Most politicians who want to scare the other side’s young people out of public life have the sense not to say it into a microphone. Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin said it on a stage at the University of Chicago.
At an Oct. 13 live taping of Vox’s “America, Actually” podcast at the university’s Institute of Politics, Slotkin laid out what Democrats should do if they win Congress next month. She wants “signature cases,” and not only against President Trump.
“I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him,” she said. Then she got to the point. “I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity. I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that. I want that deterrence message.”
Read that slowly. The people she wanted to reach with that message were not crooked cabinet officials. They were kids coming out of school. And the goal was not justice in any particular case. It was making those kids afraid to take the job.
The Chicago Thinker, the conservative student paper at UChicago, posted the clip on Oct. 17. As of Monday it had been viewed more than 7 million times on X.
So why is this a Wisconsin column? Because David Crowley wants her help.
Crowley appeared with Slotkin and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger in Madison in late September, when both women were in town for Cap Times Idea Fest. “Leaders like Senator Slotkin and Governor Spanberger inspire me to be the best I can be,” Crowley posted on Sept. 27. Then on Oct. 18, with the Chicago clip already spreading online, Slotkin posted a campaign video of the two of them standing side by side in Madison, asking Wisconsinites to chip in and get their ballots in. “We purple Midwestern states stick together,” she wrote. It was “such a pleasure to be back in Madison supporting” Crowley, “the next governor of Wisconsin.”
On Monday, the Wisconsin podcast New Fashioned Conservatives (@NewFashionedPod) put the obvious question to the candidate, tagging @DavidCCrowley and asking for his “thoughts.” I went looking for an answer. As of Monday afternoon I could not find one. His feed was busy with early voting and Big Tech.
To be fair to Slotkin, she says critics are twisting her words. In a long post on X Sunday night, she wrote that anyone who has “aided in the corrupt use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit the President or his family, or you have violated the law in order to carry out guidance from the President, you should be held accountable.” She also says Trump’s Justice Department tried to indict her over a video, and that a grand jury refused.
We already have a deterrent for that. It is called the law. Nobody needs a senator to announce a ‘deterrence message’ aimed at graduating seniors.
If that were all she meant, there would be nothing to argue about. Everyone agrees people who steal from taxpayers belong in court. We already have a deterrent for that. It is called the law. Nobody needs a senator to announce a “deterrence message” aimed at graduating seniors.
And she did not stop there. On Monday she added that lawyers who bring what she calls “frivolous lawsuits used to intimidate and jail your political opponents” should be “held accountable for that via your bar status.” Who decides which lawsuits are frivolous? If you are a young conservative lawyer in Milwaukee or Madison, you already know the answer would not be you.
Conservatives across the country saw it the same way. Law professor Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) wrote that Slotkin “said the quiet part out loud.” Utah Sen. Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) called it “absolutely disgraceful to threaten young Americans for participating in politics and serving their country.” Gene Hamilton (@GeneHamilton), a former Trump White House lawyer, had the best advice for the students in that room: “Senator Slotkin wants you afraid. Be bold instead.”
One X user, @HayekRonald, put the Wisconsin problem plainly: “Crowley is running as the moderate alternative in a purple state. Association with this kind of explicit deterrence strategy against political opponents undercuts that.”
That is the heart of it. In August, after a Madison rally, Crowley told Channel 3000, “I’m not running to be the governor for Democrats. I’m not running to be the governor for Republicans. I’m running to be the governor for all of us.” That is a fine line. It is hard to square with standing next to a senator who wants Republican kids to think twice before taking a government job.
Governors do not prosecute anybody, and I am not suggesting Crowley would. But a governor appoints the people who run state government and sets the tone for everyone who works in it. Wisconsin conservatives who want to work in Madison deserve to know whether the man who wants that office thinks they should be scared of serving.
