GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Another addition to the crowded field of candidates vying for a soon-to-be-vacant senate seat in 2024 announced his candidacy Monday morning.
Former Representative Peter Meijer, a republican, said he intended to seek the seat due to be vacated by long-time Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan).
Meijer was ousted from Congress after John Gibbs, a fellow Republican, leveled a primary challenge against him in the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and Meijer’s vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump.
The candidate—whose family operates the eponymous regional grocery chain, Meijer—has already taken criticism from some among GOP leadership, who dismissed Meijer’s candidacy as unviable following his exit from Congress.
He spoke with 13 ON YOUR SIDE via Zoom Monday. The full transcript is featured below with minimal revisions undertaken for the sake of brevity and clarity:
What prompted you to want to fill this open seat, a seat that's been held by a member of the opposition party for some time now?
"I'm just not the type of guy who can sit on the sidelines. I have always moved towards things that I felt were broken, and that were in need of some change. Whether that was, you know, joining the military and serving in Iraq, working in the veterans community, at home around education advocacy. Abroad, disaster response and humanitarian aid efforts in places like Afghanistan and South Sudan or running for Congress, myself, and serving up until earlier this year. Things are in a dark and frightening spot. I think we need to have folks in the arena, who are offering a bold vision for where we need to be by 2050, if we're going to be in the middle of a second Great American century. But it's not enough just to have the vision, you also have to be able to outline how we're going to get from here to there. When it comes to the long term approach, when it comes to a commitment to not just talking about something, but actually doing it, I just can't sit on the sidelines."
13 OYS: Your vote to impeach President Trump resulted in a primary challenge that later led to your ouster pretty early on. That has some in leadership questioning now whether you would be a viable candidate here and now, in a primary race or in the general election beyond.
Are you concerned some of the same element will be out there, at play in 2024, and that it could affect your odds of success?
"I think it actually offers a great opportunity to have frank and honest discussions with people. I think that's one of the challenges in politics generally, but especially in the Republican Party's a lot of folks who just go along to get along. And people don't vote for somebody so they can just go and sit on their hands and tell happy lies while the truth is hard and difficult. I'm running because I am more than happy to have those conversations. In fact, I think that is an excellent opportunity to get an understanding of just how broken Washington politics are. You mentioned some of the folks like the establishment National Republican Senatorial Committee. I don't want to betray too many confidences though I feel like I have some license to be able to do that. But it's, it is hilarious to me how much contempt they have for Republican voters, and how little they actually want to address core issues. I mean, these are folks who just hope that Donald Trump goes away tomorrow…. behind the scenes, I say the same things, I'm critical of the same things and supportive of the same things with regards to the former president, whether I'm on TV or sitting at the bar, having a conversation with somebody, as opposed to many of those who go out and claim to be his loudest boosters and behind closed doors, have nothing but contempt for him and his voters. So, I, frankly, am running against that type of two-faced hypocrisy. I'm looking for an opportunity to get a couple of drinks with folks who disagree with me and see where we can find some common ground."
Trump remains the undisputed GOP favorite for next year. Far and above the competition there at the moment. If elected, any thoughts regarding your ability to co govern?
"I count many of them, my friends, and some of them have… encouraged me to run for this seat, because they're frankly disgusted with business as usual in the Republican Party. If you want somebody who's actually an outsider, you know, I'm outside of everything at this point. You know, when it comes down to it, though, I'm going to try to have a productive conversation and working relationship with whoever the Republican nominee is, as you mentioned, it'll probably be the former president, but a lot can happen between now and then. And at the end of the day, I'm going to support the Republican nominee, because I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that Joe Biden is a one term president, and some of the, you know, anti-Trump and never-Trump people who like me are going to be frustrated by that. But I am somebody who wants to call balls and strikes, I will give credit where credit is due, I will speak up when I see something that I disagree with. And at the end of the day, I think that's what we should expect of our officials, not for them to hold their tongues, and just toe the party line, but to actually be honest and truthful and say it as they see it."
Would you have done what you did again (with regard to the impeachment vote) in an identical, hypothetical scenario?
"I mean, I'm not sure how you manufacture the same components and I hope we never find ourselves in a situation like that again, but looking back on that vote, I regret that we had to take it, I regret that it came forward, I don't regret my vote, although I do regret, you know, seeing all of the ways in which the Democrats proceeded to manipulate that both by taking a very different approach toward January 6, as they did on similar occasions, and also, frankly, the way they use it to meddle in Republican primaries, I just want to be very clear, I have no personal disagreements with Donald Trump. He gave $5,000, towards my primary opponent, the Democrats put in, you know, 100 times that when they worked to try to meddle in the Republican primary here just last year."
With respect to the other Republicans in the field, how would you weigh your odds of success against some of the current front runners… James Craig, for instance, several others on that list?
"I have a lot of respect for some of the other candidates who put their name forward, I think, important to know for the listeners is that in order to get on the ballot, you need to get a minimum 15,000 signatures. There's some stipulations where those signatures need to come from. That can be a pretty tall task. I think I’m the 10th candidate who's filed. Obviously, the question is going to be how many of us who filed make it onto the ballot and are truly kind of in that race. But I think a large dynamic field is a positive. I think it's great for the voters to be able to hear where candidates are in agreement, where they're in disagreement, and let those candidates make their voices known. Frankly, having a larger field I think is beneficial, because then you have candidates who are seeking to define themselves off of what they believe, rather than just the opposition or negative attacks you traditionally see with a smaller field. So, I'm excited for the race to come."
13 OYS: It would come more down to questions of policy, I suppose, than it would under the alternate scenario you just described… while we're there, we've seen a large number of these recent races come down to issues tied to the culture war… everything from book banning to drag queen brunches. Will you focus on some of those hot button topics or not?
Describe your platform in a nutshell for me, if you would.
"I certainly think that there are some of those issues that don't really come down to a question of federal, or even state or even governmental policy, generally speaking, but that get at a feeling that things are just weird, right? That common sense has become a rarity. That there's this willingness--and you see this, especially on the fringe left--just to really try to redefine everything in ways that are not coming from a point of empathy, but coming from, well, if we can outrage the right conservatives, then we must be doing the right thing. That's not necessarily going to be the center point of a policy position. But I think it's important that we bring some rationality back to the equation, that we stop giving so much power and oxygen to those who are in it only to outrage, only to provoke. Especially with some of those excesses on the left, what we have seen in terms of the response on campuses, and within many more progressive organizations, after the brutal Hamas atrocities in Israel has been an unwillingness to actually confront evil, a willingness to justify atrocity, you know, because of some bizarre intersectional affiliation. Now, I am firmly opposed to that. I think it flies in the face of just basic humanity and decency. Now, in terms of the campaign, I think, from a policy standpoint, we need to be fixing how our federal government operates, because so much power has accumulated at the federal level. And it's accumulated within bureaucracies and within other entities that are basically being sold off to constituent interest groups, right? I mean, we see some of that from just kind of corporatist lobbying more generally. But on the left, especially, it has become finding these ideological coalitions that are profiting off of getting a stranglehold on taxpayer revenue streams, and feeding into these nonprofit industrial complexes that are in bed with the government. Right. That's where you see the difference between what is a purely private activity and what is inadvertently getting subsidized and supported and protected by taxpayer dollars… you have a right to be outraged. That is understandable if somebody is using your funds to do something that you personally do not approve of or that was contrary to that intention, I think folks have every right to step out and federal officials have every right to step back and say, do you want the government telling you what to do? If not, don't take taxpayer dollars. It's as simple as that. Be actually a private organization with private means of sustaining themselves. But the big picture point that I want to get across is what's broken in our government. First and foremost is the fact that we elect people send them to Washington, and they can't actually do anything, because the offices they hold have been stripped of their power, from especially the executive branch and the presidency. Congress has far less than the ability to actually make an impact, because so much of the laws and rules and other restrictions that are put on Americans come from the executive branch come from bureaucrats and technocrats, within administrative state entities that are not beholden to Congress. Maybe Congress passes their budget. Right? But there's no committee hearing. There's no vote on that legislation. There's a complicated rulemaking process that favors special interests and makes it hard for those individual members of Congress or let alone individual voters and constituents to have their say, right? We need to put power back in the hands of our elected officials, and out of unelected bureaucrats. We need to find a better balance between the state and federal governments so that we can actually solve the problems that there's not really much disagreement on between the parties. Right? That, to me, is hard from a process standpoint, but low hanging fruit politically. Nobody's sitting back and saying, that's great. We want our schools to be failing. No, very few people are sitting there saying, oh, we love rising crime. Oh, we love health care costs that are out of control, right? There's a select few who love a problem, because they can use that as a crisis they won't get let go to waste for their cynical political opportunism. But by and large, these are not controversial issues. And if we had a better ability to compare and contrast strategies at the state level, as opposed to all or nothing at the federal level, we might just get something done. And then we can focus on the issues where we actually disagree on what the outcome should be, and hash that out. But know that your elected officials can actually put forward the change they're suggesting, as opposed to just being an impotent mouthpiece that's elected. That was what I saw in DC was a vast majority of things that were happening that people were frustrated about. I could try to echo some of that frustration. But there are very few things that even our elected representatives are able to do. That's where we need to start with the fixes. If the federal government is going to do it, then the federal government needs to be accountable and the way you make it accountable, is you put it in the hands… of people who are actually voted on, as opposed to those who are appointed."
13 OYS: So, increased transparency, accountability, shifting where some of the power lies, and having common sense debates over some of the most pressing issues of the day.
Would you say that crystallizes your position pretty well?
"Absolutely. Now, obviously, when it comes to what those issues of the day are, I mean, I'm more than happy to spend all day talking."
13 OYS: The list is long, right?
"Yeah. Energy dominance. Obviously, we have to secure the border. We need to make sure that we control rising costs and inflation and just make sure the American dream is not out of reach of affordability. But all of those—a lot of those are symptoms of this deeper underlying rot in our system that has moved to be less accountable to the voters and less transparent in terms of where the problem actually lies."
13 OYS: The slogan looks pretty familiar. Tell me about the decision to use that.
"You know, it's funny. When I spell my name in all lowercase, it looks like the current logo, I put it all in uppercase. It looks like the former logo. I think it's part and parcel with having a readily identified family name and being in the state of Michigan here."
Are you counting on some of that legacy to maybe hold some sway with voters?
"You know, I'm standing on my own and I'm making my own case. But, I do hope that folks appreciate the value that our family businesses brought to customers throughout Michigan and our five-state footprint."
Watch it here:
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