Defense is crucial to winning in virtually any team sport. The same is true for politics, and it’s a lesson Democrats may learn the hard way in a Michigan Senate race that, until recently, seemed like an easy hold for Team Blue.

The Wolverine State has voted Republican in a Senate race only once over the last half-century, even as Michigan became a premier presidential battleground and the governorship has toggled between the parties for decades. All in a state characterized by a sharp demographic divide between heavily Democratic urban hubs, rapidly shifting suburban areas, and solidly Republican rural regions.

With Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) set to retire at the end of this Congress after 12 years in the Senate, Democrats seemed to have a deep bench from which to choose his replacement. The Aug. 4 Democratic Senate primary winner will face GOP nominee-in-waiting Mike Rogers, a House member who represented a Lansing-area district from 2001 to 2015.

More here

Tagged: Elections BACK TO HOMEPAGE