Michigan Democrats Try To Regroup For 2018 After Losses
By David Eggert, Associated Press
LANSING (AP) - Michigan Democrats disheartened by Republicans' recent dominance of state-level elections have been able to take comfort in their continued success at winning big federal races.
Not anymore.
President-elect Donald Trump's narrow lead over Hillary Clinton in Michigan — which is awaiting certification by Nov. 28 — has left devastated Democrats to ruminate over what went wrong and to try to rebuild for 2018, when term limits will open the governorship and other statewide offices that the GOP has held since 2011, if not much earlier. Republicans also will have led the state Senate for nearly 35 years, the House for eight years and the Supreme Court for nearly all of the last 19 years.
The fact that a billionaire celebrity businessman who opposed the auto bailout did so well in Michigan, which a GOP presidential nominee had not carried since 1988, is cutting deep. Democrats bemoan various problems but generally agree that the message to blue-collar voters was lacking: too much Trump bashing and not enough attention to pocketbook issues in a state still recovering from the Great Recession.
"You start with a clear, concise message. That message has to be economically based. You have to be consistent. Define what Democrats stand for," said Dianne Byrum, a former House Democratic leader. "Democrats weren't talking to what people were looking for."
Pollster Ed Sarpolus said Democrats can still win in Michigan, citing Gary Peters' 2014 victory in an open U.S. Senate race in what was otherwise a big year for Republicans.
"But they got to focus on the messages that motivate people to turn out and vote that they care about," he said. "Democrats win on pocketbook issues. It was more about anti-Trump and temperament, which pervaded all the races" including the state House.
Sarpolus estimates that 230,000, or 10 percent, fewer Democrats voted than in 2012, when President Barack Obama won Michigan by 9.5 percentage points. About 152,000, or 8 percent, more Republicans cast ballots this time.
Unless Obama is on the ballot, Democrats have struggled with excitement and turnout, especially in urban areas such as Detroit. That — combined with Trump's much stronger performance in rural areas than Mitt Romney four years ago — spelled trouble, particularly for Democratic legislative candidates in rural communities where Trump excelled.
Take a county like Shiawassee between Lansing and Flint. It is one of only two Michigan counties to vote for the candidate that won the presidency in the past six elections.
Shiawassee mirrored Obama's 51-47 national popular vote margin four years ago. This time, about the same number of people voted, but Trump won it 56-37. The local "lean-Republican" state House race between two non-incumbents turned into a nearly 22-point blowout.
"There was a massive miscalculation on people's rage, especially in these rural areas and these enclaves of working-class voters" in the Macomb County and Downriver areas of suburban Detroit, said Democratic political consultant Joe DiSano.
He said state Democrats need to forge an identity separate from national-level Democrats and, at least in rural districts, should become more comfortable recruiting anti-abortion, pro-gun rights Democrats.
"The national Democratic message I'm not sure works here anymore," he said. "Less focus on social issues and more focus on full-throated populism."
Republicans, he said, run campaigns designed to appeal to voters' "baser instincts." Democrats treat them as "high-minded policy seminars" and must become "less condescending" and "talk at a street level," DiSano said.
The 2016 ballot was fairly short, with few visible races other than the presidential contest. It will be longer in two years.
Gov. Rick Snyder cannot run again for his office. Nor can Attorney General Bill Schuette and Secretary of State Ruth Johnson — both Republicans — though Schuette is expected to run for governor. Leading Democratic gubernatorial contenders could include U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee of Flint Township and former state Senate minority leader Gretchen Whitmer of East Lansing.
Third-term U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat, will be up for re-election. Unlike this year, state senators will be on the ballot, too.
Republicans' control of the White House and Congress could be a bonus for Democrats in 2018.
The last time a gubernatorial candidate won Michigan and was from the same party as the president was 1990, when Republican challenger John Engler narrowly defeated Democratic Gov. Jim Blanchard.
"Usually the midterms are better for the party that is not holding the presidency. Historically that has been true," said Byrum, a Michigan State University trustee and a partner in an East Lansing public relations firm. "But I think Democrats have to do a real soul-searching and an assessment — how are they going to define themselves?"
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