William Lawrence

Lawrence obtained a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College. Lawrence is the co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, the Michigan Rent Is Too Damn High Coalition, and the Mid-Michigan Tenant Resource Center.[1][2]

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Campaign websiteLawrence's campaign website stated the following:Make Housing AffordableThe rent is too damn high! So is the cost of a mortgage. If you aren’t personally dealing with high housing costs, your kids probably are.We need major federal investment in quality housing, at all price points. I am particularly excited about the mixed-income housing model that has been pioneered in Montgomery County, MD, and is now being adopted around the country.I also support a federal tenant bill of rights that would level the playing field between tenants and price-gouging landlords. Many of our worst landlords are owned by Wall Street firms and have no commitment whatsoever to our communities.Guarantee HealthcareWe pay more for our healthcare than any other nation in the developed world, while receiving worse care, and living shorter lives. Big Pharma gets rich from pushing pills, while Big Insurance gets rich by denying us care.Tom Barrett voted to kick up to 700,000 Michiganders off of Medicaid. The ripple impacts of these cuts will raise healthcare costs for all of us.Our healthcare technology is a marvel of modern science and engineering. I am deeply grateful that my family members have benefited from chemotherapy, heart bypasses, and other life-saving treatments. Every family deserves the same standard of care. I support Medicare for All, which would remove the profit motive from health insurance and allow us all to access quality care, for a lower price.End HomelessnessIt’s a disgrace that in the richest country in the world, nearly a million people are without homes, and millions more are teetering on the edge. We have experienced a noticeable rise in homelessness in Mid-Michigan since the pandemic.Ending homelessness requires more affordable housing, as well as rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing. I support a “Housing First” approach, because having housing is the essential condition to rebuild a stable life.Care for Our Mental HealthSocial media and AI misinformation has fractured our reality and is literally driving people insane. Economic and political insecurity also cause deep worry about the future. Our kids, our elders, and everyone in between are struggling with isolation, depression and anxiety.Billionaire-aligned Republican politicians are making the problem worse by cutting essential mental services, such as the steep proposed federal cuts to the VA, and local cuts to Community Mental Health being pushed through in Eaton County.Defending existing mental health programs is the baseline. Moving forward, we need a district-wide conversation about what’s driving us mad, and what would make us whole and healthy. This will require investment in community, in care, and a genuine collective effort to re-stitch the social fabric.Tax the BillionairesYou and I pay a higher tax rate than billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg who are poisoning our politics and destroying our democracy.Taxing the billionaires would pay for all of the basic goods that the people of this district deserve. I support a billionaire minimum tax, which is a minimum wealth tax rate that the mega-wealthy must pay. (Don’t feel bad for Elon — he’d still be rich even after the tax.)Pass the PRO Act and Support Labor UnionsUnions are proven to increase wages, benefits, and job security. Workers in the 7th District, from coffee shops to warehouses and manufacturing plants, are working to form unions to improve their conditions, but retaliation from CEOs makes it an uphill climb.I support the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which lowers barriers to unionization by holding corporations accountable for labor law violations.I’ve walked on the picket line with GM and Starbucks workers in the 7th District, and I will always stand with labor as your representative.Defend Michigan State UniversityMichigan State University is one of the cultural and economic centers of the 7th District. Its undergraduate programs were once a ladder to a good life for young people across Michigan. Its science research, graduate programs, and international programs have made it a globally renowned institution. Now MSU is under attack from the billionaires and bullies in the Trump administration, enabled by Tom Barrett.We need to defend the political independence and long-term funding of Michigan State and other public universities across the country. Public universities actually make America great.Keep the Promise of Social SecurityOur seniors worked their whole lives and paid into social security with the promise they would be able to collect in their retirement. Now the billionaires are trying to break that promise. Trump and Musk’s DOGE has been pushing cuts to social security to make it less responsive. They want to weaken the program now, so they can kill it later.I support lifting the payroll tax cap, which would guarantee social security for our seniors now, and all of us in the future.Defend Our Water, Land, Air and ClimateI learned about climate change when I was 12 years old and spent the next 18 years working to stop it. I saw first-hand how Big Utilities have sabotaged the clean energy transition so they can keep getting rich off our monthly gas and electric bills.A stable climate is the foundation of our economy and way of life. Michigan’s lakes are suffering from rising temperatures and pollution. Michigan’s farmers are uncertain when the last freeze will come, or when the rain will arrive. Mount Brighton isn’t open as many days as when I skied there in high school.I will be among the most knowledgeable and dedicated members of Congress on water, climate and energy policy. I will fight for investment to secure the climate we depend on, adapt to the changes we can’t prevent, and finally drive our electric bills down.Invest in Public Schools and Community Colleges; Offer the Education that Young People NeedBillionaires are attacking our public education system because an educated population is an empowered public. We need to stand strong for the principle of public education at every level.In our K-12 schools, we need to take a firm stand for the value of literacy, against encroachment by the AI corporations who are eroding our ability to read, write, and think for ourselves.In higher education, we need to not only support 4-year universities, but community colleges and trade schools as well. A blue-collar education in the trades is the best path to a middle-class life for many of our young people and it should be encouraged, especially if the alternative is taking on debt.Say No to Endless WarAs a nation, we spend a trillion dollars every year to enrich military contractors and drop bombs, while robbing ourselves of real security here at home. Every dollar we spend blowing things up and killing people abroad is a dollar we don’t spend building housing and caring for people at home.The damage caused by militarism is not only economic, but ethical. I am reminded of the words of Martin Luther King Jr. from 1967: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”The United States must work for peace around the globe, rather than pursuing escalation. Most urgently, we must stop arming Israel, which is pursuing a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza with U.S. weapons and tax dollars.Regulate AI and Surveillance by Corporations and GovernmentBig Tech is coming for every last second of your attention, and every last bit of your data, so they can package it and sell it. They are strip-mining our attention, and degrading it in the process. The impacts on our mental health, our community life, and the job market are already severe. There’s also the huge invasion of privacy from 24/7 surveillance.We need to squarely face the negative impacts of AI and surveillance, and question whether we want Big Tech making the biggest decisions about our shared future. I don’t have the answers here, but I know the question needs to be asked.Support Small Businesses over Corporate MonopoliesSmall businesses foster unique local communities, create jobs, and circulate money back into the community. Corporate monopolies suck up our money and deliver it to their investors on Wall Street. I am eager to meet with small business owners in our district and hear what policies are the highest priority for them. For starters, I believe that no small business in our district should pay a higher tax rate than a multinational corporation.Defend the V.A. and Honor Our VeteransVeterans committed to service with the understanding that they would receive quality benefits. Now, that promise is being broken. Trump and Musk want to lay off 80,000 V.A. workers, which would seriously diminish the quality of service and veterans’ ability to access benefits.In defending the V.A., and in my own constituent services, I will work to honor the promise made to our veterans, especially by ensuring that they have good housing and healthcare. Support Families to Care for Children and SeniorsHow are we supposed to build a family, when the costs of caring for our kids and our parents are so extreme? Families are stuck in a terrible bind of having to choose between two incomes, never seeing their kids or parents, and paying a full income just to care for their loved ones, or going to one income to offer full-time caregiving. I will support a National Family Care Agenda that supports families at every stage of their lives together, including Paid Family Leave, expanded Pre-K, a re-evaluation of how we manage senior care, plus defending and expanding home health care optionsStand Up to Bullies and Defend Equal RightsWhen I say I’m for everybody, that means everybody, including people who are different from me. I’ll stand up to bullies who want to blame communities of color or the LGBT community for our problems.I’ll oppose any attempt to roll back civil rights legislation, and keep the focus where it belongs — on the billionaires who are taking advantage of us all.Protect Private Choices Over Personal HealthcareI will defend women’s right to choose an abortion, and seek to codify this right in federal law. Reproductive healthcare is a deeply personal decision for each family. Attempts to insert government into this matter are not about morality — they’re about control. I will highlight the hypocrisy of men in politics who want to control the actions of pregnant women, but won’t provide the childcare or education that families need to raise their kids once they’re born.End the ICE Occupation of American Cities and Streets; Create a Path to Citizenship for ImmigrantsICE was created in March 2003, as part of the War On Terror. It is now equivalent, all by itself, to the 15th largest military in the world. ICE is occupying American cities and raiding neighborhoods in the 7th District, sweeping up innocent people whose only crime is trying to build a better life. Immigrants pay taxes, enrich our communities, and help our economy. It’s not immigrants who hurt U.S. workers — it’s the two-tier labor system that depresses wages for everybody. This is a form of divide and conquer by the corporations. I support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, in order to level the playing field for all workers in the United States, and raise wages for everybody.— William Lawrence's campaign website (May 16, 2026)Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.

Campaign ads

"Michigan First" -Lawrence campaign ad released August 12, 2026

"Home"-Lawrence campaign ad released July 24, 2026

"We're scaring the billionaires"-Lawrence campaign ad released July 23, 2026

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