The votes are in and the winners and losers are announced.

That's our lead story with Chuck Stokes, Beth LeBlanc, Zoe Clark an Bill Ballenger to discuss same.

So sit in with us a we get the election year inside out, off the record.

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And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Well, we are still a chatty group for having no sleep this week.

Right.

Let's start around the table.

Chuck, given all the things that happened on Tuesday, what surprised you the most?

Give me a sentence.

That the voter turnout for Kamala Harris was lower in 202 than it was for Biden in 2020.

Beth.

I was surprised by how much House how many seats Hous Republicans were able to flip.

I didn't think they'd get a majority that large.

I think I'll g with two statewide races that, you know, Trump winning Michigan and Slotkin winning Michigan.

I would go back to what Beth said.

State House outspent Republicans 3 to 1 by the Democrats, and yet they flipped four seat and they got a 58-52 majority.

So I think quite remarkable.

Let's sum it up this way, Michigan is no longer a blue state.

Anybody buy that?

I don't think we've ever been a blue state.

We're a purple state.

We'rea purple state.

We're not purple.

I think we are.

Nine counties, the same number of counties that Trump won in 2016.

No, no, no Nine counties went for Harris.

And those nine, it was fewer voters for Harris to than Biden.

Look, I mean, I think that that's a fair and accurate statement after this election in some ways.

But then you've got to look, if you're doing bright side for Democrats, of which there were not many, but 16 out of 17 US Senate races now have gone Democratic.

And so I think if anything, I don't know that I would say we're a red state or a blue state.

I think we continue to be a swing state.

I think we're a divided state, which I think, again, shows that Michigan is very much a microcosm of the United States.

We are swing stat with this guy, win 74 counties.

He won 74 counties.

But that's not a proportional by number.

That's just a land base.

Yeah, I mean, one county has twice as many.

I mean, yeah, that you got to.

Remember, two years ago the Democrats swept everything.

I mean, we're one election way.

You know, would you like to do the show again?

Well, I. I feel like if you look a those state House races, right.

Those candidates, the Republican candidates were held extremel well by the top of the ticket.

Right.

That Trump helped them.

I think they're going to be i a tough spot in 2026 defending.

If Democrats can get a good person at the top of the ticket.

So it's is it is swing.

It's the pendulum going back and forth, depending o who is at the top of the ticket.

And I feel like, you know, will there ever be a Republican candidate like Trump again who can appeal to that working base who, you know, proved a lot of pundits wrong again in 2024?

So I think, you know, if if Republicans can harness that energy again and find a candidate who can kind of thread that needle the way that Trump has, I think they might have a chance of continuing to swing Michigan right.

And I think you still at heart we're a state that likes to see a healthy mix between Republicans and Democrats.

And whenever we can strike a balance, we try to do that.

I think that we saw that with them flipping the house.

We also saw that Tom Barrett gets in Slotkin's old seat.

So that flips there.

By the same token even though Kamala Harris didn't win here, came close but didn't win.

Look at the Michigan Supreme Court.

You know, the two people that Whitmer wanted on there, they got on there.

And now the balance is solidly Democratic.

You got a 5-2 majority on there.

So you you get a mix here.

But is it because the Republicans ran such a brilliant campaign or the Democrats just didn't get it?

Yes, But yeah, I mean, I think it's I mean, it's I don't think that's a mutually exclusive.

The abortion issue that they ran in legislative races, apparently did not bring people to the polls that they thought it would.

I think Tim too, when you when you saw again at the state house level, right.

Those abortion ad against some of those vulnerable Republican candidates, they didn't work.

There were at least three seats that were very vulnerable for Republicans.

And they and Democrats couldn't pull it off.

And they were kind of lik these cookie cutter abortion ads that they ran in all of those vulnerable districts.

And they they couldn't get any traction with them.

And there was no like, I mean, which granted it was it would have been difficul to break through the advertising at the top of the ticket to do anything different with these state House candidates.

But there was no like districts specific ads or candidate specific ads.

It was kind of lacking.

Republicans did a much better job of running in specific districts.

Look, the Democrats spent $37 million on state House races, more than twice as much as two years ago when they got the majority and they got wiped out.

I mean, again, but if we're talking money, I mean, you know, the Kamala Harris campaign raised $1,000,000,000.

Better.

Organization and some could argue had a better organization and a better ground game.

Some could argue or though they had a better ground game, and yet we still saw that.

So, I mean, again, if we're talking money talks right, the money put in campaign certainly does not necessarily portend the outcome.

But if we're talking money in terms of as a reason that folks voted what we know, I mean, it's the James Carville it's the economy, stupid.

Right.

Two major issues.

And whether it was national, it took it all the way down to state and local.

And you're right, the economy and immigration and borders and concerns that people have in terms of who's coming into this country and how they're coming into this country and how they're integrating into this country.

Those were major issues they couldn't escape.

And even though Kamala Harris tried very, very hard and I think ran a good race, still only had 107 days, she was thrown int that position and she tried to paint herself as thi agent of change in the future.

And she was still part of the administration that people said they were angry with.

And it's hard historically to do that.

It's been nearly 40 years since a vice president took over after a sitting president of the same party.

And that would be on top of the fac that, again, you had the sitting president, Joe Biden, historic on approval numbers.

I mean, when you actually look at this idea of change, that's what folks said they wanted.

And this was not an election where people, at least in Michigan, did not turn out and vote.

And five pointed.

To zipping into the fact of this revenge factor from four years ago, people who felt as though he won, even though we all know he didn't.

In terms of the technicalities of the election, but they still felt like we're going to get you back in this time.

We're going to do it.

And he did it both with the popular vote and with the Electoral College.

Somebody the two togethe and what Kamala Harris carried, Marquette County.

Right.

Okay.

Democrats always carry Marquette.

But guess what?

Jenn Hill, the stat representative, lost that seat for the first time in almost a century to the Republicans.

And look it was all based on because vote in the legislature, Jenn Hil took vote after vote after vote that sounded like she came from Detroit or Ann Arbor, and her opponent, Karl Bohnak.

The weather man.

And right now, Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Peninsula over party.

And the Democrats spent a ton of money up there, over $1,000,000, Jenn Hill on negative ads against Bohna trying to present him as a kook.

And everybody up there knows Bohnak.

He was the meteorologist fo 30 years and it just didn't fly.

I mean, I talked up there two months ago and they said those ads are backfiring and the Democrats squandered over $1,000,000 up there and lost that sea for the first time in a century.

I have we blown away the myth that the more people that vote in Michigan, the better the Democrats do.

Is that now history?

Yes, it is.

Yes, that's what it is.

That's I mean, what I was going to say right, is 5.67 million Michiganders.

Record 78%.

79, 78.

Let's go.

With that.

We've never seen a turnout like that.

And yes, that is the thing that the thread that I've really been picking at that my whole life.

It's tend to be right that the more folks who turn out in Michigan, Democrats do better.

And this is the first tim that that's just not the case.

And so when you asked, you know, was it Democrats running a poor campaig or is it Republican messaging?

I mean, it's all of the things what you saw.

And again, going back to like what you mentioned, the popular vote, like, let's not forget that, you know, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.

Right.

Like Al Gore won the popular vote.

You know, Kamala Harris did not even win the popular vote.

That is that is telling.

Did she spend too much time telling us what we already knew that nobody likes Donald Trump.

She did that rather than saying I'm the new person on the block.

There she goes.

She goes on the TV show.

And as we ask the question, how will it be different?

You know, I don't think it's going to be that much.

I forget some people have said that was the election right there.

Is that too simplistic, guys?

No, no, that's absolutely right.

She never presented a coherent, positive vision of what she would do.

And did she need to throw Joe Biden under the bus?

Probably.

In retrospect.

It wasn't going to happen.

I also think she she didn't tap into the frustration of people on the economy.

I don't think I think it was recognized once in a while, but I don't think there was enough of or she didn't connect on that issue.

The economy was doing well.

Well, no, but Tim, I'm telling you repeatedly, people I talked to at Harris rallies, at Trump rallies, going door to door with these Republican and Democratic candidates, every door they knocked on, people said the one issue was affordability, that even some union members told me I am making more than I ever have.

But the cost of livin is higher than it ever has been.

And I can't.

So, you know, I that what you said, that the economy overall, overall is doing well.

And I think at the beginning of the campaign, they tried to give that message that they said, well, on a macro level, you know, inflation is receding or it's stopped.

Yes.

And I think like they to their credit, they stopped that early on.

But I think that like kind o showed a disconnect, like it was a little bit like an ivory towe take on on what was happening.

And I think on the ground, people people were really struggling with costs.

And I think that that drove them to a certain extent.

And you couldn't.

Throw Joe Biden under the bus even if she wanted to.

And it's not the character of her to be able to do that.

She was in that position because of Joe Biden.

Bad debate performance, whatever you want to say.

She got that opportunit to be a historic vice president.

Never hav we had a woman in that position because of Joe Biden and then an opportunity to run for president because of Joe Biden.

And she could have run the risk of turning off Democrats who still like Joe Biden if she had done that and seemed like she was disloyal.

But she could have given better answer to that question.

Could Mr. Bide have helped her out by saying, you know, I've talked to my vice president, and I basically said to her, look at this is now your ballgame, okay, forget about all the stuff that I did chart a new path, chart a new course.

Could he have helped her messaging on that that he didn't want t because it would have demeaned his one thing if he didn't want to, but if it was for the good of the party, which he said that's why he didn't run.

Yeah, that could have set up a better message.

Not enough for the party.

I think he fel he'd done enough for the party by stepping aside.

He wasn't going beyond that.

And first of all, I don't think any of us sitting around this table have any clea indication of what at any moment was going on for sitting President Joe Biden.

Right.

I mean, like what we have seen really was a historic month after month after month, beginning after that first early debate where he wante desperately to stay in.

Right.

And then he announces he's not going to but then takes a little bit of time to endorse Harris.

And look, this was a complicated, messy months long internecine battle among Democrats.

And I think what they have to sit down and have a conversation abou as a party is to whom are they speaking and to whom are they representing and what kind of party do they do they want to be?

I will also say, though, for as much as and I want to be careful how I articulate this, so many people turned out and voted for Donald Trump like that was clear.

Again, popular vote county after county, more votes.

So let's not argue that.

But again, this was in Michigan, like less than 2% or two percentage points between the two.

So we again, are still makin we are right like 89,000 votes.

That's the size of like a small, you know, So we're still divided.

We just we are.

And to Beth's point, the economy, the economy, the economy.

And when you historically look at what happens when you have incumbents and then their vice presidents running, and if they ar if there is a high disapproval rate which there was for Joe Biden, and then as Chuck said, 110 days to try to figure out this tiny little thread of throwing the current president under the bus with whom you're aligned.

And it was really hard to do.

And they didn't do it and they didn't talk to the voters in the way that voters felt like they wanted to be talked to.

And about two and the biggest mistake that Biden may have made was trying to seek a second term period.

A lot of people saw him as a transitional president.

And if he had said at the beginning of all of this, I'm not going to run again, but I'm throwing my support behind Kamala Harris, then what could have been a messy primary, but he would have given her more opportunity to build her case for being the next president of United States.

She still would have bee attached to his administration, but she wouldn't have had to do it in 100 700 days out.

No one, I think, can fully understand the decisions that the the Biden team decided to make early on, because to your point, the Whitmer's, the Buttigiegs, the Josh Shapiro's there was a lot of the Gavin Newsom's there were names out there las year, two years ago, when when internal Democrats started to have this conversation.

And Joe Biden continued to say, no, I'm going to run.

Former Governor John Engle say yesterday that the Democrats could have won with anybody else but Kamala Harris, although that was their big mistake.

Should they have come up with a better nominee?

Well, here's the thing.

Republicans two weeks were saying we'd be able to win with any with any other Republican than Donald Trump.

Right.

So I just this whole like any other candidate, I think it's much more at this point about like the messaging and how voter feel like they're being heard.

Somebody in a forum the other day asked the question, was this race in some way related to sexism and racism?

Yes, I think so.

Yes, Yes.

Yeah, I do.

Were American men ready some American men ready to have a woman calling the shots in the Oval Office.

A lot of were not.

And I think that was a smart piece of strategy by the Trump campaign.

They were thinking at the beginning, we're going to get completely clobbered by the female vote.

So guess what?

Let's double down on the other side of the gender divide Did they get clobbered by the female vote?

They did get clobbered.

They got clobbered by not enough to win or lose.

They because they got the male vote, because they reall doubled down on the male vote.

I mean, you know, you saw it at the national convention.

Everything they played up there.

I mean, the numbers speak for themselves.

A first presidency with 1789, we've had 45 men in that position, never a woman for that elective office.

There's something about the word commander in chief that a lot of males se only a male filling that role.

And let's be honest, there are a lot of females who have trouble saying a woman should be quote unquote, commander in chief.

And we saw that in some of these vote totals here.

Now, you could certainly make the case that maybe the women who've run so far haven't been the right candidates.

But America does have a problem trying to elect a woman to that position.

It will happen.

It's just a matter of when.

Some of the data sai that people felt that women were just not emotionally prepared to be in the Oval Office.

Oh, geez.

Oh, look, you have have you not seen that data?

Not recently.

And what I will say is, if you're talking about the two candidates at the to of the ticket in this pass rate and which one was more emotional on any given day, I think that I think the fact.

I agree with you 1000% I'm just repeating back to you what I've seen in the data that some people have said that and it's obviously.

Some people have said a lot of things here.

Yes.

I don't know, Tim.

I mean, look, you you look at the first 20 minutes of this program, the issue that we've talked about.

Right.

The economy, the fact that Biden didn't pull out soon enough, the the different issues that were driving this.

I mean, I think it was the candidate.

It was the environment that she was in.

It was the fact that she couldn't deliver a winning message.

I don't know that it has.

I mean, maybe there's a little bit of sexism there, but I feel like, you know, what have we talked about this whole time?

It was the economy.

It was it was all of these issues that any candidate couldn't deliver on.

I agree.

Those people that raise the issue, all they have to do is look at Gretchen Whitmer and Jennifer Granholm.

Okay.

In the state of Michigan, I think they supported their performance.

And if you talk to women who are in power, they say, you know what, we approach this this whole thing completely different than men do.

Men approach it as a war.

Moving the parts aroun women are into solving problems.

Have you ever heard the governor say that Ms. Clark.

Once or twice before?

Yeah.

I'll also put this out there that again, I sort of wonder, you know, look there is the cult of personality behind Donald Trump, so I want to name that.

But I also wonder, could a Nikki Haley have been the first female president?

Right.

Would would a race between Nikki Haley and Joe Biden have been, you know, the first female president?

But I mean, to your point, yes.

I mean, the United States in some respects was built on foundations of racism, misogyny, and it still is a huge part of this country.

Can we say that?

That was the specific reason?

It is one of the reasons.

I'm not suggesting that was the specific reason.

There was an undertone o foreign policy in this election that I think was a little more elevate compared to previous elections.

I mean, you have Gaza, you have the war in Ukraine and Trump was consistently contemptuous of the image of Kamala Harris representing the United States against the likes of Putin and Xi Jinping and so fort He said he just can't envision that she'll they'll eat her lunch.

And I think that it had a trickle down effect on a lot of the electorate.

It reinforced the idea that she would not be a strong leader.

And in a lot of polls, when you match the two of them, Trump and Harris consistently, Trump wins in the eyes of the voters going into the election.

The strong leader type.

Let's talk about that.

Go across colors, too.

We saw some African-American men exactly saying that they see Donald Trump.

They found that attractive in Trump.

Making himself as a stronger leader and could make a tougher decision.

It wasn't the lion's share of them but there were certainly some.

And he increased his margi among African-American men and.

Right.

And and Latino men.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's talk about the house power struggle now.

And Matt Hall is the new speaker elect and Mr. Puri the Democratic leader.

Read the tea leaves there.

What does that mean for the future?

It means the governor's got some challenges.

I think it means big gridlock the next two years, big gridlock, Listen I talked to them yesterday.

You know, we got an agenda and we're going to move it.

And there will not be what they didn't know.

You know, I gave Bill Schutte a chance to say promis that there will be no gridlock.

And he answered another question.

Okay.

I thought that was a gimme.

while he's doing up his campaign from the state Senate.

You're our expert here on how.

I mean, I think Matt Hall excels at gridlock.

And he told me Wednesday that he thinks there are some bipartisan wins they can achieve.

He said he thinks they can find a permanent funding source within the existing budget for roads going forward because, of course, they the that the money that Whitmer has set aside over the past several years is has run out.

And now we're facing kind of a funding cliff for roads.

So they're going to have to figure that out.

But yeah, I think, you know, Matt Hall has has excelled in holding his caucus against a very slim Democratic majority in the House, and now he has the majority and he has to hold his caucus against a Democratic Senate and a Democratic governor.

Does he have to cooperate with the governor?

No.

Hell, no.

Well, what Excuse me, Did I miss something here?

She's got control of the Senate.

She has a veto pen.

And you're saying Matt Hal can be successful without her?

I mean, I think it depends on.

For him it's to stop Whitmer and the Democratic agenda that they've been pushing for two years, and that is successful.

Campaigning.

A lot of what they said is we can stop this.

We can stop this policy that's moving forward.

So if if success is defined by stopping policy that people agree with, he Can do that.

The wonderfully smart who we all adore.

Around this table.

President of Gongwer Zach Gorchow yesterday said, look, some of it is going to depend which Matt Hall right?

Was it Matt Hall from the first term, kind of bombastic or is it going to be the Matt Hall sort of the second term problem solver?

You know and I don't think we know yet, and I'm not sur that Matt Hall knows yet either.

I think it's the same Matt Hall consistently.

Oh, really?

That's a straight line.

He hasn't changed and he won't change.

T Tom Kunse It was I was told yesterday was confident going in that he had 34 votes.

Oh, my God.

I just just figured, okay, we remind everybody around the table, we've covered the elections.

I remember Lynn Jondahl and Joe Forbes some years ago.

Sure.

Both told me to Timmy walk into the room, I got the votes, I got them, I got the votes, and they ended up with five votes or something like that.

You know what?

They had votes, but not enough.

You sort of walk into something and say to Tim Skubick I don't have the vote.

Well, I.

Know when these guys might think you're unusual.

And say, look, I think this next look, you know, but we hav let's remember, right, that the for the firs four years of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, it was it was divided government.

Right.

So we've we've seen this movie before.

It's different actors and different players, but we have seen this situation before in Lansing.

And it's it's going to be.

You folks don' believe he will reach out to her to try to to work on stuff together?

I think Beth is right.

I think if he sees a clear path to something that he feels his constituency wants him to work with the governor on and it may be rolled, then he will try to do that because he wants to be able to say, I have a win.

I think you're also right that he's going to play loyal opposition as much as he can, because let's face it, we've got a gubernatorial election coming around the corner in two years.

And Republicans, if you talk to Pete Hoekstra, he feel we've got a real shot at this.

All right.

Let me finish the program on that note.

John James, Kevin Rinke, Perry Johnson, Dick DeVos, Eric Nesbitt.

Pete Hoekstra, Tudor Dixon, Mike Duggan, McMorrow, Swanson, Gilchrist, Buttigieg and Benson.

Huh.

I know.

Really, you should have listed who is not possibly running a shorter.

And there will be more an there will be more discussion.

Mike Rogers Let's add him to the list of My point is I kid you not I kid you not my guys at the TV station the day after you'd like to say, All right, so who's running for governor?

Is it could we just tak a breath here for half a second?

And thank you for watching.

Thanks for your great analysis.

More of off the record right here next week.

See you there.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Bellwethe public Relations, a full service strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com For more off the record, visit wkar.org Michigan Public Television stations have contributed to the production costs of off the record.