Mich. candidate: Dems must win back workers
She tries to counter Trump populism with emphasis on green energy jobs
Gretchen Whitmer, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, scaled the roof of the Local
58 electrical workers union to survey what she hopes is part of the jobs future of this onetime industrial boom town: 600 madein-Michigan solar panels making the building energy-selfsufficient.
The 46-year-old former state Senate minority leader said she offers a liberal alternative to President Trump’s 2016 populist pledge to bring back U.S. jobs. Whether Michigan voters like her message will help shape the future of the national Democratic Party.
A few Midwestern gubernatorial races are perhaps the most consequential of the 2018 election cycle. They’ll signal whether these once reliably blue states — many of which voted Republican in 2016 for the first time since the
1980s — are trending away from her party. These new governors will preside over the redrawing of congressional maps around the
2020 Census. “This race is critical, not just for the makeup of the state Legislature but for Congress,” Whitmer told USA TODAY.
Whitmer makes a direct appeal to the same working-class voters who put Trump in the White House because he promised to bring back the manufacturing jobs that once made Detroit a thriving middle-class metropolis. In contrast, Whitmer touts a new era of green energy, skilled trade and water management jobs. Michigan lakes possess 20% of the world’s fresh water.
“Democrats have to do a much better job of promoting job growth and skills,” Whitmer said at a family-owned shoe repair shop on Detroit’s northwest side. “It’s sad because that’s what the Democratic Party was founded on,” she said, “making policy that gets people into good-paying jobs.”
Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina are among the most gerrymandered states — where Democrats were written out of power with the help of lopsided congressional maps drawn by GOP-controlled legislatures around the 2010 Census. That year, despite winning 45% of the vote, Democrats held just 12 of 38 Senate seats.
Trump won Michigan in November by a hair — a little more than 10,000 votes. The state, heavily populated by labor unions, the grass-roots heart of the Democratic Party, is prone to big political shifts. It was after 12 years of Republican John Engler that voters picked Democrat Jennifer Granholm; after an additional eight years, they chose Republican Rick Snyder. Republican William Milliken held office for 14 years before Democrat Jim Blanchard was elected.
If Democrats can’t regain power here, it’s unlikely to happen in other critical Midwestern states, said Blanchard, the former gover- nor who endorsed Whitmer. “This is going to be one of the key races” nationally, he said.
Blanchard said Whitmer can win if she does what Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton failed to do: blanket the state and promote what her party has done for workers, including the auto rescue package in 2009. “People took that for granted,” yet “it would not have happened with a Republican Congress,” Blanchard said.
Jennifer Duffy, an analyst at the non-partisan Cook Political Report in Washington, called Whitmer the “nominal front-runner,” even as the race has yet to truly begin. Abdul El-Sayed, a Detroit doctor and Democrat running to be the state’s first Muslim-American governor, has also been blanketing the state.
“Democrats walk into this cycle at their lowest point. They have nowhere to go but up,” Duffy said. “The path to that is probably through the Midwest,” where many states have been under Republican control for at least eight years, she said. “They’re looking for change.”
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, announced his intention to run. He pledged to be a “jobs” governor by cutting income taxes and high auto insurance premiums. A recent poll by EPIC-MRA showed Whitmer and Schuette deadlocked. The same survey of likely Michigan general election voters found 62% of voters disapproved of Trump, and 35% approved.
Gov. Snyder’s office said more than a half-million jobs have been created statewide since he took office, and Detroit’s unemployment rate is at a 17-year low amid investments from Amazon and others. The uptick allowed for some tax credits to be reinstated, including increasing a property credit and the number of people who qualify for it. “If that’s the record she wants to run ‘against,’ I wish her the best of luck,” said Anna Heaton, a Snyder spokeswoman.