Bridget Brink declares candidacy for Michigan's 7th Congressional District
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink of Lansing is running for Michigan's 7th Congressional District in the 2026 election cycle. The Lansing-area district is currently represented by Republican Tom Barrett of Charlotte.
Brink, who is running as a Democrat, made her campaign announcement Wednesday.
"We need principled leaders who have a proven record of standing up to Trump's policies, and fighting like hell for our democratic values," Brink said in her campaign materials. "We've got to take on the chaos and corruption coming out of Washington, because it's costing Michiganders."
Brink grew up in the Grand Rapids area, and said several generations of her family have lived in the Eaton County area. She attended Michigan public schools, then earned her bachelor's degree at Kenyon College and two master's degrees at the London School of Economics.
Brink was a career diplomat, with nearly 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service under both Democratic and Republican presidents, before she decided to step down.
The Senate confirmed her as ambassador to Ukraine shortly before Russia launched an invasion of that country in 2022, a decision that resulted in her becoming the first woman to serve as a U.S. ambassador in a war zone. That time of her career is highlighted in her campaign video and other materials.
She stayed on in that role during the start of the current Trump administration, but left her post in April, citing policy differences with the White House.
"I resigned from Ukraine and also from the Foreign Service, because the policy since the beginning of the administration was to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia. I fully agree that the war needs to end, but I believe that peace at any price is not peace at all," she said May 18 on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."
Brink is married to Nicholas Higgins, a Foreign Service officer with twenty-five years of service. The couple has two sons.
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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Bridget Brink, who stepped down as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine this year in protest of what she said was President Donald Trump's unfair treatment of the the war-torn country, announced Wednesday that she's running for Congress in one of Michigan's most competitive districts. The longtime diplomat, who previously held high-ranking State Department roles in other former Soviet and Eastern European countries, is casting herself as a public servant as she runs in next year's midterm elections, when her Democrats hope to win control of the House. 'My next mission: to fight for what's right here at home,' she said. Trump picked Brink to be the country's ambassador to Slovakia in 2019 and Biden tapped her to be ambassador to Ukraine shortly after Russia invaded the country in 2022. She resigned in April, saying in an op-ed published in the Detroit Free Press that Trump continues to pressure Ukraine and not Russia. 'Appeasing a dictator never has and never will achieve lasting peace,' she said in a video announcing her candidacy. 'And it's just not who we are.' Having worked as a diplomat under five presidents, Brink said that if elected, she would take on 'extremists' and powerful influences such as Elon Musk. She criticized Republicans for cutting government funding and programs. Brink, who grew up in Grand Rapids, is running in the 7th District, which covers a swath of southern and central Michigan that includes the capital, Lansing, and is one of the state's most competitive. Last year, Army veteran Tom Barrett flipped the district for Republicans, delivering a key win for the party as it kept its House majority. He defeated Democrat Curtis Hill by almost four percentage points in the open race. The seat was previously held by centrist Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who successfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2024.
