In Michigan’s closest congressional race, Democrats believe Republican Congressman Tom Barrett, a freshman, can be beat. They have just one problem: Their candidate, William Lawrence, has failed to launch.
Whether it’s his present or his past, Mr. Lawrence is a man of question marks. Michigan’s Seventh District was a tight race in 2024, when Mr. Barrett won 50-46, by a margin of about 16,000 votes. The Republican had run in the district in 2022 but lost to now-Senator Elissa Slotkin by about 20,000 votes.
Mr. Lawrence last week missed an August 13 deadline to file his financial disclosure. That filing was only made this week.
The three-page document is hardly worth the suspense. The progressive Democrat owns a small amount of gold, between $1,000 and $15,000, and has a checking and a savings account.
He earned about $55,000 last year as a professional activist with Detroit Action but nothing in 2026. Detroit Action describes itself as “Uniting Black and Brown Working Class Detroiters in a Transformational Program to Win the Economic and Social Justice We are Owed.” Mr. Lawrence is white.
Most of the rest of his wealth owes to his wife’s 401(k), which consists of seven accounts of $1,000 to $15,000 each.
There’s nothing in the disclosure worth hiding. Nor is it so complicated and exhaustive a disclosure as to prompt a delay. And yet Mr. Lawrence blew the deadline anyway, without as much as filing for an extension.
In a world where small things are big things, this tardiness was an oversight that raised eyebrows in Michigan.
Mr. Lawrence has tried to distance himself from the Democratic Socialists of America, whose popularity is waning as 2026 goes on. He says he let his membership lapse through nonpayment of dues.
But on a Michigan insider news outlet MIRS podcast this month, a left-wing activist named Jessica Newman said she attended a DSA meeting in a Lansing house Mr. Lawrence lived in.
His team insists he didn’t host or organize the meeting. It just happened at a house he lived in and was organized by a group to which he paid dues.
Mr. Lawrence vanquished some tough competition in the Democratic primary: former Ukraine ambassador Bridget Brink and Ms. Slotkin-backed former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam. Punchbowl News says his campaign was boosted by $1.7 million from a “Republican mystery super PAC,” presumably because it saw him as the weakest challenger to Mr. Barrett.
Now Mr. Lawrence is showing why that is.
