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      Gretchen Whitmer Rejected False Choices. All Democrats Should.

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      For years, the so-called Blue Wall states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have been not just politically but also emotionally important for Democrats. With the party poised to enact a new primary lineup that includes Michigan in an early slot, the state has grown even more important for Democrats.In many ways, Michigan offers a microcosm of American politics. It includes a diverse population of over 10 million people and a mix of big, medium and smaller urban areas, along with diverse suburbs and rural areas.For Democrats, much of the debate about running in and winning big northern industrial states is that we have to choose a style of campaign. Either we talk to blue-collar voters about issues like economics and manufacturing, or we talk to suburban women about abortion. Either we use progressive issues to turn out our base, or we take moderate positions on issues to persuade people in the middle.There is a model for running an effective campaign in Michigan and states like it — and it involves rejecting many of these false choices.Gretchen Whitmer illustrated that model in Michigan this year. With her midterm victory, she has now had two decisive general-election wins in a critical Blue Wall state. Last month, she won by 10.6 points (a margin bested by only two Democratic presidential candidates in the last 50 years, Barack Obama in 2008 and Bill Clinton in 1996).She ran on economics and abortion, increased Democratic turnout and persuaded swing voters, all while connecting with the party’s largest base: Black voters. She embodied the way smart campaigns in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and around the country operated this cycle, and she gave a blueprint for Democrats in 2024.The first lesson of Ms. Whitmer’s campaign is that economic good news and development — especially building things — really make a difference. Democrats should run on American manufacturing: Whether it was a new semiconductor plant (to help ease the chip shortage facing the auto industry) or generational-level investments from G.M. in electric-vehicle battery plants (to make sure the critical supply chains for electric cars will be based in Michigan, not China, where many E.V. batteries are currently built), Ms. Whitmer fought to bring them to Michigan.In in multiple TV ads, she told voters, “I can’t solve the inflation problem, but we’re doing things — right now — to help.” She listed tangible benefits that she proposed or got done, like more affordable community college, insurance refunds and tax cuts for seniors. She passed four balanced, bipartisan budgets with no tax increases, and she let voters know about that.A lot of Democrats talked about economics across the country, but few did so as consistently and effectively as Ms. Whitmer. And it wasn’t just talk: When businesses opened, she was often there to celebrate them.This was paired with a pocketbook attack. Her opponent, Tudor Dixon, took millions of dollars from the wildly unpopular (in Michigan) billionaire Betsy DeVos and her family. For months her campaign highlighted Ms. Dixon’s connections to Ms. DeVos and how Ms. Dixon’s tax plan would benefit Ms. DeVos and hurt the middle class — working-class tax hikes, cuts to schools and the like. Ms. Whitmer also highlighted abortion rights as a vote-deciding issue for swing voters. Again, this was not just talk. Through a ballot initiative, Michigan voters faced the decision on whether to place abortion protections in the state Constitution. Voters approved changing the state Constitution with strong support (57 percent).Months before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and could have effectively banned abortion in Michigan (because of a dormant law from the 1930s), Ms. Whitmer sued and got courts to block enforcement of that law. No doubt the issue helped Michigan Democrats and progressives to catalyze turnout. Estimates from the U.S. Elections Project show overall turnout in 2022 was down about 6 percent from the 2018 midterm, but in Michigan, turnout was up nearly 5 percent.Ms. Whitmer also developed a deep connection with Black voters well before she picked as her running mate and governing partner the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist. After winning Black voters decisively with high turnout in 2018, she deepened that connection. The “Big Gretch” song (“We ain’t even about to stress/we got Big Gretch”) and memes that came out of Black Michigan spoke to a deep appreciation Black voters had for her decisiveness in the pandemic to keep people safe.This was on top of a lot of other work to help Black voters, things like bringing the first new auto plant to Detroit in 30 years and making sure Detroiters had a first crack at the plant’s jobs.This did not come at the expense of talking to white voters: She won Macomb County, ground zero for voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama, then switched to Donald Trump, by about 60 percent more in 2022 from 2018.What Ms. Whitmer has done in Michigan can be done by Democrats across the country. We can talk about economics and abortion, we can invest in turnout and persuasion, and we can strengthen our appeal to voters of color while winning over white voters.Brian Stryker (@BrianStryker) is a partner at Impact Research and a strategist for Gretchen Whitmer, Tim Ryan and Mandela Barnes, among others.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Barack Obama Lamented the Attack on Paul Pelosi. Then He Got Heckled.

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      Mr. Obama was reflecting on the level of hostility in American politics when a man in the crowd at a rally for Democrats in Detroit shouted at him.Former President Barack Obama was twice interrupted by hecklers on Saturday at a campaign rally in Detroit for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other Democrats, a reminder that it is easier to call for civility in American politics than to achieve it.In the first incident, less than 10 minutes after Mr. Obama took the stage, a man in the crowd shouted at him while he was lamenting Friday’s attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, and the rise of violent political rhetoric.“We’ve got politicians who work to stir up division to try to make us angry and afraid of one another for their own advantage,” Mr. Obama said. “Sometimes it can turn dangerous.”Moments later, the man, who was not identified, shouted “Mr. President” at Mr. Obama, creating an off-script exchange that the former president tried to use to drive home his point. The rest of what the man said was not picked up by microphones or cameras.“This is what I mean,” Mr. Obama said. “Right now, I’m talking. You’ll have a chance to talk sometime.”Mr. Obama told the man, “You wouldn’t do that a workplace. It’s not how we do things. This is part of the point I want to make. Just basic civility and courtesy works.”About seven minutes later, another heckler interrupted Mr. Obama, who later said that the current lack of respect in political discourse was different from when he first ran for president in 2008. At the time, he said, he could visit Republican areas and engage in a positive dialogue with those who disagreed with him politically.But that’s not the case now, said Mr. Obama, who juxtaposed the concession of Senator John McCain, his Republican opponent for president in 2008, with former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election to Joseph R. Biden Jr.“American democracy is also on the ballot,” Mr. Obama said. “With few notable exceptions, most Republican politicians right now are not even pretending that the rules apply to them. They seem to be OK with just making stuff up.”Mr. Obama said that Republicans had not taken responsibility for their shortcomings as a party and were looking to assign blame for electoral defeats. He recalled his overwhelming defeat in a Democratic primary for a House seat in 2000.“I got whooped, and let me tell you, I was frustrated,” Mr. Obama said. “You know what I didn’t do? I didn’t claim the election was rigged. I took my lumps.” More

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      His Campaign Pitch? ‘No One Wants to Have a Beer With Me.’

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      By his own admission, Adam Hollier is not the kind of guy you want to have a beer with.“You remember when George W. Bush was running and they were like, ‘He’s the kind of guy you want to have a beer with?’” he told me, by way of explaining his personality. “No one wants to have a beer with me.”Why not, I asked?“I’m not fun,” he said. “I’m the friend who you call to move a heavy couch. I’m the friend you call when you’re stuck on the side of the road. Right? Like, I’m the friend you call when you need a designated driver.”He repeated it again, in case I didn’t get it the first time: “I am not fun.”Hollier, 36, a Democratic candidate for a House seat in Michigan’s newly redrawn 13th Congressional District, which includes Detroit and Hamtramck, is a whirlwind of perpetual motion. A captain and paratrooper in the Army Reserves, he ran track and played safety at Cornell University despite being just 5-foot-9. After a fellowship with AmeriCorps, he earned a graduate degree in urban planning from the University of Michigan.Hollier’s brother, who is 11 years older, is 6-foot-5. His eldest sister is a federal investigator for the U.S. Postal Service who went to the University of Michigan on a basketball and water polo scholarship.“I grew up in a household of talent. And I don’t really have much of it,” Hollier said with self-effacing modesty. “My little sister is an incredible musician and singer and, you know, has done all of those things. I can barely clap on beat.”Hollier is running — when I spoke with him, he was quite literally doing so to drop his daughters off at day care — to replace Representative Brenda Lawrence, a four-term congresswoman who announced her retirement early this year.Her district, before a nonpartisan commission remapped boundaries that were widely seen as unfairly tilted toward Republicans, was one of the most heavily gerrymandered in the country, a salamander-like swath of land that snaked from Pontiac in the northwest across northern Detroit to the upscale suburb of Grosse Pointe on Lake St. Clair, then southward down the river toward River Rouge and Dearborn.Defying the odds, Hollier has racked up endorsement after endorsement by doing what he’s always done — outworking everybody else.Early on, Lawrence endorsed Portia Roberson, a lawyer and nonprofit leader from Detroit, but she has failed to gain traction. In March, the Legacy Committee for Unified Leadership, a local coalition of Black leaders run by Warren Evans, the Wayne County executive, endorsed Hollier instead.In late June, so did Mike Duggan, the city’s mayor. State Senator Mallory McMorrow, a fellow parent and a newfound political celebrity, backed him in May. A video announcing her endorsement shows Hollier wearing a neon vest and pushing a double jogging stroller.Hollier’s main opponent in the Democratic primary, Shri Thanedar, is a self-financing state lawmaker who previously ran for governor in 2018 and came in third place in the party’s primary behind Gretchen Whitmer and Abdul El-Sayed. His autobiography, “The Blue Suitcase: Tragedy and Triumph in an Immigrant’s Life,” originally written in Marathi, tells the story of his rise from lower-class origins in India to his success as an entrepreneur in the United States.A wealthy former engineer, Thanedar now owns Avomeen Analytical Services, a chemical testing laboratory in Ann Arbor. He has spent at least $8 million of his own money on the race so far, according to campaign finance reports.Pro-Israel groups, worried about his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have backed Hollier, as have veterans’ groups and two super PACs backed by cryptocurrency donors. The outside spending has allowed Hollier to compensate for Thanedar’s TV ad spending, which dwarfs his own.A firefighter’s son who couldn’t become a firefighterThe son of a social worker and a firefighter, Hollier recalls his father sitting him down when he was 8 years old and telling him he must never follow in his footsteps.Asked why, his father replied, “You don’t have that little bit of healthy fear that brings you home at night.”The comment stunned the young Hollier, who still considers his father, who ran the Detroit Fire Department’s hazardous material response team and retired as a captain after serving on the force for nearly 30 years, his own personal superhero.“And that’s a weird experience,” Hollier said. “Because, you know, at Career Day, nothing trumps firefighter except astronaut. Every kid’s dad is their hero, but my dad is, you know, objectively” — objectively, he said again, emphasizing the word — “in that space.”When he was 10 years old, in 1995, he persuaded his father to take him to the Million Man March in Washington, a gathering on the National Mall that was aimed at highlighting the challenges of growing up Black and male in America. They went to the top of the Washington Monument, where young Adam insisted on taking a photograph to get a more accurate sense of the crowd size.His parents were not political “at all,” he said — he notes that when Martin Luther King Jr. visited Detroit just ahead of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, his father went to a baseball game instead.Years later, Hollier admitted sheepishly, he did rebel against his father — by becoming a volunteer firefighter in college.Hollier says he’s most proud of scrambling to save jobs in his district after General Motors closed a plant in Hamtramck just after he took office in the State Senate.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesEarly interest in politicsHollier was very much a political animal from a young age, he acknowledged.“I know it’s in vogue for people to say they never thought they would run for office, but I always knew I was, right?” he said. “Like, I was always involved in the thing.”That same day in Washington, for instance, he met Dennis Archer, the mayor of Detroit at the time, who told him he should “think about doing what I do” someday — a heady experience for a 10-year-old. He took the advice to heart, winning his first race for student council president in high school.Hollier’s first official job in politics was in 2004, working as an aide to Buzz Thomas, a now-retired state senator he considers his political mentor. Hollier lost a race for the State House in 2014 to the incumbent then, Rose Mary Robinson. In 2018, he was elected to the State Senate, where he worked on an auto insurance overhaul and lead pipe removal.But the achievement he’s most proud of, he said, is scrambling to save jobs in his district after General Motors closed a plant in Hamtramck just after he took office. In a panic, he called Archer, who gave him a list of 10 things to do immediately.One of the top items on Archer’s list was tracking down former Senator Carl Levin, a longtime friend of labor unions who had recently retired, and whom he’d never met.Don’t accept that G.M. would close the plant, Levin told him when they spoke.“They’re not going to produce the vehicles that they produce there right now,” Hollier recounted Levin saying. “But you’re fighting for the next product line.”Hollier took that advice to heart, and worked with a coalition of others to steer G.M. toward a different solution. The site is now known as Factory Zero, the company’s first plant dedicated entirely to electric vehicles.Motivations and milestonesIf Hollier loses, Michigan is likely to have no Black members of Congress for the first time in seven decades.When I ask him what that means to him, he jumps into an impassioned speech about how important it is for Black Americans, and for young Black men in particular, to have positive role models. It’s one I suspect he has been giving some version of for his entire life in politics.Growing up in north Detroit, Hollier often ran into his own representative, John Conyers, the longest serving African-American member of Congress. Conyers, who died in 2019 at age 90, was known for walking every nook and cranny of his district.But when Hollier knocked on his first door the first time he ran for office, the woman who opened it asked him, “Are you going to disappoint me like Kwame?” — a reference to Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced former mayor of Detroit.That experience sobered him about running for office as a Black man in Detroit, a highly segregated city where Black men are disproportionally likely to end up jobless or in prison. But it also motivated him to prove the woman wrong.On his 25th birthday, Hollier recalled going to pick up some food from a store near his parents’ house. Told about the milestone, the man behind the counter replied: “Congratulations. Not everybody makes it.”With just one day left before the primary, Hollier has spent 760 hours asking for donations over the phone, raising more than $1 million. His campaign says it has made 300,000 phone calls and knocked on 40,000 doors — double, he tells me with pride, what Representative Rashida Tlaib was able to do in the district next door.But when I asked him if he would be at peace if he lost, he confessed, “That’s a tough one.”He paused for a moment, then said, “I feel strongly that I’ve done everything I could have done.”What to readRepublican missteps, weak candidates and fund-raising woes are handing Democrats unexpected opportunities in races for governor this year, Jonathan Martin writes.Sheera Frenkel reports on a potentially destabilizing new movement: parents who joined the anti-vaccine and anti-mask cause during the pandemic, narrowing their political beliefs to a single-minded obsession over those issues.Madison Underwood, a 22-year-old woman from Tennessee, was thrilled to learn she was pregnant. But when a rare defect in the developing fetus threatened her life, she was thrust into post-Roe chaos. Neelam Bohra has the story.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Trump’s Focus on 2020 Election Splits Michigan Republicans

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      The former president is trying to reshape the battleground state in his image. But his false claims about the 2020 election are driving a wedge between loyalists and those who are eager to move on.SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The shouting in the banquet hall erupted just minutes after the Macomb County Republican Party convention was called to order.In a room packed with about 500 people, Mark Forton, the county party chairman and a fierce ally of former President Donald J. Trump, began railing against the establishment Republicans in the audience. A plan was afoot to oust him and his executive team, he said.“They’re going to make an overthrow of the party, and you have a right to know what this county party has done in the last three years,” he said as his supporters booed and hollered and opponents pelted him with objections. Republicans in suits and cardigans on one side of the room shouted at die-hard Trump supporters in MAGA hats and Trump gear on the other.The night ended as Mr. Forton had predicted, with a 158-123 vote that removed him and his leadership team from their posts.The raucous scene in Macomb County exploded after months of infighting that roiled the Michigan Republican Party, pitting Trump loyalists like Mr. Forton, who continue to promote Mr. Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 presidential election, against a cohort of Republicans who are eager to move on. The splintering threatens to upend the upcoming Republican state convention, where county precinct chairs vote on nominees for secretary of state, attorney general and other statewide offices.Mr. Trump is all in on trying to sway those contests — and other races across the state, which he lost by 150,000 votes in 2020. The former president has endorsed 10 candidates for the State Legislature, including three who are challenging Republican incumbents, and has already picked his favorite candidate for speaker of the State House next year. Mr. Trump also has made numerous personal entreaties to shore up support for Matthew DePerno, who is running for attorney general, and Kristina Karamo, a candidate for secretary of state.Kristina Karamo, a candidate for Michigan secretary of state, belongs to a slate of “America First” candidates campaigning, in part, on distorted views of the 2020 election.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn Michigan and other battleground states, Mr. Trump’s chosen candidates have become megaphones for his election claims — frustrating some Republicans who view a preoccupation with the 2020 election as a losing message in 2022.Republicans in Wisconsin and Arizona have encountered similar fractures over support for continued investigations into the 2020 election, and Mr. Trump’s attempts to play kingmaker in the Ohio Senate race is splintering Republicans there as well.The root of the rupture in Michigan can, in part, be traced to endorsements made by Meshawn Maddock, a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a Trump confidante. The Republican Party leadership has traditionally stayed out of statewide races, especially before the state convention. But Ms. Maddock endorsed Ms. Karamo and Mr. DePerno.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Both candidates have been vocal supporters of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election. Mr. DePerno was one of the lawyers involved in Republican challenges in Antrim County, Mich., where a quickly corrected human error on election night spawned a barrage of conspiracy theories.Ms. Karamo belongs to a slate of “America First” secretary of state candidates running across the country and campaigning, in part, on distorted views of the 2020 election.Matthew DePerno, a candidate for Michigan attorney general, was involved in Republican challenges in a Michigan county where an election night error spawned conspiracy theories.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesBeyond her endorsements, Ms. Maddock has been working to help prepare convention delegates. Last month, Ms. Maddock attended a mock convention held by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and reiterated glowing praise from Mr. Trump for Ms. Karamo, Mr. DePerno and John Gibbs, the conservative challenger to Representative Peter Meijer, a Republican congressman who voted to impeach Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.“He was so fired up about Michigan,” Ms. Maddock said of conversations with Mr. Trump as she spoke during a question-and-answer session at the mock convention, according to audio of the event obtained by The New York Times. “This man cannot stop talking about Matt DePerno, Kristina Karamo, John Gibbs, who’s running against Peter Meijer.”In a statement, Mr. DePerno said he’s “proud that local and state party leaders have endorsed my campaign. Ms. Karamo’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Republican candidates facing Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo were taken aback by the endorsements and were outraged at the meddling by the state party leadership before the convention. Ms. Maddock, some candidates charged, appeared to be trying to tip the scales in favor of Trump-backed candidates.Beau LeFave, a Republican state legislator who is running for secretary of state, said that he had spoken to both Ms. Maddock and her husband, State Representative Matt Maddock, “multiple times” before jumping into his race. They told him they were both rooting for him “and that they’re going to stay out of it,” he said.“So it was quite a surprise to find out that they lied to me,” Mr. LeFave said.Ms. Maddock was not available for an interview, according to Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party. He said that co-chairs had endorsed candidates in the past but acknowledged that the dynamic this cycle was a bit unusual.The root of the rupture in Michigan can, in part, be traced to endorsements made by Meshawn Maddock, a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a staunch supporter of Mr. Trump.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times“You’ve never had a co-chair who has been this close to a former president, who arguably has a lot of influence on the convention floor,” Mr. Portela said. He added that the party believes the contested races ahead of the convention were “a good thing” that “speaks to the frustration with the direction of our country, and more importantly, the direction of the state.”The state party has struggled with other conflicts. After more than a year of hearing specious claims about vote counts and election equipment, some activists began questioning why the party would use tabulation machines. A group called Unity 4 MRP started an online campaign to pressure the party to count paper ballots by hand rather use the major brands of voting machines.“Grassroots groups would sooner stare into the glowering, red eyes of Beelzebub than to allow a Dominion, ESS, or Hart tabulator to run its lecherous paws over their sacred ballots,” another group, Pure Integrity Michigan Elections, wrote in an email to supporters, according to The Detroit Free Press.Eventually, the party leadership announced a concession: an audit of the convention vote overseen by a former secretary of state. But that didn’t please everyone.“We have state committee members who fought hard to make sure that you do not have a hand count, and you need to ask why, and you need to be angry, and you need people figuring it out,” said J.D. Glaser, an activist who attended a rally of election skeptics in February. “This is our Republican Party. They’re working against you.”The Macomb County Republican Party convention was one of 83 county meetings held Monday to pick the delegates to the statewide Michigan Republican Party endorsement convention on April 23.In the weeks leading up to the event in the Detroit suburbs, Mr. Forton, a retired autoworker and longtime political activist, had rankled prominent Republican elected officials with his conspiracy-theory-laden assertions about the election and what he has described as “a cabal” of Democrats and Republicans who have been installed to control the country.Presiding over the convention, Mr. Forton argued that his wing of Trump supporters had revived the county party, replenished its coffers and helped usher in a wave of Republican victories in the state. He slammed what he viewed as the old-guard Republicans in the room, some of whom were preparing the way to vote him out of office as he spoke.“They have been wanting to take this county party back for a long time,” he said, adding that he and his supporters were “not going away.”Some on Mr. Forton’s side of the room were attending a convention for the first time, spurred to do so, they said, out of concern for the direction of the party and outrage over the lack of audits and investigations into the results of the 2020 presidential election.“What is happening here should be calm and exciting, but what you have is a Republican Party that does not think the same,” said Tamra Szacon, who earlier had led the prayer and was decked out in a cowboy hat and glittering American flag heels. “One of our biggest things is that we believe the election was stolen — a lot of people do.”On the other side of the room, Republicans said they were frustrated with the bickering. Natasha Hargitay, a 35-year-old single mother, said she had been to more than a dozen conventions and had never been to one so contentious. She described herself as “Switzerland,” neutral in the fight. Still, she had not been pleased with Mr. Forton’s comments.“I lost a lot of respect for him when he said, ‘We are the real Republicans,’” she said. “That means you are dividing the Republican Party.”After the commotion, Eric Castiglia, who was elected the county’s new chairman, pledged to welcome all Republicans into the fold. He said he believed the state convention, with its machine and hand count election, would provide an opportunity to show election skeptics that the process could be fair.“We have to start working on what we’re going to do with our values and not be a place where every candidate is a RINO, or not a Republican enough,” Mr. Castiglia said in an interview, using shorthand for “Republican in name only.”But Mr. Forton has no intention of moving on. On Thursday, he filed a petition to state party leaders appealing his ouster. More

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      Mike Duggan Wins a Third Term as Detroit’s Mayor

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      Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit was elected to a third term on Tuesday, The Associated Press projected, as voters signaled confidence in the direction of a city that has suffered from decades of disinvestment and population loss.Mr. Duggan, a Democrat who was elected eight years ago as the city was in the throes of municipal bankruptcy, has presided over a resurgence of Detroit’s commercial center and a restoration of basic city services like streetlights. New factories are opening, the Detroit Pistons basketball team moved back from the suburbs, and young college graduates have moved into downtown and Midtown, along with businesses catering to them.“Eight years ago, the problems Detroit was facing were just Detroit — no other city was talking about bankruptcy or streetlights,” Mr. Duggan said earlier this year. “Today, the challenges that we’re dealing with, every other city has.”But by Mr. Duggan’s own assessment, Detroit remains a work in progress. Violent crime is a persistent concern. Blighted and abandoned homes are a common sight, despite efforts to bulldoze or restore many buildings over the last decades. And some longtime residents, especially Black residents who stayed in Detroit through years of white flight to the suburbs, say they are concerned about gentrification as the white population grows and rents go up.Mr. Duggan, the first white mayor in decades of a city where nearly 80 percent of residents are Black, has also so far failed to deliver on his promise to end more than half a century of population decline. Data from the 2020 census showed the population had fallen more than 10 percent since 2010, to about 639,000 residents. The white, Asian and Hispanic populations increased in that period, but there were tens of thousands fewer Black Detroiters in the city. The mayor has disputed that data and pledged to challenge the census figures.Mr. Duggan’s opponent, Anthony Adams, a lawyer and fellow Democrat, focused his campaign on crime reduction, police reform and keeping longtime residents in the city. But he struggled to gain traction as local and national figures in the Democratic Party, including President Biden, gave their support to Mr. Duggan.“We’re starting to lose our Black population in the city, and we’re losing it because the policies of this administration are harmful to the people who have been here through thick and thin,” Mr. Adams said in an interview this summer. More

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      The Census Said Detroit Kept Shrinking. The Mayor Begs to Differ.

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      DETROIT — Once again, the Census Bureau reported, Detroit has gotten smaller.For most Detroiters’ entire lives, census day has brought only bad news, a painful once-a-decade accounting of an exodus that has shrunk their city’s population by more than half since 1950 and left entire blocks abandoned.Mayor Mike Duggan pledged to stop that decline when he swept into office eight years ago, telling voters they could measure his success based on whether residents returned. But when the latest numbers were released this month, they showed the population had fallen more than 10 percent since 2010, to about 639,000 residents.In the ledger of the federal government, Mr. Duggan had failed to meet his goal, people were still leaving and Detroit now had fewer residents than Oklahoma City. In the mayor’s own view, he was succeeding, the city was coming back and the Census Bureau had just counted wrong.Hours after the census count was released, the mayor fired off an indignant statement accusing the bureau of undercounting Detroit residents by at least 10 percent. Mr. Duggan said municipal utility data backed up his claims, but his office declined to provide localized evidence to prove that. Census officials mostly declined to discuss the mayor’s complaints.Mayor Mike Duggan has told Detroiters they could measure his success based on whether residents returned to the city.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesOnce the country’s fourth-largest city, Detroit had more than 1.8 million residents at its peak in 1950. In the 2020 census, fewer than 640,000 people were counted.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesThe unusual squabble between City Hall and the Census Bureau was only the latest sign that, under Mr. Duggan, Detroit has become America’s ultimate Rorschach test. Does your attention go to the many challenges that persist — the crime, the trash piles, the people struggling to pay rent, and, yes, the census tally? Or do your eyes focus on what has clearly improved during the mayor’s tenure — the livelier downtown, the clean lots where blighted houses once stood, the N.B.A.’s Pistons moving back from the suburbs, the new Jeep factory?“People in Detroit know the difference,” said Mr. Duggan, a Democrat who is seeking a third term and who finished far ahead of his challengers in this month’s primary election. “If you came in from the outside, you would not go around saying how good this looks.”On the west side, where well-kept homes are situated next to others with busted windows or fire-scorched frames, Cynthia A. Johnson, a state representative, said her district “hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot” since Mr. Duggan took office.The mayor is a smart guy and a talented politician, she said, but his policies have benefited newcomers to the city and business interests more than the longtime Detroiters in her part of town. She found his complaints about a census undercount unconvincing as she went through a mental list of neighbors who had recently left the city.The number of white Detroiters increased over the last decade after decades of flight, experts said, but the census counted tens of thousands fewer Black Detroiters than lived in the city in 2010. The city’s population of Asian and Hispanic residents also increased since 2010.The vast majority of Detroit residents are Black. Mr. Duggan is the city’s first white mayor in 40 years.“He has opened the door for gentrification — that is my belief,” Ms. Johnson, a fellow Democrat, said. “He has given companies contracts over the people.”Looking at the same evidence, though, some reach the opposite conclusion about Detroit’s trajectory. As Ms. Johnson walked through her neighborhood, pointing out city-owned lots with overgrown weeds and sidewalks littered with liquor bottles, Willie Wesley emerged from his home with a more upbeat view.Cynthia A. Johnson, a state representative, walks through her neighborhood in Detroit. She said her district “hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot” since Mr. Duggan took office.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesWillie Wesley, who has has been living in the same neighborhood as Ms. Johnson for 21 years, said Detroit was on the upswing.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesMr. Wesley, a retired U.P.S. worker who helps mow his neighbors’ lawns, said Detroit was on the upswing. His block felt safer. Some long-vacant homes had new buyers. New industrial sites offered the chance for neighbors to earn a good wage.“I like the mayor I have — I wouldn’t trade him for nothing right now,” Mr. Wesley said. “He’s bringing jobs back into the neighborhood.”Detroit is a city caught in transition. Its distant past as the world’s manufacturing center remains a source of pride. The struggles of recent decades, including the city’s unprecedented journey through municipal bankruptcy, are spoken of with pain. And a vision of its future, though blurry and contested, comes into clearer view with every boarded-up home that is razed, with every coffee shop that opens, with every U-Haul truck heading in or out.Once the country’s fourth-largest city, Detroit had more than 1.8 million residents at its peak in 1950. By the turn of the century, fewer than a million remained. And in the 2020 census, fewer than 640,000 people were counted and Detroit was barely among the country’s 30 most populous cities.Those declines are more than a blow to civic pride. They lead to less political power when new legislative districts are drawn and less federal funding.“I think that is the ultimate test of a city,” Mr. Duggan said. “Do more people want to move in or move out?”Detroit was far from the only city where the latest census showed a populace in atrophy. Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Flint, Mich., were among several other industrial centers in the Midwest that saw their populations drop. In Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula, almost every county lost residents.But unlike most local officials who received bad news, Mr. Duggan reacted by engaging in a public fight with the Census Bureau and suggesting he might sue. He said the bureau, under former President Donald J. Trump, did not give on-the-ground canvassers enough time to do their work last year. The change to an online questionnaire also disadvantaged the city, he said. The pandemic did not help.“The census is just factually inaccurate,” Mr. Duggan said in an interview, noting that he raised concerns about the process last fall, long before the numbers were published. “It was census malpractice and we’re going to get it reversed.”Census officials declined to discuss the mayor’s specific claims, but defended their work in an unsigned statement and said local officials who thought there were errors could appeal. Any corrections would not affect the data used for political redistricting, the bureau said.There is precedent in Detroit for census disputes paying off. After the 1990 count, Coleman A. Young, the mayor at the time, challenged the tally in court and got the bureau to acknowledge that it missed tens of thousands of residents.Still, the latest drop in the population provided a political opening for Anthony Adams, who finished a distant second to Mr. Duggan in the low-turnout mayoral primary and who will face his fellow Democrat again in the November general election.“We’re starting to lose our Black population in the city, and we’re losing it because the policies of this administration are harmful to the people who have been here through thick and thin,” said Mr. Adams, a lawyer who has focused his campaign on crime reduction, police reform and keeping longtime residents in the city.Even some of Mr. Duggan’s allies were unconvinced by his census rhetoric.Paul A. Garrison II, an urban planner and economic developer who leads the Osborn Business Association, credited Mr. Duggan with nurturing new businesses, addressing problems in neighborhoods and attracting educated newcomers to Detroit. He said he even had a Duggan campaign sign in his yard. But Mr. Garrison was not buying the claims of a massive population undercount.“No mayor,” Mr. Garrison said, “wants to admit that the population of their city is decreasing and people are leaving the city. That’s not good politics.”Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaking at the Farwell Recreation Center in Detroit during a news conference on crime reduction. Nick Hagen for The New York TimesKenneth Robinson and his wife had to leave their apartment after their unit flooded.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesMr. Duggan is betting that Detroiters trust the direction he is steering the city. He says the city’s problems are on a smaller scale than when he took office in the throes of a bankruptcy and a crisis of city services.“Eight years ago, the problems Detroit was facing were just Detroit — no other city was talking about bankruptcy or streetlights,” Mr. Duggan said. “Today, the challenges that we’re dealing with, every other city has.”But the question of whether the census count ever officially goes up will be determined one resident, one circumstance at a time.Earlier this month, at a senior apartment complex that was swamped during this summer’s devastating floods, Kenneth Robinson grew emotional as his belongings were loaded into a moving truck.“It’s a horrible feeling,” he said. “I hate to even think about it. And I’ve got a sick wife with cancer.”Mr. Robinson, 72, a lifelong Detroiter, had been staying with his wife in a downtown hotel since their unit flooded. Mold and mildew made it unsafe to return home, and financial assistance to stay at the hotel was running out. There was talk about moving temporarily to an extended-stay motel in the suburbs.Mr. Robinson, who worked in the auto industry and as a janitor before retiring, wanted to eventually move back into his apartment. He wanted to stay in Detroit. But he did not know what would come next.The population in Detroit has dropped more than 10 percent in the last decade. Nick Hagen for The New York Times More

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      Michigan Republicans Debunk Voter Fraud Claims in Unsparing Report

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      The report, produced by a G.O.P.-led committee in the State Senate, exposes false claims made about the 2020 election by Trump allies in Michigan and other states.A committee led by Michigan Republicans on Wednesday published an extraordinary debunking of voter fraud claims in the state, delivering a comprehensive rebuke to a litany of accusations about improprieties in the 2020 election and its aftermath.The 55-page report, produced by a Michigan State Senate committee of three Republicans and one Democrat, is a systematic rebuttal to an array of false claims about the election from supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. The authors focus overwhelmingly on Michigan, but they also expose lies perpetuated about the vote-counting process in Georgia.The report is unsparing in its criticism of those who have promoted false theories about the election. It debunks claims from Trump allies including Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow; Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former president’s lawyer; and Mr. Trump himself.Yet while the report eviscerates claims about election fraud, its authors also use the allegations to urge their legislative colleagues to change Michigan’s voting laws to make absentee voting harder and limit the availability of drop boxes for absentee ballots, as Republicans have done in other swing states as they try to limit voting.“This committee found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigan’s prosecution of the 2020 election,” the authors wrote, before adding: “It is the opinion of this committee that the Legislature has a duty to make statutory improvements to our elections system.”Michigan Republicans, who control the state’s Legislature, have for weeks debated a series of new voting restrictions. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has said she will veto the legislation, but Michigan law allows citizens to circumvent the governor by collecting 340,047 signatures.Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that she hoped Republican lawmakers would use the report to “cease their attempts to deceive citizens with misinformation and abandon legislation based on the lies that undermine our democracy.”Here are some of the conclusions from the Michigan report that debunked Trump allies’ claims about the election:Referring to Antrim County in Northern Michigan — where local election officials briefly and inadvertently transposed voting numbers before correcting them, leading to false conspiracy theories about voting machines — the report suggests that Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, should “consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.” It adds that anyone who promoted the Antrim County theories as the prime evidence of a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election had left “all other statements and actions they make in a position of zero credibility.”The Voter Integrity Project, a right-wing group, has said that 289,866 “illegal votes” were cast in Michigan. The report’s authors called 40 people from the group’s list of supposed voters who received absentee ballots without requesting them and found just two who said they had been sent unrequested ballots. One was on the state’s permanent absentee voter list. The other voted absentee in the 2020 primary election and may have forgotten about checking a box then to request an absentee ballot in the general election.The report found that the chaos that unfolded after Election Day as votes were counted at the TCF Center in Detroit was the fault of Republican operatives who called on supporters to protest the count. “The Wayne County Republican Party and other, independent organizations, ought to issue a repudiation of the actions of certain individuals that created a panic and had untrained and unnumbered persons descend on the TCF Center,” the report states.Claims that Dominion Voting Systems machines in Michigan and other states had been hacked to change results were false, the report said. The committee’s chairman, State Senator Ed McBroom, a Republican, called Georgia officials to investigate claims made by Jovan Pulitzer, who said he had access to manipulate vote counts. Mr. Pulitzer’s testimony “has been demonstrated to be untrue and a complete fabrication,” the report said. “He did not, at any time, have access to data or votes, let alone have the ability to manipulate the counts directly or by the introduction of malicious software to the tabulators. Nor could he spot fraudulent ballots from non-fraudulent ones.”Of Mr. Lindell’s wide-ranging claims of fraud and impropriety in vote-counting systems, the report states that “this narrative is ignorant of multiple levels of the actual election process,” before embarking on a lengthy debunking of his claims.While Mr. Trump claimed that more votes had been cast in Detroit than people who live there, the report found that turnout in the city was under 50 percent of eligible voters and about 37 percent of its population.No ballots were secretly “dumped” at the Detroit vote-counting center. “A widely circulated picture in media and online reports allegedly showed ballots secretly being delivered late at night but, in reality, it was a photo of a WXYZ-TV photographer hauling his equipment,” the report states. More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s Fraud Claims Died in Court, But the Myth of Stolen Elections Lives On

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