Small Business Owner Lorrie Rutledge Seeks Democratic Nomination in Michigan's Redrawn 13th District

Lorrie Rutledge, a small business owner, is among nine candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in Michigan's newly redrawn 13th Congressional District. The district takes in portions of Detroit, the Grosse Pointes and the Downriver communities.

Rutledge describes a varied work history that ranges from serving as a third class stationary steam engineer to owning a business. She currently runs a small manufacturing company that produces natural hair products and herbal supplements. She is the mother of two sons and has spent many years in Detroit. Since 2012 she briefly lived elsewhere before returning to care for her parents, until they died.

Community health problems, she says, drew her into the race. "Wayne County is the sickest county in Michigan of 83 counties," Rutledge says, calling health her most pressing issue because it "affects everything else, especially during the pandemic."

She also points to the wide economic differences within the district. According to Rutledge, the Grosse Pointes have "pretty much zero poverty," while Hamtramck has almost 50% poverty. The other 19 or 20 cities in the district, she says, fall somewhere between those extremes.

To address poverty, Rutledge says she would introduce what she calls a domestic Marshall Plan if elected. She describes it as legislation that worked in Western Europe after World War II and says she considers it the answer for the district. "I plan to really, really push that," she says. She also believes the measure would benefit Michigan as a whole if it passed.

Rutledge argues that her range of experience would serve her in Congress. Her career has crossed several industries, she says, and she has held union jobs, which lets her relate to both union workers and small business owners. She also notes that she raised her two sons as a single mother, an experience she considers relevant because many women in the district are single parents.

She says her perspective as someone who lived in Detroit both before and after the 1967 rebellion sets her apart from other candidates. Rutledge says she has been in the city all her life and remembers it before the unrest. That memory, she says, is why she speaks of decades-old blight and squalor, which she believes many people do not realize has existed in parts of Detroit since the 1960s.

Rutledge says that history gives her a vision of what life in the city was like earlier. More information about her campaign is available on her website.