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Republican U.S. Representative Tom Barrett, the incumbent in Michigan's 7th Congressional District, and Democratic challenger William Lawrence took aim at one another's records during the first and possibly only debate in the race for one of the closest U.S. House districts in the country.
Barrett repeatedly took shots at old social media posts and comments made by Lawrence during the debate at WKAR's studios in East Lansing, including Lawrence's past stance on police funding.
"My opponent doesn't want to answer for his record of repeatedly calling for the defunding of police multiple different times," Barrett said. "And then, when crime soared here in Lansing, and we became the ninth most violent city in America, my opponent publicly said, 'Turns out the cops aren't very good at enforcing or keeping us safe. We should just abolish them altogether.' Couple that with his plans to throw open the borders, and it will make our communities far less safe."
Lawrence said there was a "wide-ranging conversation at the beginning of this decade about how to keep people safe, and the result of that conversation was clear: we do not want to defund the police."
Instead, he said he supports funding police with community violence intervention and mental health programs.
He told reporters after the debate that "Tom Barrett wants to talk about old tweets because he can't talk about recent votes that he's cast to make our lives more expensive and really damage our standing as a country here among our own citizens and around the world."
"I'm somebody who thinks out loud," Lawrence said. "I've spent my share of time thinking out loud, like lots of millennials on the internet. I'm not afraid to change my mind and live and learn. And I've answered for those comments."
But Barrett told reporters that people running for public office have to own their entire record.
"We are supposed to believe that somebody who had a 15-year record as an activist, in the final weeks of a campaign, can disavow their entire history, and then tell voters that they no longer believe in those things? I call that a conversion of convenience, not one of conviction," Barrett said.
Among the votes Lawrence criticized Barrett for taking is one against ending the national emergency that gave President Donald Trump broad powers to levy tariffs.
Barrett said tariff policy should bring investments back to the United States and prioritize calm and stability.
But Lawrence said the president's tariffs have been anything but calm or stable.
"If Tom has been calling for calm and stability, he hasn't been very effective at it, because what we see from the president is chaos and instability," Lawrence said. "That's reflected in the prices, which you can't even count on what your budget's going to be next month. You can't make investment decisions about next year because there is no economic security. This is chaos."
Barrett said he voted against ending the national emergency because "that vote was taking place in the midst of a Supreme Court decision that was still pending," adding that "I respect the separation of powers."
Lawrence also criticized Barrett for voting for an early draft of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have prevented state or local governments from regulating artificial intelligence.
Barrett said it "would be very difficult to have a patchwork of regulation state by state."
"I believe that we need appropriate regulation for artificial intelligence," Barrett said. "I think the federal government needs to take the lead on that, and then where states and locals want to add further protection for privacy and data rights and things like that, I'm certainly very much supportive of that."
Barrett said artificial intelligence is "evolving so rapidly that it is hard to see where the puck is going every minute of every single day, and that's something that we need to continue to have a very, very discerning process for how we review that."
Both Barrett and Lawrence have campaigned on regulating data centers and advanced artificial intelligence development.
Barrett has introduced or co-sponsored legislation to prohibit federal, state and local officials from signing non-disclosure agreements related to data center developments and to prohibit federal agencies from overriding local land use, zoning, siting or permitting authority related to data centers.
Lawrence has called for a federal moratorium on the developments, but Barrett says that decision should remain at the local level.
Barrett has also introduced or co-sponsored bills to require age verification measures to use AI chatbots, require that the companies notify parents if their children show signs of suicidal ideation and increase testing requirements for advanced models.
Other bills introduced or co-sponsored by Barrett would prevent artificial intelligence from making health insurance coverage decisions, autonomously carrying out an intentionally lethal military strike or making the final decision about disability claims for veterans.
Lawrence has rolled out a platform with some similar policies that also calls for a New Deal-style jobs program to assist workers displaced by the technology.
Michigan's Seventh Congressional District is expected to be one of the closest U.S. House races in the country, meaning either party's hopes of controlling Congress rest on winning the seat.
The district includes both deeply Democratic areas, like the campus of Michigan State University and the city of Lansing, and deeply Republican areas, like Howell. That means each candidate has to make inroads in counties they won't ultimately carry in November to win the seat.
Lawrence predicted a progressive wave across the country in November, including in Michigan's Seventh Congressional District.
"People are ready for change, no doubt about it," Lawrence said. "They're ready for candidates that are unbought by the corporate money and who are not following party bosses in Washington, D.C., but are representing the people of this district."
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