Kid Rock for the Senate? ‘Gotta take it seriously’
Let’s be real about what’s possible these days.
A reality television star is president. California’s last governor was a bodybuilder turned action movie star. A professional wrestler was the governor of Minnesota, which is currently represented in the U.S. Senate by a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member.
Kid Rock for Senate? It could happen.
Two weeks ago, the brash Michigan musician launched a “Kid Rock for Senate” website dangling plans for a 2018 run against Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
That presented the political world with a paradox: Kid Rock, a foul-mouthed star known for blue-collar hits like “Picture” and “Only God Knows Why,” could be launching a publicity stunt for his upcoming series of concerts. Or he could be seriously testing the waters for a legitimate Republican run. Both could be true at the same time.
Michigan political experts aren’t laughing Kid Rock off.
‘He’s competitive’
“You gotta take it seriously until he says ‘I’m out,’ ” said Dave Dulio, professor and chair of the political science department at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich. “I don’t have to tell you, it’s for obvious reasons when we’re in the wake of Donald Trump running for president and winning.”
Early polling shows Rock is dominating the Republican primary field and is competitive with Stabenow.
Kid Rock, 46, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, leads Stabenow 48.6 percent to 46.1 percent in a hypothetical matchup, according to a survey of 1,078 likely voters released Friday by the Trafalgar Group, which predicted Trump’s upset victory in Michigan last November.
Another survey of 800 likely voters — conducted by the independent polling firm Target-Insyght — shows Kid Rock leading the next-closest candidate in the GOP primary field by 17 percent and trailing Stabenow 50 percent to 42 percent.
“I knew he would do well, but I didn’t expect him to have a double-digit lead over his nearest competitor” in the primary, said Ed Sarpolus, the firm’s founder. Against Stabenow, “he’s competitive at this stage of the game,” Sarpolus said.
‘Trumpish’ campaign
Kid Rock has not filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, which is required within 15 days of spending or receiving more than $5,000 in support of a possible campaign.
Instead, at midnight Wednesday night, about 15 days after he launched his website, he issued a statement that provided very little legal clarity on whether he was running but offered some strong clues as to what a Kid Rock campaign could look like: populist, profane, troll-ish and Trumpish.
“When my name was thrown out there for U.S. Senate” — to be clear, Kid Rock was the one who threw his name out there — “I decided to launch kidrockforsenate.com,” the statement said. “I was beyond overwhelmed with the response I received from community leaders, D.C. pundits, and bluecollar folks that are just simply tired of the extreme left and right (bull).”
Without announcing a run, he said he now plans to “get people engaged and registered to vote while continuing to put out my ideas on ways to help working-class people in Michigan and America, all while still calling out these jackass lawyers who call themselves politicians.”