FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — Political newcomer John James, a local businessman, prevailed handily over Sandy Pensler, a Grosse Pointe financier, in the Michigan Republican primary Tuesday night, setting up a fall U.S. Senate race that may become the sleeper race of the 2018 midterm elections.
James will face Sen. Debbie Stabenow in the fall, one of 10 Democrats running to hold their seats in states President Trump won in the 2016 presidential elections that include Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Rarely are either Baldwin or Stabenow’s races mentioned as possible flips, let alone competitive, and some pollsters are wagering that it is the Democrats who will surprise everyone and flip the 51-49 Republican Senate advantage in their direction.
The primary race between James and Pensler was one of the most contentious battles in this year’s GOP primary contests with both men trading barbs over who worked the hardest to run their family businesses, who was the more Trump supportive candidate, and who was the best candidate to take on Stabenow in November.
President Trump left no doubt who he supported, tweeting not once but twice his support for the political outsider and dropping a robo-call in support of James beginning Monday, the day before today’s election.
The Iraq War veteran and suburban Detroit businessman says he has been “a conservative Republican all of his life,” despite growing up in a family of Democrats.
James graduated from West Point in 2004 and went to Iraq in 2007 where he flew Apache helicopters and led two platoons as an Army captain in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He joined James International, the family business in 2012, a business his father, a Mississippi native who was refused entry to Mississippi State University because he was black, founded after he returned from serving his country in Vietnam.
Two years after joining the family company, an automotive logistics company that specializes in supply chain information systems, James became its president in 2014.
The last Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Michigan was Spencer Abraham in 1994. He lost his re-election bid in 2000 to Stabenow, the current Democratic senator, who James faces in three months.
Both parties are said to expect to see polling in the field testing the match-up between James and Stabenow to hit by the end of this week.
Trump won Michigan in 2016 by 0.23 percentage points, a state President Barack Obama won by 9.5 percentage points, and a win that made him the first Republican candidate to win the state since George H. W. Bush in 1988.
