It’s no surprise Democratic Party presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned Oct. 4 in Flint, Michigan, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump rallied Oct. 3 in Saginaw, less than 40 miles north.
Nor will it be a head-scratcher when they stump across central Michigan again and again before Election Day.
Both cities are within a 100-mile corridor along Interstate 75 between Detroit and Saginaw Bay, where election results from six counties will determine who wins the state’s 15 electoral votes and perhaps cast the clinching Nov. 5 tally that seats the next president.
Finding those winning voters in Michigan’s battleground counties, among the nation’s most hotly contested constituencies, will mean ferreting out the undiscovered undecided. Campaigns know where they are, just not who they are.
Both parties’ county and district committees are searching for the uncommitted with intense ground games—street-by-street grid grinds, platoons of canvassing door-knockers, affirming the adage, “All politics is local,” especially presidential elections.
And the clock is ticking: Michiganders have been casting absentee mail-in ballots since Sept. 26.
“We need all hands on deck,” said Wayne County Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch, who chairs the Democrats’ Congressional District 13 committee.
“Yesterday, there were 5,000 ballots returned [in Wayne County] in just one day. We’re getting the message out, ‘Vote early, return your ballots now, and Kamala Harris will win,’” Kinloch told The Epoch Times on Oct. 2.
Wayne County includes Detroit and Dearborn—Democratic bastions, along with neighboring Oakland County, and Genesee County north on I-75.
Wayne County hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1928, Oakland since 1992, Genesee, which includes Flint, since 1964.
Collectively, President Joe Biden won the three counties by more than 470,000 votes to spearhead his 155,000-vote Michigan win in 2020, four years after Trump became the first Republican to win the state since 1988.
The GOP aims to shave into this blue bulge, especially in Genesee County. If so, that may help Trump take the White House, help former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) flip a blue Senate seat red, and help Republicans win two “toss-up” House races.
Democrats are pounding the streets in these counties to keep them producing the overwhelming local victories needed to win statewide elections.
Wayne County “is very important for us, a strong Democratic hub. The key is making sure the base generates the numbers,” said Kinloch, who is running unopposed for his seat on the Wayne County Commission.
“This election will be decided in a razor-thin victory,” he said. “It won’t be so large of a win that you should take any vote for granted.”
‘Battle of the Bases’
Republicans must sustain high-octane routes in deep red Livingston County while consolidating new-found control in Macomb County, which backed Trump twice after voting for Democratic President Barack Obama in preceding elections.
“It’s a battle of the bases,” Republican CD 7 Chair Dan Wholihan said, his district ranging from Lansing in blue Ingham County to Livingston and into five other counties, including Oakland and Genesee.
“Macomb County was the deciding factor in the 2016 election,” Macomb County Republican Committee Chair Mark Forton said. “Turnout was good for Trump in 2020 but we have to produce like we did in 2016.”
Who wins Michigan is “just a matter of Macomb County,” Democrat CD 10 Chair John Rutherford said. “They voted with Trump before. I don’t necessarily think that is the case right now. I think Macomb County is certainly in play.”
Only Saginaw County among the six central Michigan trench-fight counties is a “toss-up” between the Trump-topped GOP ticket and the Democrat slate headlined by Harris.
Biden won Saginaw County by one-third of a percent in 2020, about 300 votes, after Trump won it in 2016 by 1 percent, the first time a Republican won the county since 1984.
That’s why Trump was there on Oct. 3, Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research Director Matt Grossman told The Epoch Times.
“Saginaw was part of the Trump trend in 2016,” he said. “It’s an ancestral Democratic area—home of industrial loss [enlivened by] potential resurgence of the auto industry—with a lot of white union workers that have switched to Trump.”
“I do see, really, potential for Saginaw County going red,” said Saginaw County State GOP committeeman Dane Couture, a truck driver idling in Chicago-area traffic on Oct. 2. “All these races are dead heats.”
Saginaw Democrats say momentum is swinging their way since Harris succeeded Biden.
A county party mustering two volunteers a day, maybe six on weekends, now has “up to 50, 60 people door-knocking, 20 or so phone-banking on Thursday, Friday nights,” Saginaw County Democratic Party Chair Aileen Pettinger told The Epoch Times. “The energy. It’s just incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Who wins or loses Saginaw County could be the trend-setter, or “the bellwether could be Macomb if it doesn’t get the turnout Republicans need, or it could be Wayne if Democrats don’t win big,” she said. “These are the biggest counties in the state. That’s where the votes are.”
The Undiscovered Undecided
Knowing where the votes are isn’t the same as knowing who the voters are, Grossman said.
There are clues. “Nationally, there are polls that show declines in black support [for Democrats]. If that’s true in 2024, the Detroit-area “is where it will materialize,” he said.
“I don’t think, at this point, there are [many] undecideds,” said Rutherford, former chair of the Democratic Black Caucus of Macomb County. “A lot of it is turnout, targeting areas of low turnout.”
That’s where the ground game, networking, phone trees merge to “make sure we don’t leave any votes on the table,” he said.
Kinloch said Democrats are canvassing to find “inconsistent voters” where “traditionally, there has been lower voter-participation,” such as in east Detroit.
Forton said the Macomb County GOP is targeting Democrats in Democrat-dominated areas.
“We’re going door-to-door and appealing directly to Democrats and, so far, we’ve been very successful,” he said. “They might be union people but they have families. They shop at the same grocery stores and suffer the same inflation. They’re upset like we are.”
Republicans in Saginaw and Oakland counties are using similar tactics, orchestrating forays into deep blue pockets to talk about inflation and find disaffected union members.
Couture said he grew up in a “GM union family” and was a union Teamster. “If there is anybody who knows what’s going on with the economy, I’m on the front lines being a truck driver,” he said.
He tells union voters “we would not have seen a ‘Big Three’ [auto-maker] strike last year because the economy would have been better than it was” if Trump was in office.
Couture has found receptive ears. Saginaw County is “generally blue with a large union faction. But what you are starting to see, beginning in 2016, is union members going for Trump because they realize their jobs are being shipped overseas,” he said.
Rutherford said if Republicans believe they’re going to pry more union votes from Democrats in Macomb, Saginaw, or anywhere else, good luck.
“Union members see that [Harris] is more pro-labor, pro-union than Trump is,” he said.
Wholihan said his seven-county district team is focusing on “moderate areas” in liberal Ingham County where state capital Lansing sits, while bulking up reliable red voters in conservative Livingston County
“The economy is the biggest issue,” he said, noting one thing most Michiganders agree on is that “Bidenomics is not working here.”
Armed with more “micro-data than usual” from national campaigns and political action committees, the numbers show why sharply ideological candidates with “a strong base” may win in primaries “but don’t have strong general elections,” Wholihan said.
“Hopefully, we’ll make some inroads. We have to compete on the margins,” he said. “If we get one-third of the vote in Lansing, I think that would be a good showing. If we get 30 percent in East Lansing, we are going to win.”
Democrats also have porch-front selling points to voters, Pettinger said.
“The big ‘seller?’ Project 2025, absolutely,” she said, referring to conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation’s game plan for a next conservative administration, from which the former president has distanced himself and says he hasn’t even read, but critics say is a reflection of a Trump second term agenda.
“Last spring, a lot of people didn’t know about it,” Pettinger said. But after the county party’s “education” effort, “Now there is public awareness. Every door we knock on, people know about it.”
Democrats’ other selling point is Trump every time he speaks, including in Saginaw on Oct. 3, she said.
“We have Republicans and Independents who come into our office and say, ‘We just cannot vote for him,’ so they come here to volunteer,” Pettinger said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Down Ballot Upsides
Michigan’s Nov. 5 ballot is also crowded with municipal, state Legislature, and congressional district races.
There are seven House districts that include parts of the six trench-fight counties. Democrats are defending five, including Plotkin’s open CD 7 seat and retiring Rep. Dan Kildee’s CD 8 post. Both races are rated “toss-ups” by The Cook Political Report.
Wholihan said campaigning for Republican Tom Barrett in his tight CD 7 race with Democrat Curtis Hertel is the top priority for local party committees.
“I like Tom’s chances. We’re working hard. We knocked on doors, raised more money than two years ago when he came close” to beating Slotkin, he said. Barrett “is a likable person, someone people can relate to, a retired army veteran. Tom is an easy candidate to sell.”
Beyond CDs 7 and 8, the other competitive area House race is in “Lean Republican” CD 10, where Rep. John James (R-Mich.) faces Democrat challenger Carl Marlinga.
“We can defeat John James,” Rutherford said, noting his team is being assisted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, meaning they think James is vulnerable.
“We have a real opportunity to unseat James,” he said.
A hot top-ticket contest boosts turnout for down-ballot candidates. But it could be just the opposite in Saginaw County where a heated sheriff’s election is the talk of the town and the race most animating local party committees.
Republican Jason Wise, the city of Zilwaukee’s police chief, is challenging 16-year Democrat incumbent William Federspiel for the highest-elected position in the purple county.
Wise was among police escorts in Trump’s Saginaw security entourage, Couture said, noting, “I’ve been so busy trying to get Jason elected it’s almost like I’m neglecting my duties” for other campaigns.
But, he quickly added, the sheriff’s race could prove pivotal in driving turnout for up-ballot candidates.
There are voters in seams and streams of the electorate turned off by, and tuned out of, the ugliness that has been national politics, but will vote in local elections, especially when they know the candidates.
That could happen in Saginaw, Couture said. Those who want a new sheriff in town tend to also want a new administration in Washington.
“People are completely ready for a change,” he said.