counties.
"We passed Prop 3 here in this district, and the voters made their will known in this state, and the proposed national abortion ban is going to overrule that and take away what our voters told us they want," she said, referring to Huizenga's support of a ban on federal health coverage that includes abortion and the expenditure of federal funds for any abortion services.
Swartz complimented former Republican Congressman Fred Upton, who until 2022 represented the southern portions of the newly drawn Fourth District. She said she would bring a similar bipartisanship to the chamber — something she said West Michigan residents want.
"While I disagreed with him on a lot of things, I also respected him, and he did wonderful things for the district and was willing to cross the aisle when it was necessary," she said of Upton. "There's a lot of people here who are looking for that — that are fed up with the extremism. People in West Michigan, they're not buying into all of that. They're just working, going through the day trying to put food on the table, and they want someone who's going to solve the problems with them."
In 2018, Swartz worked with Michigan nonprofit Voters Not Politicians to ban both parties from partisan gerrymandering. The organization works with state legislators to pass what it calls "good-governance reforms to protect voting rights, strengthen our democracy, and ensure political power remains in the hands of the voters," according to the group's website.
"It's something that I feel very strongly about," Swartz said. "Protecting the voters and protecting our election infrastructure."
Even though the election isn't until 2024, Swartz said she plans to use this time to travel across the district's many communities to connect with as many voters as possible.
"I'm not going to limit myself just to Kalamazoo, or just to Holland; I'm going go to all of the counties in the district and talk to as many people as are willing to talk to me," she said.
"And that's kind of the point of this whole thing — there are so many people in our district who have wonderful ideas. And it doesn't matter which party they're from. I want to hear those wonderful ideas and learn from them and see how we can make that work for Southwest Michigan."
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Swartz is the third Democrat to join the race. In April, Joseph Alfonso of Holland announced he was running again for the seat after losing to Huizenga by about 40,000 votes in November 2022. The other Democrat is Chris Glasser, a child protective services investigator for the state who also lives in Kalamazoo. The three will face off in the August 2024 primary before the winner moves on to the general election in November.
Huizenga was first elected in 2011. He's expected to seek re-election next year.
— Sarah Leach is executive editor of The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter @SentinelLeach.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Kalamazoo Democrat Jessica Swartz announces bid for Fourth House District
