PONTIAC, Mich. — Republican Rep. Mike Bishop is wading waist deep through a blue tide in the 8th Congressional District as Democrats threaten to turn dissatisfaction with President Trump into a midterm election victory that could tip the balance of power in the House of Representatives.
The Michigan seat stretches from suburban Detroit west to Lansing, the state capital. It was drawn to elect Republicans and has been safely in GOP hands since the turn of the century. But Democrat Elissa Slotkin is waging a historic challenge against Bishop, who on a recent fall evening was stumping for votes at a rally for GOP Senate nominee John James, hoping to squeeze every ounce of energy he could for his re-election from a crowd that showed up to see MAGA celebrities Donald Trump Jr. and Kid Rock.
“This is the most important election in our lifetimes, and it’s up to each and every one of us to grab this thing by the horns and pull it across the finish line,” Bishop said as he warmed up a raucous gathering near Detroit ahead of headliners James; Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son; and Kid Rock, a famous musician and local favorite who still lives nearby.
“They are so angry that we beat them last time,” Bishop continued, imploring them to vote on Nov. 6. “George Soros, [Tom] Steyer, [Michael] Bloomberg, [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi, is pouring money into this state trying to buy this state, and it’s up to us to make sure it does not happen.”
Casting elections as pivotal and warning of dire consequences if the other side wins is an election-year cliche. But from Bishop’s perspective, it’s understandable. Trump won the district by 6.7 points; the congressman won re-election by more than double that. Yet Bishop, 51, could lose to Slotkin, 42, a Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Department veteran, amid a surge of Democratic enthusiasm, campaign cash, and sharp attack ads.
The seat is officially rated a “tossup” by top political handicappers, with both parties expressing confidence about their position with two weeks to go. In the most recent public opinion poll, Bishop led Slotkin 48 percent to 45 percent.
This survey fits with the Republican view of the race down the stretch: tough, hardly over, but leaning Bishop. Boosted by the nasty Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Republican voters in the district are reverting to their natural partisanship and engaging in the race.
There simply aren’t enough votes for Slotkin to pull from under these improved conditions, Republican insiders said, hopefully, in interviews.
“I’ll probably [vote] Republican,” Margie Anderson, a Trump supporter from Mason, Mich., where she manages a farm that has been in her family for more than 180 years, said last week while attending a candidate forum sponsored by the local chapter of the Michigan farm bureau.
Anderson couldn’t immediately recall that Bishop, who appeared there, is her congressman. But what mattered to her was that, whoever he was, he was supporting the president’s agenda. “I like Trump because he doesn’t feel he has to be politically correct. He talks like a lot of us talk. It’s just straight out there and he knows exactly where he’s coming from. It’s not fake,” she said.
But Slotkin has made critical inroads in the district, despite having only recent moved back to the area after serving in Washington and overseas in national security posts for the CIA and Defense Department.
Bishop notes at every turn that Slotkin doesn’t own property in the district and hadn’t voted here until this year’s Democratic primary. The Slotkin campaign responded that Slotkin is a third-generation Michigander who was raised on her family’s farm in Oakland County and won’t “apologize” for serving her country.
Ingham County, which encompasses Lansing, is expected to turn out big for the Slotkin, thanks to a combination of the wealth of progressive voters in the area and the Democratic Party’s strong top of the ticket in Michigan. And, Slotkin is showing strength to the east in suburban Detroit, in upscale northern Oakland County, where Republicans dominate.
“To me, she is, I would call, a centrist, and I’m comfortable being myself, more of a centrist, because that’s the only way, I think, you really get things done. You’ve got to reach across the aisle,” said Nancy Strole, 76, a registered Republican volunteering for Slotkin, motivated to support a Democrat after a lifetime of backing the GOP because she is “disgusted” by Trump.
“Do I agree with her, probably on everything? No,” continued Strole, a former local official in Springfield Township, Mich., in Oakland County, where she lives. “But I know she’s coming from the right place, and she has character.”
Democrats in Michigan’s 8th see the same sort of suburban surge that is fueling the party’s potential to win GOP-held districts across the country and flip control of the House. Unhappy with Trump’s provocative behavior, college-educated women and nonwhite voters are supporting Democrats by wide margins and super-charged to vote, giving them a rare opportunity to flip historically Republican districts.
“I’ve seen a tremendous amount of enthusiasm with the Slotkin campaign that I’ve not witnessed before — ever. The dynamics are pretty significant,” Dennis Ritter, 73, a veteran Democratic official, said over lunch of a soup and sandwich at Brioni Cafe & Deli in Clarkston, an affluent Oakland County community just down the road from Strole. “We’re in a Republican area right here.”
In an interview the day before the John James rally with Donald Trump Jr. in Pontiac, Bishop alternated between confidence and uncertainty — in one breath seeming at ease with Trump and sure about his re-election, in the next distancing himself from the president and expressing incredulity at the level of heat Slotkin and her allies are bringing his way in this usually sleepy congressional district.
“It’s not as though I’m overly confident. I am resigned to the fact that if they don’t know me now, and if they don’t trust me now, then they won’t. I really have given it everything I’ve got,” Bishop said. “This is a time when the Trump presidency is going to have to defend its honor and we’ll see what the people of this country feel about the Trump presidency. That’s really what it’s about.”
