Standing at a farmer’s market a half-hour outside of Lansing, Mich., in the heart of the Republican-held district he is running to represent in Congress, William Lawrence delivered an ultraprogressive campaign pitch.
Mr. Lawrence, a Democrat, spoke about New Deal-era fights between exploitative “bosses — the billionaires of their time” — and labor unions. He argued for the role of collective action to “instill consequences against powerful people, be it the president or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.”
“People are ready for a different kind of politics,” he said on a recent Thursday afternoon, perched behind the table he brings to his “Ask Me Anything” events, as he made his case against Representative Tom Barrett, the G.O.P. incumbent.
It was far from the centrist message, calibrated to alienate as few voters as possible in either political party, that candidates typically reach for in a competitive district like this one. But Mr. Lawrence is not cut from the same cloth as the middle-of-the-road candidates Democratic leaders typically gravitate to when they are trying to flip a swing district critical to their chances of winning control of the House.
Running in an area anchored by Michigan State University, Mr. Lawrence, 36, until recently was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. A co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a leftist youth-led environmental activism group, he is pitching an unapologetically liberal, populist message, centered on affordable housing and decrying data centers, the war in Iran and wealth inequality.
On Friday, CNN reported on hundreds of old social media posts he has since deleted that included attacks on moderate Democrats and embracing the abolition of police and prisons.
His victory over two more moderate candidates in a Democratic primary last month reflected the energy and influence of the left in a year when the party has a solid chance to win control of Congress. It also may have complicated the task of beating Mr. Barrett, a first-term congressman who is among his party’s most vulnerable members.
That has made the race not only one of the most competitive in the country but also a test of the standard playbook for candidates running in battleground districts.
Democrats have long regarded the seat as critical. Elissa Slotkin beat a Republican to claim it in 2018, but when she vacated it in 2024 for her successful run for the Senate, Mr. Barrett, 45, a former Army helicopter pilot, flipped it back. This year, Ms. Slotkin endorsed one of Mr. Lawrence’s more centrist primary opponents, saying it was the best way to ensure that Democrats could win back the district.
Voters decided otherwise. Now, some in the party are concerned that Mr. Lawrence will be vulnerable to G.O.P. attacks branding Democrats as radical and extreme, making it difficult for him to draw broad-enough support to defeat Mr. Barrett. In the deleted social media posts, according to CNN, Mr. Lawrence called for nationalizing fossil fuel companies and overhauling the Constitution, and condemned a nuclear family home as an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society.”
In an interview on the main stretch of his opponent’s hometown of Charlotte, Mr. Lawrence dismissed the worry, noting that Republicans have been tagging Democrats across the country as socialists and communists. He added that he wasn’t “here to carry water for any partisan or ideological label.”
“I really do believe that all of us here” in Michigan’s Seventh District, Mr. Lawrence said, “share so much more in common with each other than we share with the billionaires in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street or the political insiders in D.C.”
“We’ve all been on different journeys,” he continued, “and I want to meet and build trust” with people in “every part of the political spectrum, regardless of the labels, and say, ‘Look, here we are in 2026. The United States of America seems pretty wacky, seems pretty dangerous, seems pretty frightening. What are we going to do now?’”
With just one term under his belt, Mr. Barrett is a prime target for Democrats. Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have continued to sag. Voters have had it with the war in Iran. And tariffs have hit Michigan households harder than anywhere else in the nation, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
Sitting in his Lansing office, Mr. Barrett conceded that the high cost of living remained a problem for his constituents, saying “there’s more that needs to be done” to address it.
But he said he did not regret voting against a series of legislative efforts to cancel Mr. Trump’s tariffs, including a bill in February to rescind tariffs on Canada, Michigan’s biggest trade partner. He argued that tariffs could help reset trade agreements with nations that had engaged in unfair practices.
“In general, the idea that we need to restore our manufacturing base is something that I think most Americans agree with,” Mr. Barrett said. “I’m not in any way dismissing some of the tariff concerns that people have raised. There are some instances, probably, where we can be a little bit more mindful about how we go about it.”
He was one of four Republicans to vote in late July to direct Mr. Trump to end the war in Iran or seek explicit authorization to continue it, invoking his own experience serving in the Middle East. Days later when Mr. Trump visited his district, Mr. Barrett appeared alongside the president at a rally and told him he was “proud to stand with you today.”
Mr. Barrett said that he watched the Democratic primary and saw that there was “a very strong strain” of progressive enthusiasm. But he said he believed that Mr. Lawrence’s candidacy was “far outside the mainstream” of his district.
“While I was in Iraq, he was trying to ban gasoline engines back home,” he said. “I think that there’s a stark difference there, and I think being relatable to the people in my district is really important.”
Mr. Lawrence agrees but has a far different view of what relatability looks like. A former community organizer, he and his team have established a ubiquitous presence in the district. He and his team knocked on over 100,000 doors during the primary, and said he believed his outreach was going to be “the difference maker in November.”
Part of his stump speech is a pledge that his first order of business as a congressman would be to set up an “excellent district office” focused on constituent services.
During a brief weekend stretch, Mr. Lawrence toured a soup kitchen, set up “Ask Me Anything” events, and prayed with church leaders of a predominantly Black Baptist church at their annual festival. On Michigan State’s campus, where chalk messages in support of Mr. Lawrence offered help for students to move into their dorms, he canvassed young voters during “Sparty Gras,” a welcome-back event.
Many of the voters he interacted with said in interviews that he was a familiar face in the community, including at church services, tenants rights’ association meetings and scholarship banquets hosted by Black fraternities. Several students on campus, recognizing Mr. Lawrence’s tall frame through the crowd, bee-lined over to say they had voted for him in the primary.
His omnipresence may have helped him move past backlash to a comment he made in 2024 that some older generations of Black Democratic leaders had functioned as a “pillar” for “capitalist, imperialist American power” and had defanged “the white left.” The remarks drew outrage among some Black leaders and lawmakers, including in the influential Congressional Black Caucus. Mr. Lawrence said that he regretted them, and that they were taken out of context.
“I don’t know anybody I talked to that was specifically angered, offended or upset about that,” said Harold Pope, the head of the NAACP in Lansing, who met Mr. Lawrence when he started holding meetings at the tenants’ rights center he founded. “We’re not dumb. We take information, we process it for ourselves.”
Gwynne Cobb, a Democrat who retired from her work with the United Auto Workers, said she had reached out to Mr. Lawrence looking for an “explanation” about the comments, as well as his stance on a host of other issues. She said she ultimately decided to support him in the primary after “he went above and beyond to have one-on-one conversation with me” and impressed her with his stance on data centers and affordable housing.
“It never occurred to me to see him as a nontraditional candidate,” Ms. Cobb said. “I do know that for others, he may be a little too progressive.”
Ms. Cobb added: “We’re coming into an era in this country where it is very necessary for us to push forward. So much has been rolled back that I think it would be a hindrance to our ability to survive as working people to just play it safe.”
That appears to be the source of Mr. Lawrence’s appeal on Michigan State’s campus.
Hayden Stone, a kinesiology major who will be 18 in November and plans to vote for him, said he first learned about Mr. Lawrence through Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate. Mr. Stone learned about Dr. El-Sayed through Hasan Piker, the 35-year-old progressive streaming star.
“My general rule of thumb is, Democrats and Republicans really aren’t that different at the end of the day,” Mr. Stone said in an interview. “They still get us into wars. They still don’t really benefit us ever. But Abdul and William Lawrence, I think they have different policies that set them apart.”
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