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Elissa Slotkin Biography, Age, Politician, U.S. House of Representativesfrom Michigan’s 8th congressional district

Elissa Slotkin Biography

Elissa Slotkin (Elissa Blair Slotkin) is an American government official, politician, and former CIA analyst in the Department of Defense official, in 2018 she was the successful Democratic Party nominee for United States Representative from Michigan’s 8th congressional district

Elissa Slotkin Age

Elissa Slotkin was born on July 10, 1976, in New York, New York, United States. She is 42 years old as of 2018.

Elissa Slotkin Net worth

Elissa Slotkin earns her income from her businesses and other related organizations. She also earns her income from her work as a government official and politician. She has an estimated net worth $ 3million dollars.

Elissa Slotkin Education

Elissa Slotkin attended Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills. She received B.A. degree from Cornell University (1998) and an M.I.A. from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (2003). In 2001, she completed a course in the Arabic language at The American University in Cairo.

Elissa Slotkin Husband

Elissa Slotkin is married to Dave Moore, her husband Dave Moore retired as an Army colonel and Apache helicopter pilot. Before their marriage, they met in Baghdad during the Iraq War, and reside in Holly. Elissa Slotkin has two stepdaughters, one an Army officer, and the other a physician.

Elissa Slotkin Politician

Elissa Slotkin early employment included: community organizer for Roca, Incorporated (1998-2000) and Swahili language translator for Harbor Area Early Childhood (1999-2000), both in Massachusetts; grant writer at Isha L’Isha (meaning ‘Women to Women’ in Hebrew) (2000-2001), an intern at the U.S. Department of State (2002).

Slotkin’s professional experience included working for the Central Intelligence Agency as a political analyst (2003-2004) and intelligence briefer (2004-2005). From 2005 to 2006 she was a senior assistant on the staff of the Director of National Intelligence. She was the leader of a CIA assessment team in Iraq from 2006 to 2007, and the National Security Council staff’s director for Iraq policy from 2007 to 2009.

From 2009 to 2011, Slotkin was a senior advisor on Iraq policy at the U.S. State Department, and in 2011 she joined the staff of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy as an advisor on Middle East policy. In 2012, Slotkin became chief of staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy, and later that year she was appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Slotkin was appointed Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in 2013, and in 2014 she was appointed as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. From 2015 to 2017, Slotkin was acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. After leaving the Defense Department in January 2017, Slotkin moved back to her family’s farm in Holly, where she owned and operated Pinpoint Consulting.

Elissa Slotkin U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan’s 8th congressional district

In July 2017, Slotkin announced her candidacy for the 8th District. Elissa Slotkin started her run for Michigan’s 8th Congressional District in part because she felt Washington was broken. After narrowly defeating incumbent Rep. Mike Bishop in November 2018, the Holly Democrat experienced the partisan dysfunction, and she described the campaign trail as a firsthand, entering Congress in the midst of the longest U.S. government shutdown in history.

She’s frustrated by the gridlock, but she remains hopeful that new members of Congress like herself can inform the conversation and show there are people out there “who are just not going to accept that this is the way Washington is.” “I didn’t expect that we would get elected and sunshine and rainbows would just appear and it would be easy,” the former U.S. Department of Defense official said ahead of a Lansing event with U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

“No matter what was going to be happening at this time, that no matter what was going to be our first issue, it was always going to be complicated because of our government right now.” Slotkin served three tours in Iraq with the CIA before holding several positions with the U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense.

Prior to her Congressional run, she served as an adviser to two Secretaries of Defense on the Middle East, Europe and NATO, Russia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. She is one of four new Democratic members of Congress from Michigan, along with fellow Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, Haley Stevens of Rochester Hills and Andy Levin of Bloomfield Twp.

Slotkin’s campaign in the 8th Congressional District was closely watched nationwide, and her win – along with Stevens’ win in the 11th District – brought Michigan’s Congressional delegation to a 7-7 split and contributed to Democrats securing a majority in the House.

During the shutdown, Slotkin is donating her paycheck to the Alzheimer’s Association in solidarity with federal employees who aren’t being paid and said she’s heard stories from federal workers across Michigan whose situations are becoming increasingly dire. She said she’s “absolutely willing” to work on negotiating a deal to address border security, but believes the federal government shouldn’t be held hostage to that conversation.

Slotkin said the shutdown has impeded significant progress on policy priorities she’s eager to get to, including a wide-ranging infrastructure package and an overhaul of federal campaign finance rules. She said she’s particularly passionate about requiring similar disclosure rules for PACs that currently exist for political campaigns.

“If you’re going to donate money into our political process, whether it’s $15 or $15 million, you should have to say…what your name is, where you’re from, and who you work for,” she said.

With Democrats in charge of the House, she said party leaders now have an obligation to live up to what voters asked for in the 2018 elections and use the power of holding a branch of government to stake out a clear agenda, be willing to negotiate with Republican leadership and provide more Congressional oversight. Slotkin announced this week she’d be serving on the House Armed Services Committee.

“When you’re in the majority, you can hold hearings, subpoena people, open up the conversation, shine a light on what the executive branch is doing in a way that we just haven’t been,” Slotkin said.

Prior to Slotkin’s election, the 8th Congressional District had been held by Republicans since 2000, and her election was one of the closest contests in the state. Throughout the election cycle, attack ads against Slotkin alleged she was a Washington insider who was “hand-picked” by Pelosi to replace Bishop in the House.

Slotkin was ultimately among a handful of Democrats who did not support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – ahead of the vote, she said she respected Pelosi’s service but believed it was time for a different generation of leadership.

Slotkin said the influx of new voices into the party with one of the largest and most diverse groups of new lawmakers in Congressional history is contributing to a “complete political tornado” in Washington that hasn’t been stymied by the government shutdown.

She said she and many of her colleagues on both sides of the aisle are privately discussing potential solutions and continuing to encourage party leaders to “get in the damn room” and recognize that giving up or waiting for issues like the shutdown to resolve themselves isn’t an option.

“We all have a fire under us to get something done,” she said. “We’re trying to still figure out the dynamic between all of us, and the leadership is still trying to figure out how to manage this very, very energetic and outspoken class.”

She stated that she was motivated to challenge two-term Republican incumbent Mike Bishop when she saw him smile at a White House celebration after he and the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

She faced Michigan State University criminal justice professor Christopher Smith in the Democratic primary. On August 7, she defeated Smith, receiving 70.7% of the votes.

In November 2018, Slotkin defeated Bishop with 50.6% of the vote. She is the first Democrat to represent this district since 2001. Her victory and that of Haley Stevens in the neighboring 11th District means that there are no Republicans representing Oakland County in the House for the first time since the 1930s.

Elissa Slotkin Committee assignments

  • Committee on Armed Services
    • Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities
    • Subcommittee on Readiness
    • Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence
    • Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection

Elissa Slotkin for Congress

At a time when career politicians are practicing divisive politics, I am running for Congress in Michigan’s 8th district to do something different: to set the vitriol aside and put our country and our community ahead of everything else. Having dedicated my life to national service, I believe that the central function of elected representatives is to improve the lives of their constituents.

That is the privilege and the purpose of elected office. I offer the citizens of Michigan’s 8th district a back-to-basics, common sense approach: I will listen to you, make a plan to improve your lives in concrete ways, and fight like hell to get it done.

At a time when career politicians are practicing divisive politics, I am running for Congress in Michigan’s 8th district to do something different: to set the vitriol aside and put our country and our community ahead of everything else. Having dedicated my life to national service, I believe that the central function of elected representatives is to improve the lives of their constituents.

That is the privilege and the purpose of elected office. I offer the citizens of Michigan’s 8th district a back-to-basics, common sense approach: I will listen to you, make a plan to improve your lives in concrete ways, and fight like hell to get it done.

Over the next 18 months, I’ll be crisscrossing the 8th district from Rochester to Brighton to East Lansing, listening to people’s concerns and I’ll be bringing you into the process along the way.  Because the fight to preserve the American Dream in the 8th district is a fight that everyone should want to win.

I’m a third-generation Michigander and spent my early life on a farm in Holly, Michigan where I currently live and run a small consulting business. My family story is one of hard work and sacrifice, starting with my great-grandfather. He arrived on Ellis Island and achieved the American Dream by founding the family meat business, Hygrade Foods, which established its Detroit headquarters in 1949.

Hygrade created a number of food staples beloved by Michiganders, including the famous Ballpark Frank, first sold at Tiger Stadium. The values of hard work, decency, and integrity that underpinned his success were passed down from generation to generation in my family, ultimately guiding me into a life of service.

After college at Cornell University and a few years working for non-profit organizations, I went to graduate school at Columbia University in New York City. The 9/11 attacks happened during my first week in the city. That terrible day changed the trajectory of my life. I decided that after graduate school, I would join the intelligence community and to work to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States.

I was recruited to join the Central Intelligence Agency as a Middle East analyst, and within a year of joining the agency, I was deployed to Baghdad to serve alongside America’s soldiers and diplomats, doing my part to help in the very complicated war. I served a total of three tours in Iraq over a span of five years.

My tours in a combat zone led to various defense and intelligence roles at the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department. I worked for President Bush as a member of his national security staff and was asked to stay on when President Obama took office. I took on a series of leadership roles at the Defense Department, and until January 2017, I oversaw policy at the Pentagon on Russia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense.

There, I negotiated some of the Pentagon’s most sensitive national security matters from the fight against ISIS to the U.S. response to Russian aggression. But no matter how difficult the issue, it was the values I learned growing up in Michigan a straightforward, commonsense approach – that helped me succeed as a national security leader.

I’m fortunate to share these values with my husband Dave, who retired as a Colonel after 30 years in the U.S. Army. Dave served as an Apache helicopter pilot in the First Gulf War, Korea, and Kosovo, and he served two tours during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where we met in Baghdad. In Dave, I gained not only a partner but also two amazing daughters who have started their own lives of service, one as an Army officer and the other as a physician.

Throughout my career, I’ve been proud to work for both Republican and Democratic leaders who put the good of our country over politics. I plan to do the same in Michigan’s 8th District by ruthlessly putting the community’s needs over partisanship. As your representative, I’ll rely on my family values, a deep sense of service, and professional experience to deliver results. But in order to do this, I’ll need your input and support. I look forward to engaging you at every turn. Our district deserves strong and principled leadership – and nothing less.

Elissa Slotkin Caucus memberships

  • New Democrat Coalition

Elissa Slotkin Trump

U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, (MI-08) released the following statement regarding President Trump’s official declaration of a national emergency to build a border wall. “As a former Pentagon official, I am a firm believer in border security which is why last night I voted for a bipartisan deal to increase security at our Southern border,” Slotkin said.

“But a national emergency should be used in only the direst circumstances, not simply to bypass our democratic system when you don’t like the bipartisan deal that was struck. It sets a dangerous precedent for a nation of rules and laws. Likewise, because of that experience at the Pentagon and as an Army wife and step-mom, I  believe that diverting funds from military construction hurt our men and women in uniform. They should be the last folks to get caught in a political debate.”

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Enda Jantzen

Update: 2023-11-11