Josh Cowen has announced his candidacy for Congress in a swing district in Michigan. The seat is currently held by a Republican.
Josh’s main issues will be education and affordability. He told the AP:
In an interview with The Associated Press, Cowen said federal worker layoffs and cuts to research funding and Medicaid inspired him to run for the Lansing-area seat that Barrett flipped in 2024.
“What it really means in our daily lives is disinvestment from services that we depend on,” said Cowen, an education policy academic who is known for his research and arguments against school vouchers.
Josh’s latest book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, exposed the failure of vouchers to produce academic improvement or to help poor kids. He had spent nearly 20 years as a voucher researcher, working within the studies. He came to realize that most of those students who used vouchers had never attended public schools. Vouchers, he saw, were a subsidy for affluent families.
I sent a contribution to Josh’s campaign. He is the only candidate, to my knowledge, who is running to be an advocate for public schools. We need his voice in Congress. Open this link to send him money for his campaign.
Nick Wu of Politico wrote about his entry into the race:
Democrat Josh Cowen is launching a bid by highlighting education and affordability issues in what is already becoming a crowded primary in a tossup Michigan district.
Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, singled out the school choice and voucher programs pushed by Michigan Republicans like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as part of what inspired him to run for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District in the central part of the state.
“I’m a teacher, and I have been fighting Betsy DeVos across the country on a specific issue, and that’s privatizing public schools,” Cowen said in an interview. “She’s been trying to disinvest, defund commitments to kids and families all over the place, and that’s actually the same fight as everything that’s going on right now — trying to protect investing in health care through Medicaid and other systems — protect jobs.”
Josh Cowen is running for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. | Cowen campaign
Several Democrats have already announced bids against Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who flipped the seat last cycle after Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) vacated it to run for Senate. He could be a tough incumbent for Democrats to dislodge and reported raising over $1 million last quarter
Still, Democrats see the narrowly divided seat as a top pickup opportunity next year, with former Ukraine Ambassador Bridget Brink and retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam among the field of candidates running. Cowen brushed off concerns about a contested primary, saying, “They’re going to run their campaigns. I’m going to run mine.”
“I am going to be running really hard on the fact that I am in this community. I’ve been here for 12 years. My kids went to public schools here. My youngest is still there,” he added.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Best wishes to Josh Cowen. I hope he can bring some common sense to politics in the state. In the absence of big money backers, it would be terrific if he could get Shawn Fain and the UAW to endorse him as well as trade unions including educators.
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Josh will have support of NEA–which just awarded him its highest honor as “Friend of Education.” And AFT, which has worked with him to slow vouchers.
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“Vouchers, he saw, were a subsidy for affluent families.”
An example of what a RAND paper calculated as a $47 trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the upper 10% from 1979 to 2018. Of course it’s gotten worse with passage of the BIG, BEAUTIFUL BUDGET-BUSTING MEDICAID-EVISCERATING BILL
I’m not a resident of Michigan but I feel compelled to send a few bucks to his campaign.
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Florida has a budget surplus this year, according to the Florida Policy Institute, but faces large and growing deficits after this year.
For the current fiscal year (FY 2025–26), Florida entered with a small projected surplus of around $2.1 billion .
• However, forecasts show this surplus flipping into a $2.8 billion projected deficit in FY 2026–27, and further growing to about $6.9 billion by FY 2027–28 if no changes are made to revenue or spending .
But that didn’t stop the Legislature and Gov. DeSantis from passing a $4 billion school voucher program, to pay the tuition for every student in religious or private schools.
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I have already gotten a request for a donation to his campaign, but here’s the problem: why should a resident of Illinois have anything to do with electing a representative to congress from Michigan?
Fundraising should be limited to the district the candidate is running in. If he/she can’t get his own voters to support his campaign, getting money from outsiders is an abomination.
So, if money is free speech, let the rich hop on a plane, rent a hall in Michigan, and speak their minds. Allowing money to flow from out of district has only one purpose and that is influence peddling, and last I looked, that is illegal.
As a former union official I wish him good luck and that the people in his state support his candidacy.
Please note this is not overruling the SCOTUS opinion that money is a form of free speech, it is merely a regulation of where you can spend it. You can’t shout fire in a packed theater, so speech is regulated, so why shouldn’t political speech be, too?
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Two points: 1) Even as a non-resident of Texas, for example, my interests and well-being as well as others on the national level are affected by the toxic presence of Ted Cruz (unabashed supporter of Israel, unhinged Right wing ideologue) in the Senate as by who my own senator is;
2) Gerrymandered Congressional districts (by definition contrary to fair and accurate representation) can make it neigh impossible for a candidate to raise funds in a district configured to perpetuate bias. As the results of such elections also bear national implications, outside money is justified in an attempt to even the odds.
Of course it can cut both ways, but until we have better ways of determining equitable representation of a district, and public financing of elections, it becomes a matter of being on guard for what’s going on over the hill.
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Well observed!
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