MARQUETTE, Mich. — 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.
From left: Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, and former public health official Abdul el Sayed during a debate between the Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidates in Mackinac Island, Michigan on May 28. (Photos by Danielle James/The Flint Journal via AP)
