Washington, DC — Rolling Stone’s Kara Voght sat down with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for a profile on the AG and her race in a key battleground state. From abortion to election protection, Voght and AG Nessel discussed some of the most important issues that she’ll be campaigning on from now until election day to defeat far-right extremist Matt DePerno.

Voght writes, “She’s a woman in a state with a pre-Roe abortion ban — and as the state’s top law-enforcement official, she controls over whether that’s enforced. She’s married to a woman at a time when moral panic over LGBTQ rights has animated social conservatives. ‘I said to my wife, ‘I don’t want to live in a country where we don’t have legal rights to each other — I worked too hard to let that happen,’ Nessel says.”

“Her Republican opponent as she seeks reelection this year presents a different kind of challenge. Attorney Matt DePerno is an aggressive, Trump-backed election denier whose nomination raises the stakes of Nessel’s bid to stay in office — given that office’s role in protecting fair elections. Suddenly, Nessel finds herself at the red-hot core of a fight not just to fight back against the culture wars, but to preserve democracy itself. Her pitch to voters this time around remains anatomical: Vote for her, the candidate who has a spine.”

Voght also writes on how AG Nessel has “made candor her brand in an effort to beat back the culture war and fend off Trump-backed challenger Matthew DePerno.”

Voght writes, “‘Authenticity’ is a weird thing in politics. It’s a quality voters crave in candidates (see: Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman’s Carhartt-clad exterior — never mind his Harvard degree), but also one that’s hard to explain and measure. Nessel’s plainspokenness passes that test, explains Amy Chapman, a Michigan-based Democratic strategist. ‘In an era when people try to craft themselves to what voters might want to see or hear, she is what she is,’ Chapman says. ‘She’s strong in her beliefs — she’s not going to BS you.’”

“Whatever her je ne sais quoi, it helped her come out of nowhere to win her race for attorney general in 2018. The stakes in her bid for reelection may be even higher than she could have imagined then, but as she readied for a showdown with one of the nation’s highest profile election deniers, she’s campaigning on the same thing she did four years ago: Herself.”

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