Skip to footer

Breakfast with a key Senate Democrat in the thick of things

At a Monitor Breakfast, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan – chair of two major committees – talked Trump assassination attempts, the race for the Senate, and his frugal habits.

|
Troy Sambajon/The Christian Science Monitor
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, spoke to reporters at a Monitor Breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington on Sept. 17, 2024.

| Washington

After a summer hiatus, Monitor Breakfasts returned Sept. 17 with Sen. Gary Peters. You may not know the Michigan Democrat – but he’s right in the thick of things.

At the top, we delved into the two assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump. As chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Peters is immersed in his panel’s bipartisan investigation into the first attempt in July.

Now, after the apparent second attempt on Sept. 15, Mr. Peters is eager for more details – but “clearly,” he said, “what happened in Florida is very troubling,” as my colleague Cameron Joseph wrote last week.

The original reason for our well-attended press breakfast was to grill Mr. Peters on his other big role: chair of the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee, which faces an uphill battle to keep the majority. And so we toggled back and forth between the two topics – from matters of life and death to the politics of 2024.

Mr. Peters is focused on protecting vulnerable Democrats in conservative Montana and Ohio, as Cameron noted in his second story on the breakfast. But the senator also argued that two Senate Republicans, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida, are both beatable.

Then there’s the matter of Michigan itself, a key swing state for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Check out Story Hinckley’s recent piece on that battleground.

As always, a fun part of our breakfasts is getting to know the guest. And I immediately saw why Mr. Peters was floated as a possible running mate for Vice President Harris. He’s got the same “Midwestern dad vibe” as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz – including his habit of holding on to beloved old shirts.

“I consider myself frugal,” Mr. Peters told us, speaking of campaign money. “My wife has a different name for it.”

After the breakfast, I asked Mr. Peters to elaborate, and he mentioned an ad called “Frugal” from his first Senate campaign in 2014. It features his family’s then-30-year-old washing machine, shoes with holes, and a ratty old sweatshirt.

He said people still ask him, “Did you ever replace that sweatshirt? Did you ever get a new washing machine?”

Watch the full Monitor Breakfast on Youtube below.

About video ads
You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Breakfast with a key Senate Democrat in the thick of things
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2024/0923/Breakfast-with-a-key-Senate-Democrat-in-the-thick-of-things
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe