Great to have you along with us this day.

The primary in the Democratic U.S.

Senate race is heating up new polling data.

So sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Bellwether Public Relations, a full service strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com.

And now, this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Welcome in to Studio C on Off the record.

The end is in sight, right?

Not soon enough.

Polls.

The U.S.

Senate race.

Simon, we have three polls that are out.

The Emerson poll, 15 point lead for doctor El-Sayed.

The tavern poll, ten points.

Steve Mitchell at 14.

What's going on?

People are reading into this what they like.

You know, these tavern research polls are really good, obviously, for Abdul El-Sayed.

But, you know, when you look at the the Mitchell polls, it shows that Haley Stevens in the general election is far outperforming her primary rival here and that, Abdul Al-Sayed, I believe he's losing by ten points against Mike Rogers in the general election.

And that is something that I think Democrats are a little bit skittish about.

Well, in the devil's in the details with some of these polls, I mean, with the tavern poll for instance, the predominance of the predominance.

But a huge bulk of people polled were white, college educated women, which we already kind of had an understanding were individuals who would be going for outside.

Anyways.

I'm more interested in these.

It really seems like the X factor here is like the low propensity voters.

Who's going to turn out what is going to actually get people to the polls here, and how much is that?

You know, Al-Sayed's really relying on a base of voters beyond the, you know, white, college educated, but younger folks.

Are those people going to get to the polls who knows if this is yet another instance of we have all this polling, we have all this momentum, and people think something's in the bag.

And then election night happens.

Very astute.

Could 18 to 29 year olds can find something else to do besides vote, can't they?

There's a lot of things out there, but this is also an election where we're seeing, you know, a ton of young people do turn out and support Al-Sayed, at least when we're seeing, you know, his his on the ground campaigning again, remains to be seen.

If we're actually going to see those people get to those polls on Election Day, we should say Michigan's made it easier to vote, though, too.

I mean, same day registration.

Yeah.

Right.

And we saw that, lines at the University of Michigan campus, a couple of years ago.

So, I mean, it could be an interesting Tuesday, depending on what the youth vote decides to do.

Yeah, but it's August 4th.

It's not November.

Yeah.

No, there's nobody on this campus right now.

I just checked outside and and and so they're not going to be lining up like they were in the November general election two years ago.

And and they will this November.

But you cannot.

We know who the candidate is.

Yeah.

You can't you can't win a statewide primary on Ingham and in Washtenaw and Kalamazoo counties.

And you certainly can't win a general election that way.

So is is Abdul's energy getting into the suburbs?

Is it is it getting is it cutting into her natural lead with older black voters?

That is going to be the key.

You know you know, to watch in metro Detroit.

He also does he does he win Kent County if he can win Kent County you can typically kind of squeak one out and win in other areas.

But county in her in Oakland County, you know, trying to sort of, you know, not have a blowout in Macomb, or down river, other types of of of of, battleground areas of the, of the state where there also are some battleground primaries going on.

That's going to be really the kind of the real test here.

I think this is like to zoom out a little bit.

I think this is why the polling is a little bit dicey right now.

Is that Abdul's gambit?

Is that the kind of voters that he's pursuing aren't going to be captured in polls?

Pollsters, when they're making these polls, they're trying to create a projection, an estimate of what the electorate is going to look like on election Day.

And sort of his gambit is going after these voters who don't normally turn out.

They're not going to be captured in that sample of likely voters.

So if he can, much like Trump did in 2024, capture those low preventative voters, bring them to the polls, then they're not going to be captured in these polling samples.

And so he's going to be doing better than expected and outperform.

But we better I mean, that's that's something if we saw a 15 point spread Tuesday night I mean that would just be shocking.

It would be Brexit essentially.

I don't know for sure what $60 million in outside spending against him at this point.

Of all the numbers floating around this week, here were the three numbers that caught my attention.

Okay, registered Democrats 41% declared themselves regular Democrats, progressive Democrats 32%.

Progressive socialist 18%.

Do the math.

Boys and girls 50% of the Democratic Party in Michigan eat what we call regular D's.

Is that non-significant or not?

I think it's incredibly significant, particularly in terms of what comes after the primary, the fact that you see this splintering of the electorate here, especially among Democrats, means that whoever wins this primary is going to have to have and hope for that kumbaya moment that they can sort of repair this schism that the party's undergoing right now and bring them together.

This is still a purple state.

Mike Rogers is a very effective candidate, and they're really going to need all these factions to come back together around their nominee if they want him to have a chance.

And I just I don't know how you do that, and I don't know who the grown ups at the table are who help to make that happen.

This week, Hillary Scholten came out and basically said that she's not sure that she would back.

Do I'll say it in the general after this.

The congresswoman from Kent County was the most crucial person to try to get a Democrat who's sitting in Gerald Ford seat and then just getting that person on board of you is going to be, you know, huge.

This this primary has been vitriolic and it's gotten more so over the final.

The final few days.

And so who plays that sort of person who gets everyone back together?

I don't know, I don't know.

Like the governor Gretchen Whitmer has come in and, you know, thrown her hat in for Stevens as.

well.

Like all the all the sort of.

Right, Gary Peters I mean, anyone that you can see who's come in and said, let's kind of like cool things down, let's get on the same page.

Who plays that role?

Well, wait a second.

If you want to cool things down, do you take up sides because they just antagonistic to the other side?

You said, what's the governor doing?

I know she said he wasn't going to do this.

Take sides in a primary though, like that.

This is, I guess, where a little bit of my confusion comes from people being like, well, why?

You know, the why are people supporting this or that?

Like you're going to always have this, this vitriolic kind of primary.

The real question is like, you know, Zoe was talking about how is, for instance, if, Al-Sayed does win on Tuesday?

Yeah, he's thrown a lot of flak towards, you know, the establishment, quote unquote Democrats.

And we're going to need to see him be able to thread that needle and bring those people back on board.

Now, you know, Haley Stevens is running ads right now that is accusing him of calling Whitmer something like, Michelle Obama uninspired and Whitmer bought and paid for.

I know that those ads are making inroads into voters.

I've heard it from people who I know that live down in Oakland County.

You know, is he going to be able to come back from this, this level of advertising that we've seen against him and the fact that he's he's being painted as not necessarily being able to unite a coalition of Democrats.

The problem of the Democratic Party leadership right now is they are not looking at the issues that are inflaming people.

They are not in tune with it.

Abdul has tapped into this.

He has spent so many weeks talking about APAC is buying this election for Haley Stevens.

And then on Monday, Haley Stevens tries to come out in that debate against and say, I'm going to railing against DTE energy.

And he said, yeah, but you took $40,000 of their money.

And she sits there and denies it.

Which which was a lie.

It's been factcheck.

She's taken money for years from the, from DTE.

She even transferred.

Took the money.

She put it into her contract.

She can then transfer unlawfully.

I mean, she didn't have to transfer that money.

She could have left it in there.

She thought she needed to.

She could have $2,500 checks.

She could have given it back if she thought it was going to be a vulnerability.

But DTE is so, heated right now among the electorate over the, the affordability of power rates over their reliability after every time the wind blows in the state and after doing these big deals with with data companies, data center developers and big tech and so the Democrats are looking at they're seeing the images of Gretchen Whitmer, you know, smiling with Sam Altman and and hitching or the horse of the of Democrats to, these data centers.

You see this up and down the ballot, a former state rob running for state Senate, his term kind of throwing this term.

Democrats around.

And I mean, this is part of this war.

It's really, really hitting people hard right now.

And Abdul is tapping into that.

The rest of the establishment has no, response to this other than what we saw with Haley just kind of flailing on the stage tonight.

And, you know, I think that this moment is really remarkable, this moment in politics because of the centrality of the influence of money in politics, in campaign finance.

This issue has not broken through in previous elections, at least in my relatively short career covering politics.

I've never seen it have this much prominence.

And so when you move into the general election, I think this is where Democratic operatives are having some hand-wringing, because these are going to be 200 plus million dollar U.S.

Senate race.

And so as a result, they are going to be relying on that outside money.

There is a whole cavalcade of outside money, super PACs, dark money groups.

They're going to pour in for these Senate candidates.

And Democrats say, if we swear this off, I don't know if we have enough gas in the tank to make it through November.

And you mentioned getting money out of politics.

I would be remiss to not mention that there is going to be a ballot initiative this year on the November ballot to, stop utilities from donating to political causes.

And, I think it's something like state contractors making over $250,000.

Now, that is a, it's it's something that it's actually supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

We saw, Matt Hall, the House speaker, put his weight behind that.

We've seen Perry Johnson come out in favor of that.

We've obviously seen, Abdul Al-Sayed talking about getting money out of politics in his campaign.

You know, I think back to when we had abortion on the ballot.

And what a driving factor that was for getting Democrats to the polls.

I'm curious how much of an X factor this is going to have for people, because it's something that is so universally accepted on both sides.

Unfortunately, I don't think it.

Approaches the abortion fever pitch, but you'd rather have it, you know, and.

In it, I think it overall shows what we're talking about is that voters are fed up and frustrated with certain institutions.

Right.

And this is also what Abdul has been able to key into, is that corporations and institutions that are supposed to work for you just simply aren't anymore.

So whose job is it to put Humpty Dumpty back together again?

I. Don't think anybody, at least in the Democratic Party leadership, is prepared to do that.

Why not?

Well, if who?

I mean.

Some county commissioner up north.

With all due respect, up north.

No, I think I would say there's only two.

Yes.

And it's the nominee, the Democratic nominee for U.S.

Senate and the person who loses to them.

And if you don't have those two together, you know, holding hands.

With somebody has to go to the two of them and say, here's what you have to.

Do.

And they've said in theory that they would go back to support one another should they lose the nomination.

But it's all about whether or not that actually happens.

To Simon's point, like their supporters actually decide to do that because it's one thing to see it happen.

It's another.

I mean, you read some of these vitriolic posts about where people are at, about the candidates, and it's really hard to see some people suddenly just going, oh, okay.

Now voting blue.

Yeah.

No, I mean, even the other night we had the Haley Stevens come out on Twitter, basically trying to turn the race into what she had a post basically accused of.

Oh, so you like, hate Jewish people?

Basically is what it boils down to.

And it's like that blaming Jews.

And it was like, okay, now we're really just getting down to like the lowest of the low of these kinds of attacks.

And, you know, I'm just happy it's going to be Tuesday and before this year.

I mean, the Jewish Democrats in Oakland County essentially pull their money on August 5th.

And and Abdul is basically on his own, relying on the, the Bernie Sanders revolutionaries, essentially to get to get to the gate.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the big boon for Michigan Democrats statewide over the past two decades is that they've had sometimes competitive but relatively cordial primaries where everyone was able to come together afterwards.

This is now a street fight.

So if you're Mike Rogers and watching all this, what are you thinking, eating popcorn?

Is he with butter or without you?

Look at look at what he's been able.

The guide glide path he's had over the past few months.

I mean, this is setting up beautifully for him to be able to sort of I mean, I think the biggest thing for him to now figure out is the relationship with Trump moving forward.

Right?

We had polling numbers come out this week that show, the president's approval ratings are now at the lowest levels that they have been.

What does that relationship with Trump look like?

And what does campaigning look like?

You know, John James is sort of figured out what his relationship with Trump is going to look like.

I think for Mike Rogers, it's going to be a little bit different.

So does he do the pivot?

I think he's got to do a pivot to the general.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And figuring out how to how to keep the base excited, enthused.

I mean, we all saw what happened in 24, right?

Where people just simply did not vote for Mike Rogers, who voted for this president.

And so the Democratic commercial will be, ladies and gentlemen, Mike Rogers speaks out of both sides of his mouth.

Is that the kind of guy you want?

Speaking in the US Senate one day he's for Donald Trump.

The next day, all of a sudden, when it's politically not advantageous, he switched horses.

Speaking of horses, Chad.

Well, the other thing is there, the Democrats still have the receipts, and the receipts are your gas bill and your grocery bill.

I mean, there were Republicans in the state, state representative.

Madman.

May 1st, putting out a tweet saying predicting, hey, in three months gas, Trump will have gas down to 199.

Well guess what, it's for $30 a gallon.

This weekend on, three months later, this is it is going to haunt Republicans from Mike Rogers down to county commissioners.

They are not going to not.

To mention the bombs going.

Off.

They're not going to be able to hide from this, that mention that there's that the war is still going on in Iran with Iran.

And it's not there's no no end in sight.

There's essentially a quagmire in the Strait of Hormuz and, and, and people's price of, of their, of of living every day is still much higher than it even was when Joe Biden was, dealing with, with, record inflation.

Let's just remember, as we go into the weekend before the election, that Jim Blanchard was going to beat John Engler.

Remember that story?

And what happened, boys and girls, John Engler beat Jim Blanchard.

So I'm not saying okay, just be careful.

Anything can happen and we will.

There's still a lot of folks who are going to turn out on Tuesday.

And already have.

We don't know how Tuesday it turns out, but we also have, you know, if Abdul Al-Sayed is the nominee.

We have not seen how how ugly this could get about his religion, and his his skin color and and the undertone of that of of that kind of a race in the fall, is yet to come, but it will come.

I mean, we we're already kind of starting to see that, though, in statements out of the state Republican Party who insist on calling him by his full legal name, Abdul Rahman, as if like, that's something to be scared of.

I mean, I actually they issued a statement not too long ago that said Abdul Rahman, you know, whatever his middle name is, I can't remember now.

Al-Sayed Like terrorist sympathizer.

We're getting back to like 9/11 levels of we should maybe even expect to see that level of Islamophobia scare tactic because really, I mean, we saw it in the New York City mayoral election, and nobody stops comparing this U.S.

Senate election to that.

Why should we be surprised if that's also going to infiltrate here as well?

Well, this U.S.

Senate race has Trump something that's been traditional in our state, which is the major focus in the primary has always been the governor's race, because that's the one that's closest to all of us.

So what's going on there?

Yeah, I mean, I think.

there's a governor's race in all of this, too.

I mean, on the Democratic side, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is essentially the nominee apparent at this point.

She's dozens of points ahead of Chris Swanson in all polling that we've seen.

But I think the Republican race is a little bit more interesting.

Perry Johnson spent $30 million of his own money, and that's put him within, at least according to Emerson, polling eight points of John James, which is technically within the margin of error.

How could wait a minute if the margin of error in that pool was 3.7?

I flunked math.

It's 3.7 for the Senate race.

5.2, I believe for the governor.

I'll go 5.2, alright.

5.2.

Simon is not eight.

Yeah, well, it's 5.2 in either direction, so both numbers can go in either direction, 5.2 points.

And so it creates a little bit of overlap.

It's slim.

And it means that John James has a pretty high probability of winning this thing.

But Perry Johnson he feels confident.

I was at the, Trump tailgate that he hosted on Monday, which Trump's campaign called him a Never Trumper on the news that he's hosting this and Ed John.

And he invited John James on stage to sort of coordinate him as his endorsed candidate.

And he's really confident, you know, he's going to these events and they're able to pack small dinners.

And so for him, this seems like a good signal that he's got some momentum.

Confident that he sent out a questionnaire auditioning lieutenant governor candidates.

That's the first I'm saying that he's already bought time for post primary advertisements.

But he's already got his motel or hotel for election night.

Too many TV ads.

Have you seen from John James this campaign?

You know, how many fingers do you have?

Yeah, it's close to zero.

I mean.

The superPAC supporting him, though, has spent several million.

The superPAC has a little bit.

But John James, they're not, but they're not.

It's not heavy are in in like right now compared to Perry.

They're not going to add to ad I mean they are not sweating over there.

And and they've they're pretty confident that Perry Johnson is going to flame out here.

And he will have spent get the vice level money, to lose a primary.

But it'll be curious to see if that, you know, don't have to spend.

I'm good to go attitude continues.

We've seen that before from John James who has, you know, ditched speaking to the media wouldn't do circuits.

You know lost then statewide twice already.

So you know it'll be interesting to see whether or not he changes up his general election game or if he thinks he has it so far in the bag with going up against the potential Secretary Benson matchup that he continues with his status quo.

I think Jordan brings up an important point, which is, yeah, his campaign has been relatively guarded up to this point.

They're not really they're not highly visible and they're not.

Yes.

But at the same time, he's he's feels free to go up on stage and then say that Donald Trump won the 2020 election in Michigan as he's staring down a potential general election matchup against the state's chief elections officer.

So he's really sort of almost goading her to say, let's enter your wheelhouse and sort of talk on these issues that, you know, are sort of what you've banked your entire candidacy on, more or less.

And just say Trump won.

He said.

Trump won Michigan three times, which is effectively almost a great ad for Secretary Johnson if she goes to run saying that this man who John James has gone on the record saying that Joe Biden did win Michigan, he's gone back and forth.

He's gone back and forth.

And yeah, you want to talk about speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

You know, that's something that again, we go back to the Trump effect.

And how close do you have to be to court those more like MAGA Republicans.

Okay.

But how much is the rest of the state repulsed by that?

Embracement.

And so do you actually have the numbers to carry you over the finish line?

John James is betting that if he goes all in on Trump, he's going to be able to.

Or at least it's what it looks like at this period.

If he goes all in on Trump, he will win Michigan.

That remains to be seen because that has not worked for him in the past.

Do you find it interesting that the that the Rs have left basically Miss Benson run whatever she wanted to do this summer with no comments about her at all.

They have hardly put a glove on her.

I mean, and and it's it's.

It's a missed opportunity.

I mean, probably, but they're still beating each other up.

They're having their, you know, they're big now, I'm in a little donnybrook right now and so.

Well, can't they walk and chew gum at the same time?

Well, they also are mindful again that that they have major, you know, weaknesses with the price of gas and food and everything else.

And so, they don't want to trip over that wire quite yet.

And so they're, they're waiting to get this all worked out.

And I mean, also, it's important to note that voters have limited attention spans.

There's only so much political information you're going to get in a day.

And right now, the fire hose is the Democratic U.S.

Senate primary.

And so why even talk about the governor's race, when all you get to do instead is watch two Democratic candidates slug it out?

And at this point, it feels more than a fire hose.

It's a waterfall, for goodness sake.

Like it's just everywhere you look.

I mean, the other day I turned on my TV just to put on the news.

I think I saw 6 or 7.

Haley and, Al-Sayed ads like back to back to back to back to back.

Some of them the same ones twice in a row.

Yeah.

That's all people are getting right now, let alone just how, nationalized that race has become.

I mean, really, you look at it, and political operatives, campaign managers, the national media is really looking at this U.S.

Senate race as sort of dictating what the future of the Democratic Party is going to look like in the United States, as well.

Yeah, because we have for the Senate, the seventh Congressional District with William Lawrence, and then even in the 13th, with Donovan McKinney attempting to unseat Street, that order.

Yeah.

This is a test case for whether populist progressivism in a midterm election with a deeply unpopular president in the white House can actually take hold and have some staying power.

We haven't seen that before in American politics.

So did the.

Trump in this era.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Did the Trump visit move the needle?

No, I wouldn't say so.

No.

I mean when he said basically stay tuned.

Things are going to get better.

Which is what I'm saying.

And we were going to be out of this war in weeks and we were going to have lower gas prices and we were going to see I think at one point he said that he would he treated us better than our own parents.

If that's the case, I need better parents.

I would say, like.

He's got a massive laundry list of policy priorities right now.

Trump.

And I think the fact that he visited in general is, I think, a really optimistic sign for Democrats, because these rallies, they're not going after persuadable voters, the independents that really matter in Michigan elections.

He's shoring up the base.

They are concerned about the base.

Yeah.

If you talk if you talk to Matt Hall, I'm sure he's got internal numbers.

My guess is that says it's soft, it's swooshing.

It's now in fact, he has said we need to get that base out in order to keep control of the House.

This thing that Will Lawrence talked about the other day, the progressive congressional candidate in a three way Democratic primary in the Mid Michigan, where they're going out and targeting, low propensity Trump voters, people who've only voted in in presidential elections last three, trying to talk to them about an issue that gets them fired up and that is data centers.

And the same thing.

And.

And so this is this is something that I think even Republicans have not even thought about that, that there might be some of folks from their, their tribe that could be convinced to come over and vote, for the anti data center candidate, not the Democrat, the anti data center candy you're going to snatch.

This is where the Democrats we feel are going to try to message.

And that's why they're they're railing against.

That's why I said earlier Abdul has spent all of his time talking about APAC.

And then he finally kind of stepped on the issue at the debate on Monday.

What do you make, you know, pick your local boogeyman.

He already has all the voters that are antipathy, but there are a lot of untapped voters and they're low propensity there in the exurbs.

They're in places around Howell Township where there was going to be a data center.

There's a bunch of of Trump voters out there that, don't vote normally in midterms, but they could be persuaded to come out and vote for a candidate who's tell them they're going to get rid of the data centers or put a moratorium down.

This is, I think, the glimmer of daylight that these progressive candidates have and what they're shooting for.

I think you hit the nail on the head and that's that.

So much of Trump's magic in Michigan, the way he's able to win the state twice, is because he was able to sell voters, especially low propensity voters who aren't particularly ideological.

They're not particularly politically engaged, but they are very anti-establishment, and they're angry at the system that they feel isn't representing them.

And so I don't think because they're not that ideological, these voters, there might be some persuade ability there that they'd be willing to come out and say, hey, I'll go for it.

You know, this candidate, regardless of party, because they're anti-establishment enough.

They're willing to, you know, go against the system.

They voted for the Republican in Donald Trump.

He's been in office for six years now, and they haven't necessarily seen the kind of, you know, establishment shattering change that he's promised.

An establishment Dems don't buy it, though, right?

What their argument is, is that's not what's going to happen.

Well, we'll see how long you can stick your fingers in your ears and just keep walking on by.

I guess we'll find that out on Tuesday.

Quickly, The bridge is open.

Gordie Howe Bridge is now open.

He shoots, he scores!

It's eight years of construction.

14 years after Governor Rick Snyder signed this deal to bypass the legislature.

An unprecedented act by a governor, in, you know, a couple of decades of of work that stretches back, really to I mean, it started under Engler, but it has involved Blanchard when he was the, you know.

That's right.

And, I mean, this has been the Canadians have been pursuing a new bridge essentially, since the maroon family owned bought the, the Ambassador Bridge, and bought out, Warren Buffett in 1978.

Is, is it's been a, you know, an epic battle across the aisle along the river.

And it finally happened even after some meddling by Donald Trump at the end.

So have you guys been across yet?

No, only I've only watched, Gretchen Whitmer and, Gary Peters take their joy rides over.

I went to the base of it on Friday, but, haven't I actually driven over it yet?

All right, I'm with you.

I'm waiting to ride my bike.

I know this could be fun.

You can go to walk and ride your bike on August 5th, the day after the primary.

It's a good way to shake.

Off.

The election.

Energy.

Just don't jump off.

Thank you all of you for this great program.

Thank you for tuning in, go and vote if you haven't already.

And next Friday, we'll tell you what you did and what you didn't do.

See you then.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Bellwether Public Relations, a full service strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com.

For more Off the Record, visit wkar.org.

Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of Off the Record.