“A season of service”: Why Hill Harper left showbiz for a longshot Senate bid
The 57-year-old actor and intellectual is counting on his Obama-esque charisma, a progressive policy platform and union credentials to compete against a formidable frontrunner.

If you’re a fan of the ABC hit show The Good Doctor and were looking for Dr. Marcus Andrews during last Tuesday’s season premiere, you may have been disappointed to learn he stepped down to pursue a journey of self-discovery through Vietnam and northwestern Spain.
There’s a simple explanation for the storyline: Hill Harper, the actor who plays Andrews, is kind of busy in real life attempting to parlay his stardom into a political second act as the Democratic nominee to fill the Michigan Debbie Stabenow will vacate early next year.
“I’m just thankful for everybody out there,” Harper, who said he was aware of the storyline and has received full support from TGD cast and crew, told me during an interview last week. “This is a season of service for me. It’s a different way because, obviously, as an actor, the one thing that you develop that I think serves me extremely well running for office is empathy—you learn to walk in someone else’s shoes.”
Harper is running to serve in an institution where just 11 Black people have been elected, nine of whom have been men. Black people currently make up just four percent of the current body. Michigan doesn’t have a Black Democratic representative in Congress for the first time in 57 years.
“I think there’s a lot of Michiganders, no matter what the race is, that I hear as I go all across the state that talk about they’re not happy about that,” he said. “And they know that diversity and inclusion matters in terms of what folks are fighting for and what experience they bring to the table.
Harper has staked out the policy positions you’d expect from a progressive candidate: Climate justice, wage justice, universal health care, gun safety, filibuster reform and ending the death penalty. In fact, many of the elected officials he hopes to serve with are actively advancing these priorities.
The 57-year-old lawyer, union member, single father and five-time author is running a unifying figure who assumes most people, despite unprecedented political polarization, want fundamentally the same thing.
“They want a safe place and a quality education for their kids to go to school. They want to not go into bankruptcy if they encounter a catastrophic health care crisis,” he said. “They want a living wage. They want to see inflation go down and not feel that they have to choose between paying their rent and paying down their credit card bill.”
But Congress in general, and the Senate more specifically, runs on comity and relationships, the latter of which Harper is in short supply as a first-time candidate.
I came away from my conversations with him with the sense that he viewed the institution as the problem, not his inexperience.
“One of the biggest failings I believe we see happening in our federal government, and particularly in Congress, is the lack of the ability to see long-term impact,” he said. “And so when you have so many politicians that are just worried about short-term optics, then you can't actually start to do things that are truly transformative and long term.”
This is a complaint many a candidate has lodged only to find how difficult it is to resolve even from within.
Harper has also called for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza as Israel avenges the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas.
The Michigan US Senate primary isn’t until August, but the state’s presidential primary is today. The Biden campaign will be holding its breath until tonight when results will show how effective a grassroots movement—led by pro-Palestinian activists and members of the sizable Muslim- and Arab-American communities, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—to encourage people to vote “uncommitted” in protest of the commander-in-chief’s Israel policy will damage the president politically.
Harper told me he recently met with 14 Arab leaders who expressed deep frustration, betrayal and underappreciation for their role as a critical voting bloc within the Democratic coalition.
“Here, in particular, you have the largest Arab and Muslim population outside the Middle East. And they don’t want to feel that their voice is taken for granted. They want to feel that they have a voice in the process, as well,” Harper told me. “This strategy is to show folks how powerful and unified they can be.”
But critics of the uncommitted campaign say a vote against Biden, even in the primary, is a vote for former President Donald Trump, who has promised to reinstate a harsher version of his Muslim ban if reelected.
Harper smoothly dismissed this argument.
“The Democratic Party has to represent African Americans in this state and also has to represent the Muslim and Arab community in this state,” he said. “And if the establishment needs to be reminded of that, that’s not a bad thing.” (Folks I spoke to in Bidenworld told me the president’s record proves he never forgot about these communities.)
Biden told reporters yesterday during an unannounced visit to an ice cream parlor following a surprise appearance on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers that he hoped a temporary ceasefire could start by the end of this weekend.
“We’re close. We’re not done yet,” he said. “My hope is by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire.”
Where Harper tacked more to the center was on immigration.
He told me in our first interview that he would have voted for the bipartisan border compromise many progressives opposed if he were in the Senate before the deal was ultimately stonewalled by congressional Republicans aligned with former President Trump.
In a follow-up conversation, I asked the candidate if he still supported the deal.
“We have a border crisis. And the fact that you see political career politicians not wanting to give a party a so-called win or a solution and actually solve a problem—subordinating that to the politics?” Harper said. “That’s exactly why people are so frustrated. That’s exactly why they want change.”
He added that the US needed to create additional transparent and fair pathways to citizenship and expand temporary protective status for asylum seekers.
“But at the same time, we need a secure border,” Harper said. “See immigrants pay taxes, they work essential jobs to put food on all of our tables. They care for our elderly, and they're the backbone of many our communities. Listen, in Michigan, right here, we’ve been losing a congressional district every 10 years. And if it wasn’t for the Asian and Latino immigrants that have come to Michigan, we would have lost two congressional districts.”
By all objective measures, Harper is facing a monumental climb against frontrunner Elissa Slotkin, a moderate three-term Democratic congresswoman representing southern Michigan and Central Michigan.
Harper told me internal campaign data proves that when people learn about his biography, message and lived experience, they win voters two-to-one.
“I’ve traveled to all 83 counties in Michigan. So many people have checked out because of status-quo politicians like the one I’m running against, because of back-door deals when the establishment tries to tell them who to vote for. They check out,” Harper said. “So am I going to be able to actually reach them and then hear the message, that there is someone who’s going to fight for them that is running for office, someone they can believe in and trust will advocate for the people and not for the party and not for politics?”
A spokesperson for Slotkin did not respond to a request for comment.
The challenge for Harper? It’s expensive to spread the word, and he lags in the fundraising department.
Slotkin ended 2023 with $5.7 million cash on hand and has raised $11.7 million since entering the race precisely a year ago today. She received donations from every Michigan county, but at least half of Slotkin’s most recent haul came from donors outside Michigan.
Harper had just $154,000 cash on hand to start the year. He has raised $1.3 million since jumping into the contest last summer, including at least a quarter-million dollars in personal contributions.
Harper isn’t just behind in the money game. He trails Slotkin in the polls too.
The congresswoman recently earned 56 percent support from likely Democratic voters in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Harper, who checked in with just 14 percent. Another 31 percent were undecided.
These numbers have solidified the belief among the Democratic insiders I spoke to last year when I caught wind that Harper may be running and also while reporting this story.
The consensus I got from sources, many of whom I granted anonymity so they could speak candidly, was that Harper sees himself as the second coming of former President Barack Obama. The two are charismatic Black men with grand visions of what this country could be and no illusions of what America is and has been. But that’s where the comparison ends for even personal fans of Harper. (Harper was a key Obama campaign surrogate and served on the former president’s cancer panel.)
One insider who worked for Obama and knows Harper told me that the actor personifies what we need more of in the era—a wealthy person of color willing to use their money and fame to make a difference—and that he should be commended for putting his reputation and brand on the line to pursue public service.
“That being said, this isn’t a good idea right now,” the person said. “One of the tragedies of President Obama’s meteoric rise is that so many of his staffers and supporters assumed that it was normal and that it was easy. It was neither.”
The source added that Harper’s friendship with Obama, who served in the Illinois state legislature and US Senate before winning the presidency, may have given Harper the impression that Congress’s upper chamber is a reasonable place to start.
“It isn’t. Anyone who’s running for public office for the first time should never start with a statewide seat. You should start on the ground locally, then regionally, then statewide,” the person said. “You have to be known for something and you have to pick areas where you become known for getting stuff done. I admire Hill for his dedication to helping the people, but this ain’t it.”
The logical next question is where should Harper invest his time and resources right now?
“We need him on the ground in Michigan helping get President Biden reelected. That’s the best way Hill can use his knowledge and fame to help the people,” the Democratic insider said. “We must keep that sociopathic traitor Donald Trump from getting back in the White House and that has to be our collective goal in this moment.”
A spokesperson for Harper did not respond to a request for comment, but the candidate told me his focus is on the people—not the talking heads.
And enough of the people, including workers in the labor movement, are on his side for him to keep pressing on.
“As a 32-year union member who was elected to the national board of my union, they know that I’m going to fight with them,” he said. “They’ve seen me out there on the strike lines with them, walking with them, handing out food and clothes—your presence matters.”
Harper has called for passage of the PRO Act, which would expand workers’ collective bargaining protections and strengthen the Nation Labor Relations Board’s enforcement powers, and has received support from United Auto Workers Region 1 after the union decided to sit out the primary.
“There’s been a concerted effort to limit collective bargaining and labor and we’ve seen right-to-work states continue to get public dollars, in an unfettered manner. A strike is really the only meaningful lever that labor has to pull,” Harper, a longtime member of SAG-AFTRA, a union that represents film and TV actors, said. “But if you give NLRB, you give [Occupational Safety and Health Administration], you give this ability to mete out high dollar meaningful sanctions and actually look for a way to distribute those sanctions to the affected workers, all of a sudden, strike is not the only lever.”
Slotkin has co-sponsored the PRO Act in each session of Congress and signed onto the Raise the Wage Act to boost the federal minimum wage, an issue of significance to Harper as well. She also supported UAW’s strike against the Big Three automakers and visited the picket line last fall. A UAW worker joined the congresswoman last year as her guest at the State of the Union address.
It wasn’t until the end of my second interview with Harper that I realized “Believe in Better” wasn’t just a campaign slogan—it’s a way of life.
“I say this a lot, Dr. King's quote, we’re all tied together in a single garment of mutual destiny and we make different stitches together,” he said. “That’s why I think our race is getting so much momentum because [voters] want the government to reflect the goodness of the people. Right now, it doesn’t. But we’ll get there.”