State Rep. Donavan McKinney ousted U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar in a campaign that emphasized his roots in Michigan's 13th Congressional District as a lifelong Detroiter and capitalized on national progressive
momentum that also took hold in the battleground state.
McKinney had the support of Justice Democrats, a group with a history of taking on Democratic incumbents, and targeted Thanedar, who has self-financed his congressional runs and has a history of prevailing in crowded primaries in solidly Democratic districts based in Detroit.
McKinney won 52% of the vote to Thanedar's 48%, according to unofficial results, in a district that encompasses part of Detroit, Hamtramck, Highland Park, the Grosse Pointes, several Downriver communities and a couple of communities in western Wayne County.
McKinney wins majority in the city
In the 2018 election when he ran for governor, Thanedar won a plurality of the vote in Detroit, beating former Detroit Health Department executive director Abdul El-Sayed (now the Democratic pick for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat) and former state lawmaker Gretchen Whitmer (now governor).
While he lost the statewide race, Thanedar's path to elected office ran through the city.
Thanedar moved from Ann Arbor to Detroit to run for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives. Thanedar won a plurality of the vote in a Democratic primary that featured eight candidates, including McKinney, who came in second.
When Thanedar ran for an open seat to represent Michigan's 13th Congressional District in 2022, he faced eight Black Detroiters and won with 28% of the vote.
Despite efforts by Detroit power brokers – including the city's then-Mayor Mike Duggan – to make Thanedar a one-term congressman, Thanedar won a 45% plurality of the vote in the city in 2024 while his main opponent in the race – At-Large Detroit City Councilmember Mary Waters – won 43%.
But in the one-on-one race in 2026, McKinney won a majority of votes in the city. With 54% of the vote in the city, according to unofficial results, he beat Thanedar by eight percentage points in his hometown.
One mailer supporting his bid pictured McKinney with his family and declared, "IT IS TIME WE TAKE OUR SEAT BACK."
When Thanedar won his first congressional race, it marked the first time Detroit didn't send a Black representative to Washington, DC since 1955. During his campaign, McKinney talked about the importance of restoring Black representation to the district anchored in Detroit, one of the nation's largest majority-Black cities.
McKinney's strengths in communities that backed protest vote over Israel
U.S. military support for Israel divided McKinney from his opponent. As a state lawmaker, Thanedar called for halting military aid for Israel, and the pro-Israel lobby backed a rival in his first congressional campaign. But the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) later threw its support behind Thanedar in his subsequent bids after he voiced strong support for Israel during its military campaign in Gaza following Hamas' Oct. 7 attack. Pro-McKinney mailers attacked Thanedar's AIPAC backing. McKinney says he wants to cut off military assistance for Israel.
In an interview, Thanedar pushed back against U.S. foreign policy as a key issue in the race.
Election results indicate that McKinney's campaign resonated in the Wayne County communities that voted "uncommitted" in the 2024 presidential election during a protest campaign against then-President Joe Biden's support for Israel as it waged a war in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Waters in her 2024 bid emphasized her support for a ceasefire, but the results show that McKinney made greater inroads in cities that comprise a small portion of the district but are home to large Arab American and Muslim populations.
In Hamtramck, where a majority of voters in the last presidential primary voted "uncommitted" in the 2024 Democratic contest, McKinney won 71% of the vote compared to the 56% for Waters two years ago, according to unofficial results from Wayne County.
An election eve post to McKinney's Instagram shows him making a swing through Hamtramck, including a stop at Yemen Cafe with Hasan Piker – a controversial streamer critical of the Israeli government – and New Jersey Democratic congressional candidate Dr. Adam Hamawy, who has gone on medical missions to Gaza, according to his campaign website.
In Dearborn Heights, where a plurality of those who participated in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary voted "uncommitted," McKinney narrowed Thanedar's support in the part of the city in the 13th District. In the 2024 Democratic primary for the district, Thanedar carried 68% of the vote in Dearborn Heights, but in 2026, he only won 50% of the vote in the city, and McKinney secured 49% support.
McKinney said that he did not vote "uncommitted" in 2024. Some Black political operatives have said the vote opened the door to Vice President Harris' loss to President Donald Trump that year.
"There is some frustration there, but I let people know look at the numbers. You can blame it on uncommitted. You can blame it Vice President Harris not having the right policies, but who won at the day wasn't Trump. Who won was the couch," McKinney said the day before the Aug. 4 primary at his election eve rally. Turnout in the 2024 presidential election nationally was 64% compared to 66% in 2020, according to an analysis from the Pew Research Center.
Voter participation
McKinney's race saw big voter turnout compared to past elections. The 2022 primary marked the first election held in the newly drawn and solidly Democratic 13th District, where the August election all but assures the winner in November. Despite drawing a large number of candidates for the open seat, it didn't draw high voter turnout. Nearly 79,000 voters participated in the primary. That increased to about 81,000 in 2024, a presidential election year.
But the 2026 election saw almost 31,000 more voters show up for a total of about 112,000 ballots cast in the 13th District's Democratic primary.
Contact Clara Hendrickson at chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How progressive challenger McKinney defeated incumbent Thanedar
