One contestant put on a helmet and black leather jacket and drove his Harley Davidson through Michigan. His ads underscore his hardship on China and support for the ban on Chinese travelers from entering the United States at the start of the coronavirus outbreak, a policy pursued by President Trump.
The other candidate calls himself “impartial”. He denounces how politics has become “more evil and divisive”. His wife recently appeared in an ad to talk about their young son with asthma to demonstrate her husband’s commitment to protecting health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions.
None of the Michigan Senate candidates seem to want voters to know if they are Republicans or Democrats.
For Senator Gary Peters, the motorcyclist and one of only two Democrats running for re-election in a state Mr. Trump won in 2016, the road to victory will be much easier if he can convince enough supporters of Mr. Trump to to vote for him.
For John James, the self-described impartial Republican, success will come from the opposite situation: if enough people vote for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to support a Republican for the Senate.
The race – one of the few that could affect the Senate balance – is among the most competitive and expensive in the country. Polls show a closer race than Democrats anticipated, and both sides are fighting for the few remaining independent, undecided voters. In an election where the parties have been focused on their base turning out, Michigan is a place where winning the middle could make all the difference.
The polls have varied, but show that James has an outside chance to help Republicans move Democratic seats. A survey by the New York Times / Siena College found that Mr Peters gained one point while others saw his lead in the mid to high single digits.
Money flowed in. The foreign policy group that led the Democrats’ efforts, Senate Majority PAC, invested $ 4.4 million in Michigan last week, US files show – The total expense for the race is over $ 18 million. The only state that it spent more last week was Georgia. The Republicans countered by adding another $ 5.6 million to the $ 9 million they had pledged in recent weeks.
For some voters, everything was a bit disoriented.
Charles Gaba, a health policy analyst and Democrat from the suburb of Bloomfield Township, Detroit, said his friends, who were not so political, weren’t sure which candidate was Republican and which was Democrat. The problem, said Mr Gaba, is compounded by the fact that Mr James is black, which probably leads some people to assume that he is a Democrat. Mr Peters, a middle-aged white man, fits the stereotypical image of a Republican.
“Some people are confused,” said the 50-year-old Gaba, which may add to the narrowness of the polls.
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Mr. James, a 39-year-old former Army helicopter pilot, has tried to steer his underdog campaign through one of the most difficult balancing acts of a Republican running for national office in this election. As a black man on the same ticket as a president, openly making racist appeals to voters, Mr James was reluctant and reluctant in his criticism, aware that pushing back too hard could offend Mr Trump’s extremely loyal base .
And as a candidate vying to support bipartisanism in a state that has turned its back on Mr Trump since winning there by 10,704 votes four years ago, Mr James has struggled to prove his independence. Democrats have attacked him for refusing to put himself any further between himself and the president, highlighting comments such as his insistence that he “support the president’s agenda 2,000 percent”.
In Mr. James’s campaign, victory is within reach if he can step up the race and Mr. Trump improves his reputation – the latest data shows that Mr. Biden is high double digits ahead.
Both parties are betting that despite the tribal nature of today’s politics, there are still people who are open to voting for a candidate from another party in the voting rounds. It did so in 2016, when the Republican Senate candidate winners carried battlefield states, on average, a few percentage points more than Mr. Trump. For example, in Wisconsin, Mr. Trump won with 47 percent of the vote, while Senator Ron Johnson got 50 percent.
“There is this thing in America called a ticket splitter,” said Curt Anderson, a Republican adviser who advises the James campaign. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but it happens all the time. I am not saying that it is not more difficult now or that the party bases are not firmer. But our data is pretty clear that there is a way for John, and we’re in. “
Not all Republicans are convinced. The Trump campaign’s internal polls do not show that Mr Peters is at significant risk. And the money Republicans continue to invest in the race has resulted in senators being adjutants in races that are apparently much closer to privately complaining to party officials.
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Oct. 19, 2020, 11:13 am ET
If Mr. James wins it would be an embarrassing blow to the Democrats in a state they believed was a lockdown. Only one Republican, a candidate for the state’s Supreme Court, has won a nationwide race since Mr. Trump’s narrow win four years ago. Democrats moved two house seats in 2018 and won the governor’s race after eight years of Republican control.
Peters, 61, has worked in local, state, and federal politics for three decades – from the Rochester Hills City Council to the Senate to the US House of Representatives and now the Senate. But he is not known and has not had any voters since 2014.
“People are getting nervous about the whole election,” he said. “We know what happened in Michigan in 2016. Hillary has been in the polls for where Joe Biden is right now. And we know how that turned out. “
He is seen as a workhorse who prefers to act behind the scenes, but not a particularly dynamic activist. Unlike the Michigan Senator – Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who has taken a leadership role on the Agriculture Committee for national bipartisan support in her last three Senate races – Mr Peters is stuck in the Senate minority.
Ed Sarpolus, a Democratic political advisor and pollster, said he had been concerned about the race for months.
“What he has not done in the last six years is visible and personable,” said Mr Sarpolus. “What happened to his family in his ads? You have to tell your story, but he didn’t show any of it this year. He looks more like a professor than an ordinary Joe. “
This summer’s motorcycle trip may have been an attempt to increase support from its organized workforce, but it did not help Mr Peters with Progressives, an up and coming wing of the party, Mr Sarpolus said.
Mr James’ competitiveness is the result of demanding discipline with his message – which, according to critics, has been avoiding attitudes in which he would face difficult questions and then failing to provide answers the few times he has been on site . Voters have found his personal narrative to be compelling – a West Point graduate and combat veteran who runs a shipping company that is part of the company his father started.
“I have no problem with Democrats because I don’t have a blue or red message,” James told an audience at a fundraiser on the west side of the state on Friday. “I have no black or white message. I have a red, white, and blue message. “
Big donors loved it, as did people who give far less. Mr. James has raised more money than Mr. Peters in each quarter so far this quarter, except for the last quarter when they were effectively committed.
In today’s political situation, a candidate who takes the shaky middle ground takes great risks. Republicans usually have only two paths: loyalty to the president or outright defiance.
Mr James has barely declared his independence from Mr Trump. His criticism of the President’s handling of the unrest over the assassination of George Floyd has been mild. But his recent public appearances have spoken volumes. When Mr. Trump visited the central Michigan city of Freeland in September, Mr. James spoke to the thousands who attended the rally. But his speech came two hours before Mr. Trump’s arrival, and by then Mr. James was gone. Mr. James did not appear at the President’s rally in West Michigan on Saturday.
Recent polls show that there are still a large number of undecided voters, and while they are rather democratic, pollster Richard Czuba says Mr Peters did not seal the deal.
“One of the things that we have noticed especially among young black voters under 40 is that there is still a sizeable, undecided part,” said Czuba, founder of the Glengariff Group polling agency, who polled Mr Peters in early October took place by a five point lead. “These are the people Gary Peters has to bring in and he hasn’t got there yet.”
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