The Washington Post via Getty Images
DETROIT — Locked a tight Senate race against a challenger she calls a carpetbagger, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin has paid heavily into the DC property-tax base while taking farming tax credits for her Oakland County, Mich., house.
No farming takes place at Slotkin’s Holly home. That property has been in the family’s hands since her grandfather bought it nearly 70 years ago, in 1956.
In Slotkin’s early years, there were hundreds of cattle on the farm. But they were gone by the time Slotkin arrived from New York in 1980 as a young child.
Her father, Curtis, granted Slotkin and her brother the home last year via quitclaim deed.
Despite doing no farming at the home and having no agricultural licenses for the property, the Slotkins also inherited their grandfather’s farming tax credit.
This arrangement that saves them about $2,700 a year in property taxes.
“She sure paid her property taxes in Washington, DC, all those years,” her GOP opponent, ex-Rep. Mike Rogers, told The Post. “She didn’t claim a credit there. She took one here on the backs of law enforcement and firefighters and schools.”
Slotkin’s two-bedroom condo in northeast DC is the first home she ever purchased; to this day she’s never bought land in Michigan. Its taxable value is about $750,000, according to property records. Slotkin has paid some $23,188.10 in property taxes on the condo since 2021.
The GOP views the Democratic rep paying taxes in DC but avoiding them in Michigan as an opening in a race where Slotkin has harped on the time Rogers spent in Florida after leaving Congress in 2015.
“Slotkin is all too happy to pay her DC property taxes, but when it comes to investing in Michigan, she refuses to even pay the taxes that fund our schools,” said Chris Gustafson, Rogers campaign spokesman.
“It’s no wonder Slotkin has never bought a home in Michigan; she cares more about her DC property values than representing Michigan values in Washington.”
Slotkin’s team did not respond to a request for comment.
But Maggie Abboud, National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman, said the records show Slotkin’s the carpetbagger she’s accused Rogers of being.
“Slotkin represents Michigan in Congress, but the first time she voted there was when she ran for office,” Abboud told The Post. “She has always been a DC resident who claims to live in Michigan for political purposes.”
The Democrat went to Washington after college, leaving the government right before Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017. Months later, she announced her congressional run in Michigan.