Hillary Scholten

Hillary Jeanne Scholten (/ˈskoʊltən/ SKOHL-tən; born February 22, 1982) is an American politician and attorney who has served as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 3rd congressional district since 2023. She is the first woman to represent the district and the first Democrat to represent Grand Rapids in Congress since the 1970s. Before her election, Scholten worked as an attorney for the Department of Justice and in private practice. Her district, which was once represented by former President Gerald Ford, is based in Grand Rapids and much of the urban core of West Michigan.

Scholten was born on February 22, 1982, in Michigan. She grew up in Hudsonville, a suburb of Grand Rapids. Her mother worked as a public school teacher and her father was a sports journalist for The Grand Rapids Press. Her great-great-grandparents emigrated to West Michigan from the Netherlands; and her parents raised her in the Christian Reformed Church, a Calvinist denomination having its roots in the Dutch Reformed Church.

Scholten went to Unity Christian High School and then attended Gordon College, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2004. After college, she worked as a social worker, focusing on housing advocacy for the AIDS Action Committee. She later did immigration work for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington. She went on to earn a Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland School of Law in 2011.

Following law school, Scholten clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, specializing in immigration law. She later joined the U.S. Department of Justice as an attorney adviser for the Board of Immigration Appeals from 2013 to 2017, where she worked on federal immigration policy during the Obama administration. Afterwards, she went back to Michigan and became a staff attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and later worked in private practice.

In July 2019, Scholten announced her candidacy for the United States House of Representatives in Michigan's 3rd congressional district in the 2020 elections. She was unopposed in the Democratic Party primary. She lost the general election to Republican nominee Peter Meijer, but came the closest a Democrat had come to winning the district since 1982, when incumbent Republican Harold S. Sawyer was held to 51% in what was then the 5th district. It was also only the second time since 1982 that a Democrat had received 40% of the vote; the Democratic nominee received 43% two years earlier.

Scholten ran again in the 2022 elections. She was again unopposed in the Democratic primary. She was initially preparing for a rematch against Peter Meijer, but Meijer lost the Republican primary to a considerably more conservative challenger, former Trump administration official John Gibbs.

Scholten was running in a district that had been made much friendlier to Democrats in redistricting; it had been pushed to the west to grab a large portion of the Lake Michigan shoreline, including Muskegon and Grand Haven. Had it existed in 2020, Joe Biden would have won it with 53% of the vote; Donald Trump carried the old 3rd with 51%. Scholten defeated Gibbs 55% to 42% to win election to the 118th United States Congress.

Scholten ran again in the 2024 election. She had token opposition in the Democratic primary, winning 91% of the vote. She went on to win the general election winning 53.7% of the vote against a Republican opponent.