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Vice President Mike Pence arrived at Mackinac Island in Michigan in an eight-vehicle motorcade, prompting cries of “sacrilege” on social media, the Detroit Free Press reports.
Cars are generally banned on the island, and that century-old ban is integral to its charm.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on Twitter: “Disgusting. I am in such disbelief that this was allowed to happen. This Administration doesn’t care about the law (you know, the U.S. Constitution), so it shouldn’t surprise me so much that they don’t care about our history or traditions.”
A new EPIC-MRA poll in Michigan finds Joe Biden leading President Trump in a general election match up, 51% to 41%.
“But while Biden’s 10-point lead — more than double the 4-percentage-point margin of error in the poll — is the largest lead posted by a Democrat in the poll, Biden isn’t the only one with an edge over the sitting Republican president…. The three other top candidates running — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris — all lead Trump, though by smaller margins.”
“Republicans are suing to stop Michigan’s new citizen redistricting commission before it begins, alleging the voter-approved amendment is ‘blatantly unconstitutional’ and discriminates against participants based on political service or family ties,” the Detroit News reports.
“The amendment to the Michigan Constitution prohibits participation by anyone who in the last six years was a partisan candidate, elected official, political appointee, lobbyist, campaign consultant and officer or member of the governing body of a political party. It also excludes a parent, child or spouse of any of those individuals.”
A new EPIC-MRA poll in Michigan finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump in a presidential matchup, 52% to 41%.
A new EPIC-MRA poll in Michigan finds 49% of voters say they will definitely vote to replace President Trump and another 16% say they will consider voting for someone else. Only 31% said they will definitely vote to re-elect Trump.
Key finding: “Self-described independent voters are driving down Trump’s numbers. Among independents, 44 percent say they will definitely vote for someone else and 27 percent say they will consider backing another candidate, while only 18 percent say they would definitely vote to re-elect.”
“It’s musical chairs this year in the Michigan Senate, where state Sen. Rick Outman (R) won election to replace his term-limited boss and then hired her on staff,” the Detroit News reports.
“Then-Sen. Judy Emmons (R) had hired Outman as a district liaison aide after he was termed out of the state House at the end of 2016. The Six Lakes Republican would have earned a $69,500 annual taxpayer-funded salary in 2018 but resigned part way through the year to run for the 33rd District seat Emmons was being term limited out of. Back in the Legislature and now making $71,685 a year as a state senator, Outman turned to Emmons, hiring the Sheridan Republican to his old job as a district liaison.”
“Republican lawmakers may be violating the state constitution with fast-tracked bills in the lame-luck Legislature that curb the powers of incoming Democratic officeholders or water down proposals backed by Michigan voters, legal experts say,” the Detroit Free Press reports.
“Republicans who control Michigan’s Legislature voted Wednesday to advance a measure that strips campaign-finance oversight power from the Democratic secretary of state-elect, and they were poised to give lawmakers authority to stand up for GOP-backed laws if they think incoming the Democratic governor and attorney general are not adequately defending the state’s interests,” NBC News reports.
“The lame-duck moves followed within hours of similar efforts in Wisconsin, where lawmakers voted earlier Wednesday to shift clout to the Republican-controlled Legislature and weaken the Democrat replacing the GOP governor.”
The Atlantic: “Debate what counts as a blue wave in the rest of the country, but there was a tsunami off the Great Lakes. It was enormous and swept over everything: governor, Senate, attorney general, two flipped House seats with two female alumnae of the Obama administration, plus another that put a Palestinian American woman in John Conyers’s old spot, five flipped state Senate seats, five flipped state House seats, all the way down to the state supreme court and the state university boards. They legalized recreational pot, and the vote wasn’t close. They banned gerrymandering. They created automatic voter registration and an absentee-ballot process, essentially a backdoor way to institute early voting, which together will almost certainly lock in long-term the gains Democrats made.”
A judge ordered Michigan state health director Nick Lyon “to stand trial on involuntary manslaughter charges in the deaths of two men linked to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the Flint area, the highest ranking official to stand trial as a result of the scandal,” the Detroit Free Press reports.
Judge David Goggins said deaths likely could have been prevented if the outbreak had been publicly known and keeping the public in the dark was “corrupt.”
“Newly disclosed emails show Michigan Republicans angling to give their party a dominant position through gerrymandered maps and celebrating the plight of their Democratic rivals,” the New York Times reports.
“Republicans in the state have denied that they sought partisan gain when they drew new legislative boundaries in 2011. But a federal lawsuit, which argues the maps are unconstitutional, has unearthed records showing Republicans intent on drawing boundaries that would help their party.”
“A number of Russian-linked Facebook ads specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, two states crucial to Donald Trump’s victory last November,” CNN reports.
“Some of the Russian ads appeared highly sophisticated in their targeting of key demographic groups in areas of the states that turned out to be pivotal… The ads employed a series of divisive messages aimed at breaking through the clutter of campaign ads online, including promoting anti-Muslim messages.”
“As part of their investigations, both special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees are seeking to determine whether the Russians received any help from Trump associates in where to target the ads.”
President-elect Donald Trump has won Michigan’s 16 electoral votes, the AP reports.
“The Board of State Canvassers certified Trump’s 10,704-vote victory on Monday, nearly three weeks after the election. The two-tenths of a percentage point margin out of nearly 4.8 million votes is the closest presidential race in Michigan in more than 75 years.”
Here’s the final 2016 electoral map.
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“Donald Trump is headed back to Michigan on Monday for two rallies in suburban Grand Rapids and Warren, signaling that the Trump campaign believes the Great Lakes State could still be in play against Democrat Hillary Clinton,” the Detroit News reports.
The HuffPost Pollster average shows Hillary Clinton leading 48% to 40% in the state.
Washington Post: “In 2008, Barack Obama never filed paperwork to be an official Michigan candidate, and when the day of the election rolled around, his team encouraged people to vote ‘uncommitted.’ Hillary Clinton won the state with 54.6 percent of the vote, and uncommitted came in second. Total turnout was only about 600,000, since many voters didn’t bother to turn out for a race that didn’t mean anything.”
“For pollsters to know what an electorate will look like in an election, they look at what’s happened in past contests. That gives them a sense of what sort of composition of poll respondents will reflect the actual turnout on Election Day. But in Michigan, the most recent election was a weird one, in which turnout was dampened. Michigan so far is the only state that has seen more Democratic votes in 2016 than in 2008, with about 1.2 million people turning out Tuesday. Trying to predict what that turnout would look like based on half as many voters in a weird election eight years ago means there was a good chance the polls would be off.”
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Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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