DETROIT – How badly have Republicans done when it comes to winning U.S. Senate races in Michigan? Consider this:
Flash back to Nov. 4, 1952, almost a lifetime in the past. The United States had less than half the population it does now. Most American homes didn’t have television yet.
Alaska and Hawaii were territories, not states, and neither Michigan U.S. Sen. Gary Peters nor his Republican challenger this year, John James, had even been born. But something did happen on that date that hasn’t happened since: a Democratic U.S. Senator from Michigan ran for re-election and was defeated.
That happened only because of the Eisenhower landslide that year. The Democrat who lost, Blair Moody, was a newspaperman who had only been in the Senate for a year, and had been appointed to fill a vacancy. Even then, he barely lost.
Republican near-total failure in senate races seems puzzling. They have won races for governor in Michigan, more often than not. The GOP has solidly controlled the state senate ever since 1983.
But in Senate races, forget it. In the seven decades since Blair Moody lost, Democrats have almost completely dominated U.S. Senate races in Michigan, winning 13 of the last 14 contests.
Michigan Republicans last won in 1994, a national GOP landslide year, when Spencer Abraham won an open seat.
Six years later, he was beaten by Debbie Stabenow, who has been reelected three times since. Michigan Republicans are used to striking out in Senate races, especially against incumbents.
But this year, they think they can change that. They are spending record amounts of money in what is sure to be the state’s most expensive and first $100 million U.S. Senate race ever. Their candidate is raising as much as the incumbent and has kept the race close — and is drawing national notice.
It’s safe to say two things about John James, the 39-year-old Republican nominee: First, three years ago, almost nobody had ever heard of him, and second, as an African-American combat veteran and Apache helicopter pilot, he is anything but a conventional Republican candidate for high office.
And while he has never been elected to anything, if his Senate run this year looks familiar, it should. Two years ago, the even less well-known James was also the GOP U.S. Senate nominee, that time against Stabenow, running for a fourth term.
He was the nominee mainly because no other Republican of any stature wanted it. Longtime Congressman Fred Upton of Kalamazoo thought about it, then declined. Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert Young got in to the race, and then hopped out of it.
They concluded Stabenow was unbeatable. It looked like the GOP would be left with a venture capitalist named Sandy Pensler, until James got in, and said he supported Donald Trump “2,000 percent.” That won him the President’s enthusiastic endorsement –and the nomination.
After that, he threw himself into furious campaigning and fundraising. As expected, he did indeed lose.
But he raised $15 million, ran far ahead of his party’s candidate for governor, and finished only 275,000 votes behind Stabenow, who had won her previous race by nearly a million votes.
That led to his being nominated to run against Gary Peters, a freshman U.S. Senator first elected in 2014. Peters, 62, is a longtime fixture in Michigan politics; he has been a state senator, the lottery commissioner and a three-term congressman.
He has also had a financial career with Merrill Lynch and Paine Webber and is a lawyer. He is seen as hard-working and competent, but not especially charismatic or flashy, and polls show that despite his years of service, he is not extremely well-known.
Six years ago, however, Gary Peters became the only Democrat in the United States to win an open seat in the U.S. Senate, in a year that saw Republicans gain a shocking nine seats in that body.
Underestimating him might be a mistake. True, there are signs that James has personally connected with voters and those hungry for a GOP win. “I’ll be blunt with you,” Peters said in a recent fundraising appeal to supporters. “I was the ONLY Democratic senator who was outraised this summer.”
Both candidates raised $14 million from June to September, however, and have flooded the airwaves with commercials. James’ ads have been especially negative, seeking to paint Peters as ineffective, and in some cases flatly distorting his record.
But Peters has been hitting back, attacking James for ducking positions on the issues, and running old footage of him saying he was “2,000 percent” behind Trump, an attitude no longer popular in much of Michigan.
James has, indeed, refused to say how he stands on many issues, though he repeats familiar Republican talking points. While he is staunchly anti-abortion, he refuses to say whether he would support an exception for rape and incest.
Like most Republicans, he says he wants to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. But he says any plan would have to protect the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, and he has not taken a position on President Trump’s contention that Obamacare is unconstitutional and should be overturned.
In recent weeks, things have been looking better for Gary Peters. Most polls began to show him five to 10 points ahead. Trump has fallen considerably behind in the state, and unlike two years ago, James seems to be distancing himself from him, stressing that he will be “independent” on major issues.
Still, Republicans are fighting hard here. If Gary Peters should lose, it likely will doom Democratic hopes of winning control of the U.S. Senate, one of the few things on which both parties agree. That’s why both are spending lavishly and fighting so hard.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
