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Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t the only actor with political aspirations.
Actor Hill Harper is now throwing his hat into the ring as he looks to make a run for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan. His biggest opponent will be fellow Democrat Elissa Slotkin.
In his pitch, he says that while Michigan has progressively become more Democrat, the representation in D.C. hasn’t been as radical enough for him.
“We’re in a state where I think the triple blue leadership in Lansing has done really hard work moving the state forward, but in Washington, D.C., it’s still broken. And folks feel like it’s still broken. And I’m one of them,” Harper told The Detroit News.
In his jump from acting to politics, he wants to bring a new energy to his state that career-long representatives cant emulate.
“Without energized, bold leadership in the U.S. Senate, our state will continue to be held back from achieving its full potential,” he added. “We deserve a better brand of politics than politics as usual, and that’s why I’m running for the U.S. Senate.”
Though born and raised in Iowa, he moved to Detroit in 2018 and even owns a small coffee shop named Roasting Plant in the city’s downtown area. He boasts that his experience in owning a small business will also help him fulfill his duties as a U.S. Senate hopeful.
“As an example, if I’m elected to the U.S. Senate, I will be the only U.S. senator who is a current dues-paying, card-carrying union member. If I’m elected to the U.S. Senate, I will be one of very few small business owners in the U.S. Senate and, I believe, the only Democrat,” Harper said.
The 57-year-old is best known for his roles in ABC’s The Good Doctor and CBS’ CSI: N.Y. and movies like For Colored Girls and Concussion.
A switch in focus to politics serves the economics degree he received from Brown University in 1988. He’s also got political ties as he befriended Barack Obama at Harvard as the two both played basketball. The friendship remained intact, and Harper would eventually be appointed to the President’s Cancer Panel in 2012 as a member of a three-person committee that collaborated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and made recommendations to Obama’s administration about cancer healthcare policies.
See Twitter’s reacting to Hill throwing his hat into the political ring below.
