GOP state school board member challenges Slotkin in 8th District — but doesn’t live there

A little more than a week after freshman U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) announced her support for impeachment hearings for President Trump, a GOP challenger has emerged.

Nikki Snyder is a nurse and state Board of Education member who opposes the impeachment inquiry. She lives in Dexter outside the 8th Congressional District — which includes Ingham, Livingston and Oakland counties — but told the Detroit Free Press she’d probably move there if she won. Members of Congress are not legally required to live in the districts they represent.

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and assistant defense secretary, said she backed proceedings after a whistleblower report about Trump asking the Ukrainian president for help with his 2020 election with dirt on one of his opponents, former Vice President Joe Biden.

“We have the president of the free world, you know, the strongest man in the world, calling a junior partner and asking for dirt on an American, on a political opponent. That can’t be OK,” Slotkin said on CNN this weekend. “I don’t want a Democrat reaching out to China to ask for dirt on a political opponent. That to me just made things very different.”

Snyder, however, told the Free Press, “There’s nothing in the transcript that would compel me to support impeachment. “I’m not OK with [asking foreign leaders to investigate political rivals], but I think world leaders need to root out corruption.”

She also said she’s running to reduce the deficit, which has ballooned to $1 trillion. The national debt is now at $22.5 trillion, which CNBC notes is up 13% since Trump took office. Snyder told the Free Press she backs the 2017 GOP tax cut that increased the debt.

Slotkin flipped the district last year, beating then-U.S. Rep. Mike Bishop (R-Rochester). Her campaign announced Tuesday she raised $800,000 last quarter for a total of $2.1 million, with $1.65 million left in the bank.