Michigan's Midterm moment

0:01WBUR Podcasts, Boston. So you can really see sort of the old lions, all the old warhorses coming out to try and prop up Haley Stevens because they're rightfully concerned that the party is shifting. All roads lead to Michigan this election season. How the state could steer the direction of the Democratic Party and control of the Senate.

0:34It's Monday, July 27th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WVUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, we are in Michigan. There's probably no better state to go to this election season for a read on American politics right now. We'll hear about the Republican primary for governor, and just what an endorsement from the president is good for in 2026. In the primary, Trump's a lodestone. You get Trump, he'll lead you anywhere. In the general, he's a millstone who could bring you right down to the bottom. We'll also hear from Democratic voters who want to send a message to party leaders.

1:13The average American, I don't feel like our voice is being heard. I feel like a little man at the bottom of the total poll. But first, Michigan voters have picked the winning candidate for president in five straight elections. That's one reason to pay attention to politics there. And in the primary a week from Tuesday, Democratic voters are going to send a message to their party about the possible path forward in that next presidential election. Do they want a new direction? Or do establishment candidates still have some fight in them? The Democratic National Committee acknowledged Michigan's central role in elections last week when it moved the state up to an early primary voting bloc for 2028.

1:54For more on the key races on the ballot in Michigan this year, Scott Tong met up in Detroit with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist M.L. Elric, a lifelong Michigander who is with the Detroit Free Press. And their conversation began with Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who's running against Congresswoman Haley Stevens in the U.S. Senate primary. El-Sayed is one of the most impressive politicians that I've seen in Michigan in a long time. I'm the only candidate running for U.S. Senate who's never taken a dime from a corporation or on a campaign. And now let's talk about the fact that we are paying more and more for less and less every single place we turn.

2:35It is because those very same corporations charging us more get to rig the system by buying politicians so that they do their bidding instead of ours. I mean, he's got a lot of energy. He's got a lot of charisma. He seems to have a mastery of the subjects. He's able to move people with his words. And he has the support of Bernie Sanders and AOC. He's kind of one of the Bernie bro candidates out there, the new progressives, very anti-establishment, down on corporations, wants health care for all, and very, very critical of Israel. And that's a message that really appeals with younger Democrats, with progressives.

3:16Well, nationwide, of course, we may be in a moment for politicians who are part of the Democratic Socialist Party. Of course, New York City, Colorado. So do you see El-Sayed as, at least his politics, his positions being kind of adjacent to kind of that side of the political spectrum? Michigan is going to be another one of these battlefields where we see whether the Democratic Party is going to move to the left going forward or whether the establishment Democrats still have another couple of rounds in them. And Haley Stevens is most certainly an establishment Democrat. I'm not in the business of slogans.

3:55We all know that the costs are too damn high. Here are our indicators. 60 % of Americans now living paycheck to paycheck. Something that I have been eyeing for the last handful of years is the ballooning consumer debt and default rates. As someone who was in the Department of the Treasury during the Great Recession, working on the auto rescue. She helped run the auto bailout under President Obama. She has the support of Chuck Schumer. She has the support of former Senator Debbie Stabenow. She was just endorsed by outgoing Senator Gary Peters and former Governor Jennifer Granholm endorsed her as well.

4:30So you can really see sort of the old lions, all the old warhorses coming out to try and prop up Haley Stevens because they're rightfully concerned that that the party is shifting. And in their minds, it could lead the Democrats to nominate someone who won't be as viable in a general election. And of course, as far as Haley Stevens, as you described, she receives a fair amount of money from AIPAC, the American-Israel Political Action Committee, here in this moment. To what degree is that kind of a test more broadly in the state of Michigan and around the country of support for the state of Israel?

5:12That seems to be a big Michigan national question. What we saw in Michigan in 2024 was divisions over the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, the way the United States has maintained its relationship with Israel, that turned Michigan from a blue state to a red state. And this is probably one of the biggest threats to Haley Stevens' ambitions that I can think of, because she certainly has more money than Midas, and she's spending it. All you have to do is go online, and you will see an ad from Haley Stevens. And it's tough for El-Sayed to compete with that, particularly when he's sworn off any corporate PAC money.

5:52You spoke to me on the phone about the other interesting state-level race, the gubernatorial race, notably the Republican candidate who was endorsed recently by President Trump. Can you tell me a little bit about him and whether he's seen a bump or not? So John James was one of the four candidates running for governor as a Republican. I think was seen kind of as the front-runner. We are owed safe, secure elections. And frankly, I think having people who are telling the truth and continuing to question the government are exactly what we need to make sure we have a healthy Republican democracy process.

6:29There was a question as to whether or not any of these candidates would get the support of Donald Trump, because in Michigan primaries, as in primaries across the country, having Trump's support is essentially an anointing, a coronation. And he received Trump's support. And I think where that endorsement really is going to have an impact is in the fundraising. So let's say John James wins the primary. Is having President Trump's endorsement a plus statewide in the general election or no? I think the answer to whether or not Trump is a plus or not depends on two things, the price of gas and the state of the war with Iran.

7:09In the primary, Trump's a lodestone. You get Trump, he'll lead you anywhere. In the general, he's a millstone who could bring you right down to the bottom. But I think the real challenge is, are we still stuck with$4 gas? Do we still not know what's going on with the Strait of Hormuz? And does that historical trend of the president doing poorly in midterm elections also come in as another factor that drags him behind the Democrats? What's most important to voters? There's so much talk of affordability in this campaign. Broadly speaking, what's on the list? Sure. I mean, I think affordability is still the number one issue like it was in 2024.

7:53But you've been in Michigan for a few days. You see a lot of American-made cars. A lot of them are SUVs. A lot of them are gas guzzlers. And there are a lot of conservative older voters here who I think probably lean towards Trump and who probably are skeptical of the evolution towards electric vehicles. And Trump has been really down on regulations and on EVs. So whether or not that's the way the world's going, Michigan may say, well, I'm glad somebody's leaving the auto industry alone. but I think it all depends on how closely you look at it because the automaker has been writing off billions of dollars that they've invested in the transition to EVs.

8:35If there's a Democratic candidate who can make that connection that Trump's policies towards the auto industry are hurting Michiganders, then Democrats have found an issue there where maybe Republicans think this is one that's breaking their way. So the primary is underway, right? And mail-in ballots are coming in, as I understand it. And the primary or the last day is August 4th. The Department of Justice, of course, has said it is going to send what it calls election monitors to a few places in Michigan, the city of Detroit, East Lansing, which leads me to kind of ask about the election question to the degree there are people in the United States who are still kind of election deniers.

9:23What's the picture here? So we're going to have election observers. One of the places they're not going is in Ann Arbor, which is the only place in Michigan where we actually had a foreign national cast of votes. So I think I would go to Ann Arbor if I really wanted to catch somebody. They're not doing that. I mean, this is a canard. This is, Donald Trump has done better in Michigan elections every time he's been on the ballot. He should not be worried about people stealing votes from him in Michigan. I think maybe he should be worried about social security, artificial intelligence, data centers, things like that.

10:04Those are issues that people in Michigan really care about. And instead, we're talking about this phony issue that Michigan elections are not safe and secure. There's never been any proof of widespread election fraud. And I think anybody who knows what's going on in Michigan is either laughing at this or is insulted by it. And just more broadly, kind of directionally, as far as where the state has been politically, say, in the last decade or so, directionally, politically, where has the state been going? Going back to the Reagan Democrats in 1980, this state has been a bellwether. It's been more blue than red, but it's purple enough that if you don't win Michigan, you don't win the whole enchilada.

10:50M.L. Elric, thank you very much. My pleasure. We should note that since Republican John James won Trump's endorsement, Two candidates have dropped out. So now John James is just up against Perry Johnson in the primary again August 4th.

11:11Coming up next, voters in central Michigan sound off on the issues that matter to them. Stick around.

11:24Well, they were in Michigan. Scott and producer Julia Corcoran traveled about two hours northwest from Detroit and joined WCMU reporter AJ Jones to talk to some Michiganders about the issues that matter to them. They also dug into the race for governor. Right. So on the Republican side, The candidate is Mike Rogers. He is a longtime congressperson who ran back in 2024 against Alyssa Slotkin and barely lost. What Mike Rogers is all about, he's Trump endorsed. He's really running on the Trump agenda. But one thing that's interesting, he's also kind of running on a change agenda. So Michigan has not sent a Republican to the U.S.

12:02Senate since 1995. And when I spoke to Mike Rogers, he talked a lot about, you know, things that the state is struggling in. Things like education, for example. We rank really low across the country. And Rogers, despite running very closely with the incumbent president, is sort of running on this agenda of, all right, let's put a Republican in Senate and that will bring change. On the other side, you have two candidates left. Abdul El-Sayed, who I spoke on the phone with a few months ago, he was a former Wayne County health director. That's where Detroit is. He's a super duper progressive guy.

12:29He's a doctor. He's written a book about Medicare for all. When I talked to him, he's all about like consumer protections. And, you know, he didn't totally oppose the tariffs, although he said Trump was going too far. He said NAFTA was a big disaster. So really focusing on progressive agenda, very pro-M4A. And he's criticized Israel's conduct in the war in Gaza. His opponent, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, is a moderate liberal, longtime congresswoman from Metro Detroit. She's been endorsed by a lot of big establishment figures, including Gary Peters, the outgoing U.S. senator, and Debbie Stabenow, who herself was a long-term senator from the state of Michigan.

13:05Let's talk about voters here with these big races you've just talked about. You and I went to a swing congressional district not too far from here in central Michigan to the city of Saginaw. Very smoky evening with wildfires. And we spoke to some voters there. And it seems, I mean, affordability, as I heard it, really came up a lot, AJ. Yeah, Saginaw is a majority black, blue collar town, and it's in a pretty swingy district. And, you know, rising inflation and prices were top of mind. I spoke to Shirley Cork, a retiree who says everything is going up for her, including gas. Every time I go to fill up, I can only get half as much.

13:43And then next time, I might only get a quarter of them for the same money. And that's annoying. Shirley wasn't the only voter worried about inflation. Odinia Carruth was sitting with Shirley. Let's hear what she had to say. I can't really afford a lot of meat. And I can't afford, well, like chicken was very cheap, but now it's higher than steak. And it's a lot of other things like milk and cereal stuff. It's really high. Music was going that day. We also heard some voters who expressed a lot of disagreement with the SCOTUS decision that added limits to the Voting Rights Act. that was something else that came up quite a bit.

14:23So here in studio, we interviewed a couple members of the Isabella County Republican Organization, and you've also listened in to that audio. What struck you? Yeah, in Isabella County, for reference, that's where we are here in Mount Pleasant. We had Brent Fisher, who runs a steel company, and Kelly Bean. They were supportive of Trump's policies on immigration reform that came up in some of his economic policies. They did both say it was really hard to find workers. That really stuck out to me. Kelly Bean, in particular, does agriculture, real estate. And when he came into our studio, he said tariffs and interest rates had caused some heartburn in his particular line of work, but he trusts Trump's long-term strategy.

15:00I think the purpose of the tariffs was to try to reshore some manufacturing and some production. And if we can get that, that's going to bring better jobs. So, AJ, what has struck you from kind of hearing from various voters in this area about their views on the government? Do they feel like the system is working for them? Yeah, it's a very purple state. So we've had a Democratic governor since 2018. And as a result, Republicans here, in particular, are not very happy with the state government, although they do support Trump overwhelmingly. And conversely, Democrats are pretty happy with the direction of the state of Michigan, but not the federal government.

15:39In particular, in Saginaw, one thing that came up a lot are concerns, these broad concerns about federal corruption and income inequality. And that latter topic was something Calvis Burnett, who is retired from the Army and a VA nurse brought up. She says she feels ignored by the political system. The average American, I don't feel like our voice is being heard. Things are getting more expensive. We worry about things like security, finance and stuff like that. And sometimes I feel like our voice just isn't heard. I feel like a little man at the bottom of the totem pole. So a lot of voters are still deciding on both sides, frankly, in my conversations.

16:15Although Odinia from earlier told me she liked Haley Stevens. and compared her favorably to former President Biden. We've not had a elected GOP senator. She's in the Senate race since 95, like I mentioned. And Governor Whitmer is fairly popular here, but there have been some recent blips in that regard. AJ, finally, kind of on the topic of where the voters feel the government is working for them, you also spoke to a Republican who had a different take, yeah? Yeah, I did. I talked to Mary Moylan, who chairs the GOP in Gladwin in mid-Michigan, and she told me that she was not really happy with how the governor is handling things.

16:47And in general, she just wants less business regulations. And Mary told me that she believes the government is really holding small companies in Michigan back. AJ Jones, reporter here at member station WCMU. AJ, good to talk to you. Thanks. Coming up, Michigan is a lot more than its politics, of course. After the break, we go to a place where you can get strawberries for a buck and also see how the spirit of Detroit has endured through decades of boom and bust. That's in just a minute.

17:28During their reporting in Detroit, Scott Tong and Julia Corcoran also explored the story of that city's comeback. Detroit was once the symbol of America's industrial decline. remarkable urban revival in the last 15 years or so. In 2023, there were more people living in Detroit than the year before, ending a 66-year trend of population loss. Scott and Julia explored that recovery in conversations with the current and former mayors of Detroit, as well as local journalists, and visits to some parks. You can find all those conversations right now at hereandnow.org. But they also visited a place where you can feel the energy of the city and start to understand its story.

18:17It is a long and complicated and uneven story, but one spot that has endured is Detroit's historic Eastern Market. I strolled through with longtime Detroit resident journalist Paul Eisenstein, stopping at the fruit sellers, the chili sauce, fancy mushrooms, you name it. It's a place that survived the worst times, Detroit had, the riots, bankruptcy of the city. It brings in people from literally everywhere. It's probably the biggest mixing bowl that we have in Detroit. Black, white, poor, rich, suburbanites. How long have you been coming here? Probably since a week after I moved here. What year was that?

18:59Oh, I moved to Detroit in 1978 after finishing University of Michigan. I came out here for one year. Well, as you can see, best laid plans. When you came here in the old days, it was basically 150 vendors selling pretty much the same thing. Depending on season, it might have been fruits and veggies. Today, there's also prepared food, flowers. You see vendors selling baked goods and what have you. And what did you just buy? Oh, I just bought a package of prepared Thai food. We've got Lions, Maine today. Portabellas look amazing. Maitake is great for you. Get your maitake 10 ounces for$12. There was a period when the auto industry seemed to be dying.

19:50People were moving out of the city as fast as they could, yet they'd still come back to Eastern Market. There was the bankruptcy that the city faced. 2013. 13. Yeah, and yet people still came. Tell me about the surrounding neighborhood when times are more challenging. What did it look like? I remember coming through Detroit. It was a Saturday in summer, and I stopped downtown looking for, where's the party? And I couldn't find it, and I asked a cop, what do people do in this town on a Saturday night? His answer was simple. They get the hell out of here. And that was what was happening in the city.

20:32In the 70s and 80s? In the 70s into the 80s, even into the 90s. It really has been the last 20 years that you're starting to see energy return to the city. My name is John Pruitt. And right here today, I am representing Cha-Cha. So this recipe has been our family over 200 years. It's a garnish chutney relish. It's cabbage-based green tomatoes, onions, garlic peppers, pickling spices, apple cider vinegar. It's gluten-free. It's vegan as well. There's no dairy, no oil, no corn, no nuts, no meat, no byproducts, no nothing. And you eat it with, like, greens, beans, tuna, salad, chicken, salad, egg, salad, fajitas, burritos, tacos, nachos, hot dogs, hamburger, bros, pork, salmon, fish, eggs, baked beans, black beans, white beans, string beans, stir-fried soup, salad, soup, potato salad, chili, hummus, meatloaf.

21:18The thing just wants you to eat it. That's it. And I got to pause to process what you just said. All right. Ring me up here. How much is this one here? $9. $9, yep. Dollar strawberries,$1 lettuce, all strawberries. Got to go,$1 now. $1 on the strawberries, sweet strawberries,$1. Paul, this market is a series of kind of large sheds, and underneath the sheds are people walking around and the merchants. Shed 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Shed 1 is gone, and that's an important story. What happened to Shed 1? Unfortunately, one of the things that really hurt this city was having the freeways built. Like a lot of other cities, and all the worse, a lot of heavily black cities, they wound up driving Interstate 75, I-96, and so many of the roads right through the black neighborhoods.

22:14They took down a viable, the original shed at Eastern Market, so they could make it easier for people to get on and off the freeway to get the hell out of Detroit. By the way, interesting story. We don't know for sure if it's going to happen, but where they have the 375, an extension to Interstate 75, the plan is to take out that freeway, bring it back to surface level, and return it to the community. Scenes from Detroit's historic eastern market with longtime Detroiter Paul Eisenstein. Yeah, I love public radio, public TV and all that. It's getting tough now. You're not kidding. Oh, and this guy, classical guitarist David Labs, one of the musicians playing at the market.

23:03You've heard that song before your time. No, it's not before my time, but thanks for asking. You're listening to Isn't She Lovely on Here and Now.

23:22Isn't She Lovely to Detroit? Eastern Market.

23:29That'll do it for the show today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Julia Corcoran and edited by Todd Munt and Kat Welch. Michael Scotto edited the podcast. Technical direction from Caleb Green, Matt Reed, and Andre Peralta. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. Lots more on our Instagram account from them at HereAndNowRadio. HereAndNow's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.