‘I Don’t Have A Penis’ Jewish Lesbian Wins In Michigan

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel Image by Getty/Forward Montage
Dana Nessel, the Jewish lesbian lawyer whose underdog campaign for Michigan Attorney General got its first boost with a penis joke, won the job on election night by a small margin in a state that went red in 2016.
“Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Is it the candidate who doesn’t have a penis? I’d say so,” Nessel said in a viral video put out last November, when the #MeToo movement dominated headlines.
Nessel is the 49-year-old prosecutor who helped overturn the state’s marriage equality ban in 2012. That case, DeBoer v. Snyder, was later consolidated with similar cases into Obergefell v. Hodges, the watershed Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage in America. She has also prosecuted child abuse cases and, as a private defense attorney, worked on behalf of domestic abuse survivors. She has pledged to take on Michigan’s water crisis.
All this and more: Nessel, her wife, and their twin sons care for, in their words, “various cats.”
Jewess Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, also won on Tuesday, flipping a Republican seat, and Andy Levin kept his father’s seat in the D column. The Democrats also won the state’s Senate race.
Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Trump administration to review nearly $9 billion in Harvard funding over campus antisemitism
-
Yiddish World Yiddish fans in Berlin launch a Yiddish open mic series
-
Fast Forward Cornell pro-Palestinian student leader opts to leave US, as Columbia ‘self-deportee’ makes her case to return
-
Fast Forward ‘Need a final solution’: Podcast host calls for mass deportation of US Jews
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.