Michigan voters have an outsize impact on who will win the White House and which party will carry the House and Senate in 2024. In this series, Great Stakes: The fight to be hailed as victors in Michigan, the Washington Examiner will look at the thorny politics and unique matters that will swing the critical battleground state. Part four, below, examines how the economy and union vote will determine who wins the expected rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Michigan — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump‘s economic pitches to Michigan‘s blue-collar voters, particularly the state’s half a million union members, could decide the 2024 general election as this week’s primary underscores the likely nominees’ respective weaknesses before November.
If Trump can compete with Biden for those voters in places such as Michigan’s famed Macomb County, as former President Ronald Reagan did in 1980 with so-called Reagan Democrats, he could win the state’s 15 Electoral College votes and reclaim the White House this election cycle.
Trump not only has to win Macomb County, as he did in 2016 and 2020, but he also has to “win with a margin” to counter the parts of Michigan where he could underperform, according to Republican strategist Jamie Roe, the longtime chief of staff to former Republican Rep. Candice Miller.
Tuesday’s Republican primary emphasized Trump’s loose grip on 30 to 40% of his party, with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley holding him to 70% of the vote. Meanwhile, Biden netted about 80% of the Democratic primary vote due to an “uncommitted” protest vote.
Macomb County voted for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) in 2022, “but every time Trump’s been on the ballot, there are parts of the electorate that come out” for him “that really don’t come out for a whole lot of other people,” Roe told the Washington Examiner.
Those people include union workers despite Michigan-based United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, for example, endorsing Biden last month.
Terry Bowman, Trump’s 2016 campaign Michigan co-chairman and 2020 Workers for Trump national chairman, has also worked for the Ford Motor Company for almost three decades. Bowman now chairs the board of the nonpolitical Institute for the American Worker, but he contended what is good for union officials does not “necessarily mean that it’s good for the rank and file.”
“They like [Trump] personally as a candidate and just as a person,” Bowman said. “Secondly, we do now have a history of Donald Trump’s policies, and going into 2024, I think workers have looked at: What did Donald Trump do for blue-collar auto workers, and what has Joe Biden done for blue-collar workers?”
One of Biden’s more politically problematic policies has been his desire to have 50% of all new vehicle sales being electric models by 2030, though policy analysts disagree regarding its workforce consequences. Simultaneously, Bowman was temporarily laid off this week because Ford’s Rawsonville Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which builds batteries for the maker’s electric F-150 Lightning, is reducing production and shifts.
“We have thousands, or tens of thousands of workers in the auto industry in America that work in transmission plants and in engine plants,” Bowman said. “There’s more jobs coming into the assembly of batteries, but it’s not going to be on a one-for-one basis. … Even with the government subsidies, the demand for these trucks is just not there.”
Trump receiving more support from industrial union workers than Republicans traditionally do is “part of a longer transformation along educational lines between the political parties,” according to Michigan State University Institute of Public Policy and Social Research Director Matthew Grossmann. But that does not help Biden, who this week had almost 52,000 Democrats mark themselves as “uncommitted” in protest of the Israel–Hamas war instead of voting for him.
“It’s a smaller proportion of the Michigan economy than it used to be, but it still has a lot of cultural resonance because lots of people have family members who work for the auto industry or support the UAW,” Grossmann said.
Mark Gaffney, a former president of Michigan’s AFL-CIO, a union federation, conceded other types of labor groups have become less politically powerful as their membership has declined, in addition to those members being “more independent.”
“Younger members tend to be even more independent,” Gaffney said, adding that Trump’s opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement appealed to industrial union members after years of their leadership describing such deals as bad.
“So along comes Trump, and whether he follows through on everything that he says or not is debatable, but he convinces people that he’s talking their language,” Gaffney continued. “So we could have lost, in some unions, as many as 40% of our members last time. And that’s a pretty big number.”
But Jackie Kelly-Smith, Macomb County Democratic Committee’s black caucus chairwoman and a retired UAW worker, was more optimistic concerning Biden’s prospects in the community, citing him taking part in last fall’s strike.
“We’ve had this going on since I got hired by General Motors in 1975,” Kelly-Smith said. “They feel as though my union should not endorse someone that I don’t want to vote for. On the other hand, you have the union saying we’re going to endorse those that allow us to continue to represent, negotiate, and bargain, and that’s not always a Republican president. … Trump didn’t care if we went bankrupt.”
More broadly, the economy, along with border security and abortion access, could determine the election, with polls demonstrating disapproval of Biden’s economic approach. For instance, Biden’s economic approval rating is roughly net negative 16 percentage points, with 40% approving and 56% disapproving.
Michigan state Rep. Karen Twinsett, a Democrat who represents parts of Detroit and Dearborn in neighboring Wayne County, another critical region, recognized that Biden’s economy, or “Bidenomics,” has been detrimental to her constituents.
“When you’re talking about somebody in the presidency, normally, these things don’t bother you until they’re hitting you at home, like gas prices or whatever,” Twinsett said. “Everyday people don’t think about that stuff, but when you go to the grocery store, you’re feeling it.”
In response, state Rep. Erin Byrnes (D-MI), who represents other parts of Dearborn, implored Biden to emphasize “corporate greed that has been masquerading as inflation.”
“Inflation is real, but also corporations have upped their prices exponentially since the pandemic hit,” Byrnes said. “If they don’t call it out and don’t act on it, people will feel like they’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes.”
But Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the dean of Michigan’s congressional delegation in Washington, and former state Sen. Tom Barrett, who is contesting Michigan’s 7th Congressional District again, argued Bidenomics’s damage has already been done. For Walberg, from the five town halls he led last week before his interview with the Washington Examiner, it is “very clear” that Bidenomics is “not working,” especially related to interest rates and energy costs, and that only a “very significant turnaround” could improve Biden’s popularity.
Barrett additionally downplayed the importance of Biden’s union endorsements after the International Brotherhood of Teamsters‘s political action committee donated $45,000 to the Republican National Committee’s convention fund. The Teamsters have yet to endorse a candidate.
“The national union leadership is always going to endorse Democrats, and the UAW was always going to endorse Biden,” Barrett said. “It was just a question of when now they had become frustrated with him over his electric vehicle mandates and other things that really disadvantaged union workers and auto plants because their jobs aren’t going to be around. I would say your average or stereotypical UAW worker is probably somebody who cares about crime in their communities, cares about the border a whole heck of a lot.”