Michigan Capitol | Susan J. Demas
With Republicans set to retake control of the Michigan House of Representatives, the Legislature’s lame duck session may or may not be active, but it will be potentially contentious.
Those were among the conclusions reached Thursday during the Michigan Chamber of Commerce’s virtual event, “Election Update and the Future of Michigan Politics,” which featured a panel of experts looking at the implications of the impending shifts in power at both the state and federal levels following Tuesday’s election.
Peter Ruddell, a political consultant and partner at the Honigman law firm, said incoming Republicans, who retook the House after flipping four Democratic seats on Tuesday, there isn’t much incentive to work with Democrats in the final weeks of their majority as they try to resolve pending issues like minimum wage and tipped credit.
“If I’m sitting in [Minority Leader] Matt Hall’s shoes, I’m not anxious to help [Democrats] solve these problems in the next 45 days. I’m willing to wait until my people hold the gavel and we’ve got a greater leverage point looking into next year in terms of legislation,” said Ruddell.
Hall was selected by Republicans on Thursday to be speaker during the next session starting in January.
“The people of Michigan elected a new House Republican majority to put our state back on the road to success,” Hall said in a statement. “Our focus will be on serving the people of our great state. Michiganders want safe neighborhoods, high-paying careers, effective schools, and secure elections. House Republicans are ready to get to work to make our state the best place to raise a family safely and affordably.”
Adrian Hemond, a Democratic consultant and CEO of Lansing-based Grassroots Midwest, was also on the panel and said he expected to see both parties see who will blink first on key issues.
“I do think there’s a little bit of a game of chicken going on that. Unfortunately, the business community is going to be caught in the middle of … issues like paid sick leave and the tip credit, etc. I don’t have to tell anybody who’s listening to this little webinar that uncertainty is a business-killer,” said Hemond. You’ve got a lot of especially small businesses out there in the hospitality industry that are more seasonally based, that are in full on panic right now and need some certainty brought to [the question]: ‘Is our tipping system going to survive?’”
Because the ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court last July set Feb. 21, 2025, as the deadline when the minimum wage will rise significantly and tipped wages will begin to phase out, Hemond says the lame duck session will provide the only realistic chance to find a resolution.
“So, while I understand the incentives for House Republicans to want to punt as much as possible into next year so that they can do it and claim credit for it, that’s awfully short rations of time for a new House majority to put their stamp on something like that. And it does leave the business community kind of caught in the middle wondering, well, are we going to get a fix?”
To be seen as obstructing a potential compromise, Hemond suggested, could prove damaging to the incoming GOP majority to try and implement its agenda.
However, Mark Fisk, CEO of Byrum & Fisk who was an adviser for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, said House Democrats also will be looking ahead to their diminished status, which will impact how they approach lame duck.
“I like to say the goal of the minority is to become the majority, and that is the goal. And so that means advancing one or two messages over a continuum of time and not doing much else,” said Fisk. “I think if you’re betting on not much happening in lame duck, I think maybe the momentum is on your side.”
Jenell Leonard, owner of Marketing Resource Group LLC, agreed that the odds were for a quieter lame duck than in past years, but said both parties have skin in the game toward accomplishing key priorities.
“The tip credit stuff has to be addressed in lame duck, because it will go into effect in February. And if both parties aren’t willing and able to come together and fix that, I think that is going to put the next term in question as to whether or not this Legislature and the governor can truly handle the most critical issues that are facing Michigan,” said Leonard.
The panelists were also asked about the takeaways from Tuesday’s election, which not only saw the GOP take the Michigan House majority, but also the White House and U.S. Senate.
Fisk said he was most surprised by President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to win among demographics that Democrats have counted on in the past.
“He demolished the traditional Democratic coalition and reached deep into Latino voters, Black voters, independent voters, working-class voters,” he said. “And while the Dem thinking, I think, at the moment was that they had developed an anti-Trump majority, that turned out not to be true. He reached beyond MAGA, beyond Republicans, and into the middle, and I think, frankly, Dems missed the moment in terms of the mood that people felt, the attitude that was out there, and the anger.”
Leonard noted that Republicans, for the first time in 20 years, took the majority of the national popular vote.
“We haven’t seen that. And if you look at the nation as a whole, kind of from that bird’s eye view, Harris did not outperform Biden in any county across the country, so it wasn’t just a Michigan thing,” she said, adding that Republicans were able to harness not just their base, but voters across the spectrum.
Ruddell said one key factor in the loss at the top of the ticket, and its effect down the ballot, was the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris came into the race late and without the experience that primaries provide for candidates.
“The 107 days or 15 weeks that the vice president was campaigning really was a disadvantage to her. She was never battle tested. She had an opportunity to talk in small group settings in Iowa or New Hampshire,” he said.
Fisk said another surprise, especially given the GOP wave on Tuesday, were the easy wins for the two Michigan Supreme Court openings by Democratic-nominated candidates, increasing their majority to 5-2.
“The court has always been a top priority of the Republicans and, you know, under guys like [former GOP operatives] Bob LeBrant and Jeff Timmer, they often said if we control one branch of government, it’d be the judicial,” said Fisk. “It seemed like they pretty much gave up on those races on the front end. There’s really no race that I saw other than some digital communications. I did find that surprising.”
Ruddell blamed that on the dysfunction of the Michigan Republican Party for the first 18 months of the 2024 election cycle, which began under the fractious leadership of Kristina Karamo, which essentially emptied the state party’s bank accounts and sparked an internal struggle that ended with Karamo being ousted and former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra taking the helm in January.
“It was just something they didn’t have time and resources to dedicate,” he said. “I would say that Democrats generally do a much better job of telling who their voters to vote for in nonpartisan races. Republicans have done a very poor job of that in the last 10 years, and Democrats have excelled at that in the last 10 years.”
The panel also discussed the skin-of-the-teeth win by U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) over former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake) for the U.S. Senate, and why she was able to take that race in an election otherwise not favorable to Democrats.
“She’s an excellent candidate,” answered Ruddell. “She’s a moderate. She was not from the far left of the Democratic Party. She appealed to working voters. She was a hawk on military spending and national security. You know, she appealed to those same voters that Trump appealed to in some fashion.”
Ruddell said Slotkin may have had an overarching reproductive freedom pitch in her ads, but voters clearly believed she paid attention to the issues that they valued, and had a strong middle of the road appeal.
Fisk added on to that by saying Slotkin overtly ran a more independent-themed campaign.
“She ran against the party in some of her ads, and she’ll take on people in both parties. This is good positioning when you have a 50-50 election. I’m sure she irritated people along the way by doing that, but it was smart politics, and I think the messaging paid off in terms of that race.”
Hemond noted that the messaging Slotkin had, versus that of Harris, was, in his mind, the key factor in why she won.
“Slotkin had a message,” he said. “She actually was carrying a message about the future forward as opposed to the Harris campaign, which was a little schizophrenic in its messaging, and a lot of their messaging was based around Donald Trump’s bad. Well, no kidding. You already made up your mind about that one way or another.”
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