Flint, Michigan — Fall has blanketed this state ahead of Tuesday’s election with layers of gold, orange, and scarlet leaves. A persistent chill, rain, and patches of fog that, at times, gives way to sun or a blank gray sky will soon give way to ice and snow as winter sets in across this Great Lake State.
Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, stepped onto a stage in Detroit at the Local 59 IBEW on one of those gray days last weekend, telling more than 100 supporters to “please, please, please tell everyone you know about what is at stake in this election.”
The California U.S. senator wasn’t just there for Joe Biden and herself. She was also there for Sen. Gary Peters, the incumbent Democrat not just trying to hold onto his Michigan seat but also playing a key part in helping the Democrats take control of the upper chamber in Washington.
“You got to send Gary Peters back to the U.S. Senate. We going to do that?” she pleaded while nodding her head “yes” to the IBEW workers in an effort to make sure they bought her pitch.
A Peters loss here could jeopardize Democrats’ plan to grab a majority next January to either stifle President Trump’s final four years or give their party full power in Washington. That’s what will happen if Biden wins the White House, and their party holds the House of Representatives as expected.
Peters’ Republican challenger, John James, has emerged as just the kind of candidate Michigan voters may want to put the brakes on a Democratic Party on the precipice of full power. It’s a scenario similar to the way voters put the brakes on down-ballot Democrats in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.
Trump won the Wolverine State in 2016 by just over 10,700 votes; some 75,000 of those Michiganders who voted in that election left the tops of their ballots blank, choosing neither Trump nor Clinton.
Trump’s outsider appeal here marked the first time a Republican won this state’s electoral votes in decades.
Like every state in the country, data often conflicts with an abundance of anecdotal evidence in the underreported phenomena of Trump roadside rallies and boat parades, or in interviews with voters.
Some voters take a bold stand, societal consequences be damned. They include Maurice Davis, a Flint City Council member and lifelong Democrat who spoke at the Flint Bishop Airport this week ahead of Vice-President Mike Pence and pledged a very emotional support to the Trump ticket, telling the crowd that while four years ago he voted for Hillary Clinton, his party has become the party of hate.
“This year, I have decided to go with President Trump,” he said. “I am not a bootlicker. I am not an Uncle Tom. I am none of those things. I am someone who is in a poor and impoverished community … When Mr. Trump said, ‘What the hell you got to lose?’ He was talking to me. He wasn’t talking to my seat [as a councilman.] [The] only thing Maurice D. Davis got to lose is a council seat at $700 every two weeks.”
Some white, upper-middle-class voters who live in the suburbs are less forthcoming. They don’t want their neighbors to know they are voting for Trump because they fear being shunned socially as well as economically.
Place a Trump yard sign along your porch, and there go the invitations to the block parties and the networking events that help grow businesses, and here comes the isolation while standing at the sidelines of your kid’s soccer games.
Tell a reporter your name in a story, and that could affect your small business or your employer or your kids or your wife. The anti-Trump troll farms spend their days scouring social media looking for someone to shame, someone to make a fool of, someone to destroy, all because these voters are not falling in line with their political religion.
These are all very real sentiments felt by voters thanks to social media’s descent in our culture from a place to connect and inform, to a place to destroy.
Others simply don’t tell anyone who they are voting for and deeply believe in preserving that privacy as a principle — but data is science, and science says Biden maintains a 9 percentage point lead over Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of recent Michigan surveys.
Peters, in those same RealClearPolitics surveys, holds a percent 6.2 percentage-point lead over James. While both Trump and James appear to be moving in the right direction, it is James who is edging closer to a win.
Trump was in Lansing last Thursday and is scheduled to be here today at the Oakland County Airport, while Sunday will have him in Sterling Heights, at an outdoor amphitheater, on the same day of the week, at the same exact place he was the last cycle. On Monday, he is set to be in Grand Rapids.
James was in Lansing, as well. He’ll also be in Oakland County, Sterling Heights, and Grand Rapids. Trump is the draw at these rallies, but James is these voters’ future.
Joe Biden and Barack Obama will be in Michigan for their one and only event together this cycle, and the theme is set to be a familiar one: Biden is better and more caring on COVID, and a vote for the former vice president is a win “for the battle for the soul of the nation.”
Not only do the polls, forecasters, and the media favor Biden to win both Michigan and the presidency; they are also leaning toward a Democratic wave that would sweep them into control of the Senate. (Currently, they have 47 of 100 seats, plus two self-styled independents who caucus with the Democrats.)
Peters has to hold off James if the Democrats want to make a successful push for the Senate majority. Some Michigan Democrats worry Peters’s lead could disappear if the margin of error breaks for James as the incumbent continues his lackluster campaigning while assuming Democrats will come home for him while he sits on his lead.
In short, if Trump is down 5 points going into Election Day and James is down 2 points in the polls, the odds are that James will win the seat Peters currently holds.
Interviews with center-right voters show an electorate that sees James representing the next generation of conservative leadership, a bridge between the struggle of the last generation and young black conservatives today.
James appeals to a broad spectrum of voters, from the very blue-collar voters in Macomb County to the guy with a master’s degree in Oakland County, as well as culturally distinct Michiganders out there from Traverse City to Grand Rapids on the western side of the state.
Unlike James’s first run for the U.S. Senate in 2018, against Debbie Stabenow, this race was different in that James didn’t take a single issue for granted. If the Left wanted to battle out any issue, he took the argument directly to the voters, and he ran an effective race.
What has appealed to voters about his candidacy is that he does not let a single attack by the Left go unanswered — a balancing act where he does not come off as defensive, yet is unafraid to throw a counter-punch.
James also has effectively let the voter see both his intellect and raw energy. Every time he talks, you can see why he went to West Point, why he did so well in the Army, and why he wanted to be an Apache gunship pilot.
That energy has created a great contrast for voters, many of whom supported Peters last cycle, but who now view the incumbent Democrat as someone who is not attempting to earn their vote.
Outside of this state, some professional prognosticators call this the sleeper race of 2020, the one that might keep the Republicans in the majority — but most pundits are forecasting a Democratic wave that will sweep the president and the GOP Senate out of power in January in historic numbers.
Maybe. Maybe not. Spend some time in the state listening to voters, and you may think it is closer to a sleeper outcome than we think.
Disclosure: The PR firm of Brad Todd — who co-authored The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics with Salena Zito in 2018 — is doing the strategy for the James campaign.
