Michigan's Version of Graham Platner Has Controversial Views on Black Dems

Running for Congress in Michigan’s 7th District, William Lawrence is fighting a crowded primary field of Democrats vying for a hotly contested battleground seat. Who cares, right?

Apparently, the Democratic machine does.

Republicans can stomp, kick, and pound the table over any issue, but when Democrats want eyes on something, they move heaven and earth to pull everyone’s attention. That’s why I’m sitting in my basement office researching a random nerd who could disappear into a crowd of two.

What’s so interesting about this guy? Why are the Dems freaking out? Why is an anti-MAGA dark-money PAC targeting a fellow Democrat?

Lawrence’s campaign appears less focused on the Right and more at the Democrat Party.

Endorsed by virtually every national DSA-aligned politician, candidate, or organization, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and U.S. Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, Lawrence has sought to distance himself from the prevailing party consensus, mirroring the disaffected working-class platform of Graham Platner, minus the oysters and rape allegations.

Like Platner, Lawrence is yet another downwardly mobile child of privilege seeking to rise above his mediocrity by embracing anti-Americanism.

Raised in affluence, the son of Michigan State Law professors, Lawrence attended the very exclusive Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, with tuition costs coming in at just under $100,000 a year. There, he apparently spent the bulk of his time organizing against fossil fuels.

Upon graduating, did Lawrence enter the workforce, thus potentially mingling with real working-class Americans? Hell no. He spent several years encamped with environmental activists learning how to community organize before founding a nonprofit named The Sunrise Movement.

For the better part of a decade, Lawrence spent the bulk of his time outside Michigan organizing sit-ins with AOC and lobbying Democrats on behalf of the Green New Deal. The public record indicates consistent political activity in his part through the East Coast and Washington, D.C., with almost no political activity in Michigan.

Things take a weird and uncomfortable turn in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic when the Left went completely off the rails. The Sunrise Movement and Lawrence got militant and—foreshadowing the current DSA platform—a little racist.

The Sunrise Movement was accused by black progressive groups of tokenism, and it ceased organizing with progressive Jewish groups. Their aggressive tactics, wholly directed at Democrats, became so off-putting and toxic that even prominent left-wing journalists began criticizing them in print.

Lawrence allegedly departed the Sunrise Movement in 2020 and decamped to Lansing, working in housing advocacy.

Fast forward to 2026 and Lawrence has stepped into Michigan politics for the first time. Unlike Graham Platner, whom the Democrats elevated and normalized out of desperate need to reach white working-class voters, Lawrence is getting the cold shoulder, possibly due to his tendency to cut too deep into uncomfortable truths about the Democratic Party.

Black Democrats seem to be his ire, and he minced no words in podcasts he’s taped in recent years and months. Aware on some level that black Democrat voters tend to be less progressive than white liberals, Lawrence complained that black political leaders “defang the white left,” eliciting fainting spells by mainstream journalists.

On various other podcasts I listened to, so you don’t have to, Lawrence attacked Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris, and Elissa Slotkin, and the list goes on and on.

Only once did I find any deep criticism of President Trump and Republicans, and it was the typical shrieking rants about the patriarchy, Christian nationalism, and fascism, but the overall vibe matched what I encountered at The People Conference for Palestine in Detroit; total and complete hatred for establishment Democrats.

Lawrence, attempting to normalize himself, has distanced himself from calls to defund police, dismantle local police departments, and vocal disgust with traditional nuclear families in favor of what he calls the “solidarity and wealth” of queer families.

But like his DSA brothers and sisters, who he lovingly calls his comrades, he reaches for victim status when criticism comes back at him, and, in typical low-IQ fashion, blames AIPAC and the Jews.

Is Lawrence the people’s champion or just another bored and unimpressive rich kid searching for relevance? We probably won’t even remember his name in three months.