It Just Might Be That Democrats Know How to Win Michigan
Less than a decade ago, Michigan looked like it was shifting to the right. The historic labor state, home to the United Auto Workers’ headquarters in Detroit and a rich tradition of working-class politics, had a two-term Republican governor, a Republican attorney general, a Republican secretary of state, and solid Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature. In 2016, after decades of backing Democrats in presidential races, Michigan rejected Hillary Clinton and chose Republican Donald Trump, providing Trump with 16 Electoral College votes that were critical to his victory.
Then the Democrats staged an epic comeback. In 2018, they won the governorship and the races for attorney general and secretary of state. They also passed Proposal 2, a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment that set up an independent redistricting commission tasked with replacing legislative maps that had been gerrymandered to favor the Republicans. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump by a comfortable margin of more than 150,000 votes—a significantly stronger finish than in the other “blue wall” states, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, that flipped to the Democrats that year. And in 2022, Democrats retained the top three jobs in the state and took control of the state House and state Senate. “We got our clocks cleaned,” admitted state GOP chair Pete Hoekstra.
By 2023, Democrats had enacted measures to defend reproductive rights, restore protections for workers and their unions, and make the Great Lakes State a leader on a host of economic, social, and racial justice issues.
But the experience of being beaten down in the 2010s shook the faith of a lot of political seers. They still saw Michigan as vulnerable to a Republican resurgence. There were skeptics who wondered whether Michigan Democrats could maintain the momentum. Last week, they got their answer, in a pair of special elections that determined that Democrats could maintain the unified grip on the state government that has allowed them to chart such a bold course.
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