Continuing on from last year. I spent the second week of December “on the road” visiting the Western states where Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers had canvassed last year. Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Wisconsin and finally Michigan, talking with volunteers and canvassers about their experience in 2023 and their expectations for 2024. Michigan was my last stop, being the only state of the 5 with an open Senate seat. At each stop, about the half of the time was devoted to listening to volunteers and the second half responding to their questions.
Michigan is just the opposite of Wisconsin, meaning that conventional wisdom is that we need to be more concerned about the senate race than the Electoral College. At least that was the conventional wisdom before i left for my Western excursion on Dec. 18th. By the time i got to Michigan, that conventional wisdom was in doubt. “The Cook Political Report (CPR) has shifted Michigan and Nevada toward the GOP amid President Biden’s weak polling numbers just under a year before the 2024 election.”
In Michigan, Biden may have an uphill battle with the state’s younger voters and its significant Arab American population as he faces division over the war in the Middle East, the CPR report notes.
So i arrived just as volunteers and organizers were digesting this news, many of whom had seen The Hill article online.
And that’s the thing about empowering the grassroots, sometimes you walk right into it!
But the reality is that the trio of Rust Belt states that Biden flipped in 2020 — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — have been trending red since then. If the GOP nominee captures those three in November, and the other states vote the same way as 2020, Republicans win back the White House. And that is just too terrifying to think about.
I’m not alone in that thought. But that’s why we are knocking on doors in Michigan!
Even though we got off to a slow start in June, Hope Springs from Field volunteers knocked on 380,144 suburban doors in Michigan last year. We registered 99 New Voters in the state, and re-registered 541 (for a total of 640 voters registered at their doors). It is sorta strange to compare the numbers for Michigan to that of Wisconsin, where we’ve been canvassing for 3 years. (It was our first year in Michigan.) Our Michigan numbers are higher, but not as high as they would be if you compared the two state’s populations. We collected 920 Constituent Service Requests here, and we found the CSRs to be extremely popular in the Midwestern states (Pennsylvania, as well).
The Michigan U.S. Senate seat is open since Debbie Stabenow choose not to run for re-election. But most of our canvassing activity was in the three “toss-up” Congressional Districts (MI-03, MI-07, MI-08), something that was proven effective in helping win those House races in 2022. In the final two months, we were able to knock doors in MI-10 as well, a R+3 seat currently held by John James, something that our Michigan volunteers expressed interest in doing.
The volunteers and organizers i talked to in Michigan told me they wanted to start earlier: “We shouldn’t be canvassing in Wisconsin and not in Michigan,” one organizer said. We had 68 female and 7 male Michigan volunteers make trips (most repeatedly) into Ohio for GOTV in the Fall and many that did came out for my visit in their area. Given that wealth of experience and the fact that Michigan had already passed the Reproductive Freedom for All amendment in 2022 meant that we didn’t talk about Reproductive Healthcare as much as in the other states, but several volunteers reminded me that “abortion is still on the ballot” in the presidential and senate races. “The National Abortion Ban remains a threat.”
But the thing that our Michigan volunteers grasped (apparently) better than the other 4 state was my argument that we needed to try to replicate the organizing effort of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. When i talk about foregoing field organizing in 2020, volunteers remembered that vividly. We had volunteers who remembered we had used heated vests in Ohio, especially in the Toledo and Cleveland suburban areas (Michigan volunteers were going to the Toledo metro areas last Fall). “That might be especially useful given our early (presidential) primary,” one volunteer noted. It was the only observation i wished i had heard earlier in the week.
But the one thing that really stuck out to me that was unique to our Michigan discussion was the concerns voiced about Trump’s MAGA supporters. We didn’t knock on MAGA doors (VAN excluded those in its model) but one of our volunteers mentioned that it was why he never talked to the GOP canvassers he would see out knocking on doors at the same time. As i write this, i can remember the same concerns in Wisconsin the first year that we canvassed there, and maybe that is just a “first year” problem.
This is where the incessant early polling and the Big Lie can demoralize Democrats. People don’t remember that we didn’t knock on doors in 2020 (because of Covid) but they do see the polls that tell them Trump is leading Biden in the state. This is paired with the Michigan GOP’s claims that “Trump surged in rural and older industrial areas” — despite the fact that GOP vote growth (percentage wise) in Michigan was exceeded by that in Wisconsin. For some reason, it feels different in Michigan. The higher you go into the state, the greater the memories of the Michigan Militia and the storming of the (state) capitol seems to have an impact. Every state is different.
That’s why we are here. An open senate seat and a competitive presidential race makes Early Organizing and our super-compliance efforts all the more important.
But we need your help. Like everyone else, we are asking for financial support for these vital efforts. If you are like me, you are inundated with requests. We don’t have any cute pets, or special treats, to offer up to encourage your support. Nor will we try to guilt you by telling you the threat is real, ongoing and getting more sophisticated. We are all getting tired of the incessant fund-raising.
If you are able to contribute to our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please do. We need your help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well (for those who would rather send us a check). Thank you for your support! This work depends on you!