2020

In July 2019, Scholten announced her candidacy for the United States House of Representatives in Michigan's 3rd congressional district in the 2020 elections.^[7] She was unopposed in the Democratic Party primary.^[9] She lost the general election to Republican nominee Peter Meijer,^[10] 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.^[11] 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.^[12]

2022

Scholten ran again in the 2022 elections.^[13] She was again unopposed in the Democratic primary. She was initially priming for a rematch against Meijer, but Meijer lost the Republican primary to a considerably more conservative challenger, former Trump administration official John Gibbs.^[14]

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.^[15] Had it existed in 2020, Joe Biden would have won it with 53% of the vote;^[16] Donald Trump carried the old 3rd with 51%.^[17] Scholten (54.9%) defeated Gibbs (42%) to win election to the 118th United States Congress.^[18] She is only the second Democrat to represent Grand Rapids in Congress since 1913. The only other time it was out of Republican hands in that time was when Richard Vander Veen won a special election to succeed Ford in what was then the 5th District in 1974; he won a full term later that year but was defeated in 1976. She is also the first Democrat to represent a West Michigan-based district since Howard Wolpe, who represented a Kalamazoo-based district, left office in 1993. As a measure of how Republican this area has been, Scholten is the only elected Democrat above the county level in much of the district. In some portions, she is the only elected Democrat above the municipal or township level.