Detroit Sends Union Organizer Donavan McKinney to Congress

Card photograph: ARCHIVE. Donavan McKinney at his swearing-in ceremony in Detroit, December 12, 2022. City of Detroit, via Wikimedia Commons; released by the author with the Public Domain Mark. Cropped for the card. Source photograph.

Donavan McKinney is heading to Congress from Michigan’s 13th District. NPR reports an Associated Press call for the Detroit Democrat, one of five incoming House winners backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and its chapters.

Michigan Advance’s election-night report identifies his defeated Republican opponent as T.P. Nykoriak. McKinney will succeed Shri Thanedar, whom he removed in the Democratic primary. The Working Families Party welcomed the result alongside Michigan Democratic Party leaders.

McKinney’s campaign program starts with experience inside SEIU Healthcare Michigan. He identifies himself as a former union member and leader, and calls for a living wage, the right to organize and higher taxes on wealthy people and corporations to fund public services.

His housing proposals overlap with Delia Ramirez’s effort to protect tenant organizing. McKinney calls for nationwide rent controls, just-cause eviction protections, a federal right to legal counsel in eviction cases and stronger tenant unions.

ARCHIVE. United Auto Workers picketers at the GM Willow Run Distribution Center in Belleville, Michigan, September 26, 2023. Photo: Adam Schultz / The White House, public domain. Source photograph.

A primary against the party leadership’s choice

The August primary divided prominent Democrats. Michigan Advance reported that Hakeem Jeffries backed Thanedar, while Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee and Bernie Sanders supported McKinney. Thanedar congratulated him after the loss.

The district includes portions of Detroit and suburbs including Allen Park, Hamtramck, Romulus and Wyandotte. The primary result replaced an incumbent in a Democratic stronghold; the November result secured the seat for his challenger rather than flip it from Republican control.

McKinney brings state budget experience. His Michigan House biography records service on the Appropriations Committee and vice-chair roles on subcommittees covering corrections and the environment. His state district spans northeast Detroit and part of Warren.

Before elected office, he worked in the legislature, at Community Development Advocates of Detroit and Wayne County Community College District, and in political and coalition roles with SEIU Healthcare Michigan. He also served on the board of Bridging Communities, which provides senior services and foreclosure-prevention programs.

Protection before an eviction

Those measures would intervene at different points in a tenant’s dispute with a landlord. Rent controls would limit increases; just-cause rules would restrict the grounds for removing a household; a right to counsel would give tenants legal help when a case reaches court.

He also backs Medicare for All and a national homes guarantee. His campaign recounts repeated moves and evictions during childhood, alongside asthma in his family, to explain why housing and healthcare belong in the same political program.

His union and tenant proposals share an economic purpose. Collective organization gives workers and residents a way to contest decisions made by the owners of workplaces and homes, instead of bargaining alone under the threat of losing either.

A bus instead of another car bill

McKinney’s environmental platform includes renewable energy and expanded public transit. He argues that residents should be able to reach jobs, shops and childcare without having to buy a car. That makes transit a household-cost issue as well as an environmental one.

Transit would also reduce dependence on wages high enough to cover a car. The Detroit program combines that lower household cost with legal protections at work and at home: an organizing right, a defense against eviction and a route to a job that does not require vehicle ownership.