Mike Detmer won the battle but lost the war.
Paul Junge will be the Republican to take on incumbent U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, after winning Tuesday’s GOP primary.
Detmer won big in Livingston County, but he ran third in the two other parts of the 8th Congressional District – Ingham County and Oakland County. Junge piled up huge leads in both of those areas to win the race. Krisina Lyke finished third overall, while Alan Hoover was a distant fourth.
ABOUT THE RACE
U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat, flipped the 8th District seat held by Republicans for almost two decades by beating U.S. Rep. Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, in 2018.
Candidates in the Republican primary included Mike Detmer of Howell, a sales manger at an automobile dealership; Alan Hoover, an Iraq veteran and entrepreneur from Ortonville in Oakland County; Paul Junge of Brighton, a former prosecutor and TV news anchor; and Kristina Lyke of Fowlerville, an attorney at Lyke Law in East Lansing.
The 8th Congressional District includes Livingston, Ingham and northern Oakland counties.
