Campaign

Actor Hill Harper on Michigan Democratic Senate run: ‘Our party’s gotten off course’

by Lauren Irwin - 02/27/24 9:04 PM ET

FILE - Hill Harper, a cast member in the television series "The Good Doctor" arrives at the 35th Annual PaleyFest at the Dolby Theatre on Thursday, March 22, 2018, in Los Angeles. Harper announced Monday, July 10, 2023 that he is running for Michigan's open Senate seat and challenging U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin for the Democratic nomination. Harper is the sixth Democratic candidate to enter the race for retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow's seat. — Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File
FILE – Hill Harper, a cast member in the television series “The Good Doctor” arrives at the 35th Annual PaleyFest at the Dolby Theatre on Thursday, March 22, 2018, in Los Angeles. Harper announced Monday, July 10, 2023 that he is running for Michigan’s open Senate seat and challenging U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin for the Democratic nomination. Harper is the sixth Democratic candidate to enter the race for retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s seat.

Actor Hill Harper, who left “The Good Doctor” and launched a Democratic bid for a Michigan Senate seat, argued that more Democratic lawmakers should be calling for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas.

“I’m very proud of being a Democrat, but our party’s gotten off course,” Harper said in an interview with Politico.

“Seventy-one percent of Michigan Democrats are in favor of a cease-fire. But an extremely small percentage of our establishment congressional members have called for a cease-fire,” he said of the ongoing war in Gaza. “My opponent in my Senate race has not.”

Harper announced his bid in November and is set to take on Rep. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) in the Democratic primary.

In the interview, Harper said he recently met with 14 Arab and Muslim leaders in Michigan. He urged them to vote for President Biden, because if they don’t, “it’s literally supporting Trump.” He reported being told by many that people in their culture feel “that the Democratic Party has stabbed them in the back.”

The actor said that he wouldn’t “uniformly” support aid being sent to Israel for its war against Hamas, because he doesn’t want the U.S. to be “in the business of funding violence.”

“So if further funding to fund a foreign war is going to create more death, then I’m not interested in that now,” he said. “But, I am interested in helping a democracy like Israel.”

“We’re allowing people to conflate the idea that you are anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish if you advocate for a cease-fire. It’s not true. Two things can be true at once,” Harper continued.

When Harper announced his bid, he said he was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and owned a coffee shop in Detroit, which would make him the “only U.S. senator who is a current dues-paying, card-carrying union member” and “one of the very few small business owners” in the Senate, if elected.

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) shared online that he is an active member for the Denver chapter of SAG-AFTRA. He told Colorado Public Radio that he was a dues-paying member last August during the strikes.

–Updated on Feb. 28 at 1:09 p.m.