In Michigan, Female Candidates Target a Key Trump Bloc: Union Voters

MONROE, Mich. — It’s not the smokestacks that mark this part of southeast Michigan as a labor stronghold, or even the boxy union halls.

To Michelle LaVoy, a city treasurer running for the state Legislature, it’s the way people say “union” as shorthand for “decent job.”

“My husband works at Yanfeng,” Carolina Ricci, perched outside her front door, told LaVoy, referring to a nearby auto parts plant. “He’s got the union, he’s a steward. But we still struggle.”

LaVoy, straight-laced in affect and business casual in dress, doesn’t present as a working-class hero. But she is trying, hard, and her pitch has a distinctly Norma Rae vibe.

“We should be getting our fair share,” LaVoy told Ricci, echoing a refrain that many Americans are using this election year. She wants more money for roads. More money for unions. More money in workers’ paychecks.

Monroe, about 45 minutes south of Detroit, was ground zero for the political meteorite that struck Michigan in 2016: After twice backing Barack Obama, the county went for President Donald Trump by more than 20 points — netting him a lead of 16,000 votes that was equivalent to 1-1/2 times his margin of victory statewide.

The area proved to be the leading edge of a historic labor defection from Democrats that played out across Michigan and several other Midwestern states where unions have long enjoyed outsize influence. Just over one out of every two voters from union households supported Hillary Clinton in Michigan, down from nearly three out of four who backed the Democratic candidate for governor (who lost as well) in 2014.

LaVoy and other Michigan Democrats, like the party’s nominee for governor, Gretchen Whitmer, are determined to recapture union voters in 2018, and in so doing show national Democrats how to retake the state’s critical electoral votes in 2020. For unions, the fall election provides a test of political strength after years of decline, and of the power of economic issues to drive their members’ votes.

Union leaders say Clinton was a flawed champion in part because voters viewed her as a symbol of the status quo, while Trump exploited her vulnerabilities by swiping their economic message. “He came in and seduced a lot of people,” said Ron Bieber, president of the state’s labor federation.

Michigan Democrats are now on the offensive on the economy, proposing hundreds of millions in spending on infrastructure: “Fix the damn roads!” thunders Whitmer. They rail against new taxes on pensions and vow to stand up to scofflaw corporations. They insist, à la Trump, that the state can once again produce good blue-collar jobs.

Trump also exploited cultural divisions against Clinton, and Michigan Democrats are mindful of that. LaVoy introduces herself as a “Monroe Democrat,” by which she means a god-fearing, gun-wielding moderate who distrusts trade deals and companies that ship jobs overseas.

Even before many Monroe Democrats abandoned Clinton — be it over policy, trust, gender or other reasons — they had a conflicted relationship with Obama, who carried the county by a single point in 2012. While Obama is largely credited in the Midwest for saving the auto industry, Monroe’s Ford plant shut down just before his presidency and the county didn’t fully share in the industry’s recovery. Privately, some Democrats in the area also hinted at Obama’s race as a factor in their disillusionment.

As for Republicans, they argue that Democrats are alienating culturally conservative voters as the party drifts leftward in the Trump era — and that Whitmer and others will pay a price.

“I don’t think the average person knows how liberal Gretchen is,” said Randy Richardville,a former Republican Senate majority leader from Monroe, who did battle with Whitmer during her days in the Legislature. “ I don’t think it will be a cakewalk for her at all.”

Still, these Monroe voters say they are amenable to politicians who appreciate the union way of life and genuinely seem to want to protect it.

“I’m union all the way,” said Darryl Sims, a United Automobile Workers member from Monroe County who retired last year as a forklift driver at Detroit Diesel. “I’m very appreciative when I walk out every month and my pension is in the mail.

Sims has a favorable view of Trump, citing the president’s approach to trade and “his philosophy that we should take care of our own people.” His wife, Michele, a teacher, believes the president has done a good job as well.

But they are quick to distinguish between Trump and Michigan Republicans like the outgoing governor, Rick Snyder, whom they criticize for deciding to tax their pensions and enacting right-to-work legislation, allowing workers to benefit from unions without paying dues or fees.

“They swore up and down they wouldn’t do it,” Darryl Sims said. A voter outreach project last fall by the Service Employees International Union, which canvassed thousands of pro-union white working class voters in Michigan and Wisconsin, showed that voters like Sims are very much in play. The top issues, even among many who vote Republican, were good-paying jobs and expanded access to health care.

Unions in the state are trying to seize this opportunity by increasing field workers, volunteers and campaign spending — in some cases, even at greater levels than during the last presidential race.

“In 2016 I think I had two people working with me on politics,” said Lisa Canada, the political and legislative director for the state carpenters union, referring to paid staffers. “We have 20 this year.”

There is something different about the Democratic candidates and message aimed at union voters this time around. Call it populism with a female face.

All four Democratic nominees for statewide office are women, as are three of the party’s five nominees in competitive congressional races, and they are showing a knack for trying to increase the return on the labor investment in their races. Many of the candidates lighten their populist overtures with an empathy that often evades Trump — and, some Democrats say, evaded Clinton, too.

When LaVoy first introduced herself to Daniel Moran, a Trump-supporting union member, he told her to “Get out.” But 30 minutes later they were still talking about his son and the job he said he recently lost. The conversation ended with a hug.

“Did I come across harder than anyone you talked to today?” Moran asked.

“Initially you were a little scary,” LaVoy confessed.

For her part, Whitmer, highlights her role as a leader on the 2013 legislation expanding Medicaid that brought health care coverage to more than 600,000 state residents. She supports repealing the state’s right-to-work law, and spearheaded opposition to it as Senate minority leader.

She has discussed spending billions on infrastructure and pointedly contrasts her proposals — which draw inspiration from the epic Mackinac suspension bridge — with the president’s. “At a time when some people want to build walls,” she says in her Grand Rapids lilt, “we in Michigan are going to get back to building bridges.” On Labor Day, Whitmer circulated energetically through Detroit’s holiday cookouts, telling voters that November represented a “once in a generation opportunity” because the state had not “had a pro-labor governor and a good economy in 25 years.”

“In the last election some of these people were just frustrated with the whole world, and voted for the person that looked least familiar,” Whitmer said in an interview.

Clinton’s connection to her husband’s New Democrat administration may have fed a certain mistrust, but many Clinton skeptics appear willing to back other female candidates.

“We got a lot of pushback on Hillary,” said Bill Black, the political and legislative director for the Teamsters union in Michigan, which saw more than 40 percent of its members vote for Trump, according to internal polling. “We’re not seeing that with Gretchen.”

Recent public polls have shown Whitmer with double-digit leads over her Republican opponent, Attorney General Bill Schuette. She also led Schuette by 22 points among union households in an early September poll commissioned by the Detroit News.

“I think she’s resonated because she’s invited labor to the table,” said Jon Brown, a construction worker and member of a local laborer’s union, citing Whitmer’s infrastructure plan.

Kevin Hertel, a Democratic state representative leading the party’s campaign to retake the chamber, said that having credible female candidates dwell on practical economic concerns has the advantage of appealing to two types of swing voters: those in affluent areas like Oakland County and western Wayne County, where women are in open revolt against the president. And those in blue-collar areas like Monroe, one of the party’s top takeover targets.

Labor leaders, like Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, say that a message focused on jobs, wages and health care has a shot at motivating voters, including many union members, who didn’t feel inspired to turn out for the last election.

“The most urgent problems in Michigan in working-class communities — whether white, black or brown — felt completely ignored in 2016,” Henry said. “It resulted in 10,000 votes left on the table just in Detroit.”

Michigan Republicans appear to sense that they’re losing some economic arguments, even though the state’s unemployment rate is low by historical standards. Earlier this month the Republican-controlled Legislature passed bills phasing in a $12-per-hour minimum wage and requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, two labor priorities that would otherwise have appeared on the ballot this fall.

Republican leaders conceded that they did so because laws are easier to change if legislators enact them. “The Senate adopted the policy to preserve the ability for this Legislature and future legislatures to amend the statute,” the state Senate majority leader, Arlan Meekhof, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

“They are going to come back and gut it,” predicted Hertel, adding that Democrats plan to make an issue out of such maneuvering. “I think voters are extremely intelligent. They can see a political game for what it is.”

LaVoy’s district is in many respects a case study of the Trump phenomenon. In 2012, her husband, Bill, also a Democrat, won the seat by more than 20 points with backing from labor. He was re-elected by a similar margin.

By 2016, he was so confident of retaining the seat that he spent weeks campaigning for Democrats in other districts. It was only when Obama held a rally in Ann Arbor the day before the election that he had a sinking feeling.

“It hit me,” Bill LaVoy said. “Why is the president here? Shouldn’t he be in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio? Anywhere but Michigan.” He briefly thought about turning around and knocking on 100 doors, but discarded the idea. “If I’m in trouble, I’m going to be in big trouble,” he concluded.

He turned out to be in big trouble. His opponent, Joseph Bellino, rode the Trump wave to a comfortable 8-point win. After the election, LaVoy thought back to earlier in the year, when union voters would periodically ask what he thought of Trump. “I said, ‘You know, I don’t even know. I want you to vote for me,'” he recalled. “But they loved him.” (LaVoy is attempting his comeback in a state Senate race.)

In defending the seat this year, Bellino enjoys some of the same advantages that helped Trump. He is a well-known local businessman who many voters see as independent from the GOP. Jacob Goins, a manager at a pizzeria, told Michelle LaVoy he voted for Bellino after chatting him up at the wine and liquor store that Bellino and his wife have owned for years. (“My blood kind of runs cold when I hear that,” admitted Michelle LaVoy, bemoaning her opponent’s prom king-like appeal.) Bellino also has a certain blunt-spoken authenticity.

At a recent town-hall meeting on the opioid epidemic, which has hit Monroe County like a modern-day plague, Bellino talked openly about his own struggle with addiction. “I was lucky to be a cocaine addict,” he said. “The healing in my brain happened a little easier.”

In a possible foreshadowing of a strategy that Democrats may deploy in 2020, the unions targeting Bellino hope to dampen his appeal by making him answer for the Republicans’ agenda.

Exhibit A is the controversial repeal of the state’s prevailing wage law, which mandated that contractors pay union-level wages and benefits to construction workers on state projects. Republicans undid the law earlier this year despite intense lobbying from labor.

Bellino voted against the repeal, but a text message from one of his Republican colleagues indicated that he had offered to support it until the last minute. The colleague said Bellino only changed his position after party leaders secured enough votes to pass the repeal and wanted him to cover his political flank at home. The carpenters union promptly withdrew an earlier endorsement. It has taken to circulating flyers of Bellino with a Pinocchio schnoz.

Bellino waves off the controversy. “I voted the way I told them I was going to,” he said.

But Michelle LaVoy is quick to invoke the un-endorsement, and the issue appears to have emotional currency in Monroe, where many voters make their living in the building and construction trades.

William Bentley, a millwright and union member who assembles and maintains mechanical equipment at a steel mill, said he considers himself a conservative — “my daughter’s name is Reagan, for Christ’s sake.” He voted for Trump, and says he is pleased that the president is “putting us back to work.”

But asked how he felt about Michigan Republicans, and Bentley became noticeably cool. He said that he liked the effort Snyder made to balance the budget, but took a dim view of right-to-work and the repeal of the prevailing wage law, both of which Republicans passed on the governor’s watch.

“Rick Snyder has done stuff against the unions,” Bentley said. “I’m no longer with you. Now you’re affecting my paycheck.”