DETROIT, Mich. — Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) was about to make her stump speech to a small crowd at an East Detroit park last week, asking for their vote in her bid to ascend to the Senate this fall.
Several Black women attending the event were more excited to talk about another female politician, however — Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This is just new. This is change. This is women in charge,” said a beaming Toya Mason, 52, of the sudden switch from Joe Biden to Harris at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket in July. “This is really phenomenal. It’s a blessing.”
Mason hasn’t decided how she’ll vote in the Michigan Senate contest, one of at least seven Democrats must win if they have any hope of keeping the majority in the upper chamber. But she is newly excited about the first Black woman to top a presidential ticket and Democrats hope that afterglow will boost down-ballot candidates like Slotkin, who was endorsed at the rally by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) after the Democratic House member defeated an underfunded challenger in her primary earlier this month.
As Democrats begin their convention in Chicago on Monday, a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll showed Harris with a slight national lead over Donald Trump and a much larger share of Democrats said they were satisfied with their choices in the presidential race. Slotkin will attend the convention this week, unlike at least three vulnerable Senate Democrats — from Montana, Ohio and Nevada — who will skip the proceedings.
At the rally here, Slotkin, a third-term congresswoman — who faces former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) in the fall — did something Harris has so far not leaned into: She talked about her gender and the history of female politicians winning in the Wolverine State.
Slotkin praised Whitmer for blazing a path for women in Michigan in 2018 when Democrats nominated a woman to run for every statewide office — governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and Senate. Those women went on to sweep their races, despite lingering fears among the political establishment after Hillary Clinton’s surprise 2016 loss that female politicians might not be able to appeal in the Midwestern state.
“And so now when everyone wants to know, the whole world wants to know, can Kamala Harris win? They come to Michigan to understand that we can do it,” Slotkin said to cheers.
Voters at the rally ate it up.
“Men have run this country and look where we’re at,” said Sandra Doucet, 66, who did a little happy dance when asked how she felt about Harris being on the top of the ticket. “Women, we run our homes, our jobs, our children. We’re very versatile. We can do it all.”
Harris rocketing to the top of the ticket has dramatically shaken up the race for Senate Democrats, who are seeking to hold onto their narrow 51-49 majority in the chamber as they face a daunting electoral map that has them playing defense in 23 states — many of them red or purple. Recent polls have shown Harris reversing Biden’s flagging numbers in Midwest states core to Democrats’ path to victory, including Michigan, which is translating down-ticket. Since Biden dropped out of the race, two recent polls have shown Slotkin with a three percentage point lead over Rogers, while Harris opened up a four percentage point lead over Trump in an August NYT/Siena poll.
“You don’t want to stand in front of the Harris train and [Slotkin’s] definitely got her ticket and is riding the train,” said Democratic political consultant Greg Bowens, who helped run Slotkin’s primary opponent’s unsuccessful campaign.
Six weeks ago, Slotkin, who avoided being seen with Biden when he visited the state, feared Biden was going to lose her swing state over a turnout problem on the left, she said in an interview.
“She’s completely changed the air in the room,” Slotkin said a week after appearing with Harris in Detroit in front of a roaring crowd of thousands of people. “Completely.”
While Slotkin handily beat actor and Democrat Hill Harper, who is Black, in the August primary, he won in the city of Detroit, where his message of becoming the first Black senator to represent Michigan seemed to especially resonate.
Several voters who attended the Whitmer-Slotkin rally on Wednesday said they didn’t know much about Slotkin, demonstrating the challenge she faces of introducing herself to a diverse state of 10 million people where she and her opponent, Rogers, are not widely well known. They are competing to replace Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who is the state’s first female senator and who is retiring.
In 2018, Slotkin won the 8th Congressional District that Rogers had represented years earlier, and has run in tight elections ever since, showing a deftness in winning over moderate swing voters with her national security background and moderate persona. Slotkin has opened up a wide fundraising advantage over Rogers, bringing in more than $6 million in the last quarter compared to his $2 million, which has allowed her to flood the airwaves with positive biographical ads about herself.
Her opponent has sought to tie her tightly to the Biden administration. At an event with Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on the other side of the state on the same day, Rogers talked about the rising price of a “grand slam” breakfast at Denny’s because of the “Biden-Harris-Slotkin regime” and said his opponent was far too liberal for Michigan. On TV, Republicans have hit Slotkin on inflation and border policy, and for voting for the covid relief bill that sent stimulus checks to Americans, including some people in jail. (Stimulus checks in an earlier covid relief bill under Trump also made it to prisoners.)
Slotkin said her national security background — she was a CIA agent and later worked in the Defense Department under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, focusing on the Middle East — inoculate her somewhat from GOP attacks that she is too liberal.
“My background maybe runs counter to type with what their stereotype of a Democrat is,” Slotkin said. “It’s hard to say that the CIA officer is too woke. You know what I mean?”
But that background could pose some challenges among some in Michigan who oppose Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza. Dearborn is home to the highest concentration of Muslims in the United States, and more than 100,000 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the presidential primary as a way to pressure Biden over his support for Israel. The uncommitted movement did not organize around the Senate primary, and Slotkin noted she won the Dearborn area in the primary.
“Did you look at the numbers? We won it with 61 percent of the vote so you tell me,” Slotkin said, when asked if she had a lack of support in that community. “We have a very vocal, hurting population in Dearborn, but it’s not as simple as it’s sometimes made out to be.”
Slotkin, who is Jewish, has carefully threaded the needle on the war, sometimes voting for legislation favored by pro-Israel factions, including a bill that would have sanctioned the International Criminal Court for pursuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She voted against legislation that would have barred the State Department from citing Gaza’s casualty numbers, however, and faced attacks from Rogers and other Republicans for not criticizing her fellow Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib over attending an anti-Israel conference in Detroit.
Layla Elabed, one of the co-founders of the uncommitted movement, said Slotkin had not done enough outreach to win trust in the Muslim and antiwar communities since running for Senate, and that Democrats need to embrace a policy change in the Middle East. But she thinks that Harris moving to the top of the ticket has improved Democrats’ chances in Michigan, given she is not as associated with the conflict as Biden.
“I think it has opened up a very slight window,” said Elabad, who briefly met with Harris when she visited the state this month. “We have seen Vice President Harris a little more empathetic and sympathetic … towards the plight of Palestinians.”
Michigan Republicans were able to get a quality candidate through their primary after Trump endorsed Rogers, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, despite Rogers’s previous criticism of Trump over how he handled the Russia investigation and for denying his 2020 election loss. Rogers’s challenge is formidable though: No Republican has won a Senate seat in Michigan since 1994.
“If Republicans can win in the state, then they have a candidate who’s capable of doing that,” said Matt Grossman, a professor of political science at Michigan State University. “Rogers doesn’t come across as an extreme candidate or a particularly Trumpy candidate.”
Slotkin has slammed Rogers for past votes curtailing abortion and for leaving Michigan after he retired from the House to relocate to Florida.
Rogers also had to campaign in a tough primary with a base that’s changed a lot since he retired, before Trump’s presidential victory. At the Vance event this month, he touted his law enforcement record in front of the Republican crowd by saying he was an FBI agent back when it was the “good FBI.”
“Things have changed,” he added, a reference to many base voters’ suspicions of the agency after it investigated links between Trump’s campaign to Russia in 2016.
In a July rally in Grand Rapids, Trump said Rogers faces an “easy race.”
“You’re running against somebody that’s such a bad senator,” Trump said of Slotkin, a member of the House. “I was there for four years plus. I don’t even remember meeting that particular person. This is not a senator for Michigan.”