DETROIT, Mich. \u2014 Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) was about to make her stump speech to a small crowd at an East Detroit park last week, asking for their vote in her bid to ascend to the Senate this fall.<\/p>\n
Several Black women attending the event were more excited to talk about another female politician, however \u2014 Vice President Kamala Harris.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just new. This is change. This is women in charge,\u201d said a beaming Toya Mason, 52, of the sudden switch from Joe Biden to Harris at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket in July. \u201cThis is really phenomenal. It\u2019s a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mason hasn\u2019t decided how she\u2019ll vote in the Michigan Senate contest, one of at least seven Democrats must win if they have any hope of keeping the majority in the upper chamber. But she is newly excited about the first Black woman to top a presidential ticket and Democrats hope that afterglow will boost down-ballot candidates like Slotkin, who was endorsed at the rally by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) after the Democratic House member defeated an underfunded challenger in her primary earlier this month.<\/p>\n
As Democrats begin their convention in Chicago on Monday, a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll showed Harris with a slight national lead over Donald Trump and a much larger share of Democrats said they were satisfied with their choices in the presidential race. Slotkin will attend the convention this week, unlike at least three vulnerable Senate Democrats \u2014 from Montana, Ohio and Nevada \u2014 who will skip the proceedings.<\/p>\n
At the rally here, Slotkin, a third-term congresswoman \u2014 who faces former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) in the fall \u2014 did something Harris has so far not leaned into: She talked about her gender and the history of female politicians winning in the Wolverine State.<\/p>\n
Slotkin praised Whitmer for blazing a path for women in Michigan in 2018 when Democrats nominated a woman to run for every statewide office \u2014 governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and Senate. Those women went on to sweep their races, despite lingering fears among the political establishment after Hillary Clinton\u2019s surprise 2016 loss that female politicians might not be able to appeal in the Midwestern state.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so now when everyone wants to know, the whole world wants to know, can Kamala Harris win? They come to Michigan to understand that we can do it,\u201d Slotkin said to cheers.<\/p>\n
Voters at the rally ate it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen have run this country and look where we\u2019re at,\u201d said Sandra Doucet, 66, who did a little happy dance when asked how she felt about Harris being on the top of the ticket. \u201cWomen, we run our homes, our jobs, our children. We\u2019re very versatile. We can do it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris rocketing to the top of the ticket has dramatically shaken up the race for Senate Democrats, who are seeking to hold onto their narrow 51-49 majority in the chamber as they face a daunting electoral map that has them playing defense in 23 states \u2014 many of them red or purple. Recent polls have shown Harris reversing Biden\u2019s flagging numbers in Midwest states core to Democrats\u2019 path to victory, including Michigan, which is translating down-ticket. Since Biden dropped out of the race, two recent polls have shown Slotkin with a three percentage point lead over Rogers, while Harris opened up a four percentage point lead over Trump in an August NYT\/Siena poll.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t want to stand in front of the Harris train and [Slotkin\u2019s] definitely got her ticket and is riding the train,\u201d said Democratic political consultant Greg Bowens, who helped run Slotkin\u2019s primary opponent\u2019s unsuccessful campaign.<\/p>\n
Six weeks ago, Slotkin, who avoided being seen with Biden when he visited the state, feared Biden was going to lose her swing state over a turnout problem on the left, she said in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s completely changed the air in the room,\u201d Slotkin said a week after appearing with Harris in Detroit in front of a roaring crowd of thousands of people. \u201cCompletely.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Slotkin handily beat actor and Democrat Hill Harper, who is Black, in the August primary, he won in the city of Detroit, where his message of becoming the first Black senator to represent Michigan seemed to especially resonate.<\/p>\n
Several voters who attended the Whitmer-Slotkin rally on Wednesday said they didn\u2019t know much about Slotkin, demonstrating the challenge she faces of introducing herself to a diverse state of 10 million people where she and her opponent, Rogers, are not widely well known. They are competing to replace Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who is the state\u2019s first female senator and who is retiring.<\/p>\n
In 2018, Slotkin won the 8th Congressional District that Rogers had represented years earlier, and has run in tight elections ever since, showing a deftness in winning over moderate swing voters with her national security background and moderate persona. Slotkin has opened up a wide fundraising advantage over Rogers, bringing in more than $6 million in the last quarter compared to his $2 million, which has allowed her to flood the airwaves with positive biographical ads about herself.<\/p>\n
Her opponent has sought to tie her tightly to the Biden administration. At an event with Trump\u2019s running mate, JD Vance, on the other side of the state on the same day, Rogers talked about the rising price of a \u201cgrand slam\u201d breakfast at Denny\u2019s because of the \u201cBiden-Harris-Slotkin regime\u201d and said his opponent was far too liberal for Michigan. On TV, Republicans have hit Slotkin on inflation and border policy, and for voting for the covid relief bill that sent stimulus checks to Americans, including some people in jail. (Stimulus checks in an earlier covid relief bill under Trump also made it to prisoners.)<\/p>\n
Slotkin said her national security background \u2014 she was a CIA agent and later worked in the Defense Department under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, focusing on the Middle East \u2014 inoculate her somewhat from GOP attacks that she is too liberal.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy background maybe runs counter to type with what their stereotype of a Democrat is,\u201d Slotkin said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to say that the CIA officer is too woke. You know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
But that background could pose some challenges among some in Michigan who oppose Israel\u2019s ongoing offensive in Gaza. Dearborn is home to the highest concentration of Muslims in the United States, and more than 100,000 Democrats voted \u201cuncommitted\u201d in the presidential primary as a way to pressure Biden over his support for Israel. The uncommitted movement did not organize around the Senate primary, and Slotkin noted she won the Dearborn area in the primary.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you look at the numbers? We won it with 61 percent of the vote so you tell me,\u201d Slotkin said, when asked if she had a lack of support in that community. \u201cWe have a very vocal, hurting population in Dearborn, but it\u2019s not as simple as it\u2019s sometimes made out to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slotkin, who is Jewish, has carefully threaded the needle on the war, sometimes voting for legislation favored by pro-Israel factions, including a bill that would have sanctioned the International Criminal Court for pursuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She voted against legislation that would have barred the State Department from citing Gaza\u2019s casualty numbers, however, and faced attacks from Rogers and other Republicans for not criticizing her fellow Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib over attending an anti-Israel conference in Detroit.<\/p>\n
Layla Elabed, one of the co-founders of the uncommitted movement, said Slotkin had not done enough outreach to win trust in the Muslim and antiwar communities since running for Senate, and that Democrats need to embrace a policy change in the Middle East. But she thinks that Harris moving to the top of the ticket has improved Democrats\u2019 chances in Michigan, given she is not as associated with the conflict as Biden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it has opened up a very slight window,\u201d said Elabad, who briefly met with Harris when she visited the state this month. \u201cWe have seen Vice President Harris a little more empathetic and sympathetic \u2026 towards the plight of Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michigan Republicans were able to get a quality candidate through their primary after Trump endorsed Rogers, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, despite Rogers\u2019s previous criticism of Trump over how he handled the Russia investigation and for denying his 2020 election loss. Rogers\u2019s challenge is formidable though: No Republican has won a Senate seat in Michigan since 1994.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Republicans can win in the state, then they have a candidate who\u2019s capable of doing that,\u201d said Matt Grossman, a professor of political science at Michigan State University. \u201cRogers doesn\u2019t come across as an extreme candidate or a particularly Trumpy candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slotkin has slammed Rogers for past votes curtailing abortion and for leaving Michigan after he retired from the House to relocate to Florida.<\/p>\n
Rogers also had to campaign in a tough primary with a base that\u2019s changed a lot since he retired, before Trump\u2019s presidential victory. At the Vance event this month, he touted his law enforcement record in front of the Republican crowd by saying he was an FBI agent back when it was the \u201cgood FBI.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThings have changed,\u201d he added, a reference to many base voters\u2019 suspicions of the agency after it investigated links between Trump\u2019s campaign to Russia in 2016.<\/p>\n
In a July rally in Grand Rapids, Trump said Rogers faces an \u201ceasy race.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re running against somebody that\u2019s such a bad senator,\u201d Trump said of Slotkin, a member of the House. \u201cI was there for four years plus. I don\u2019t even remember meeting that particular person. This is not a senator for Michigan.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
DETROIT, Mich. \u2014 Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) was about to make her stump speech to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}