SOUTHFIELD, MI – There’s no question that African-Americans have lost considerable political clout in Michigan.
But a former legislator named Leslie Love intends to do something about that in a big way. She plans to challenge the conventional system and the odds and get elected to the U.S. Senate.
“Why not elect a candidate who has been in the community all her life and has a track record of getting it done?” she said last week. “And when I say community, I don’t mean just Black people, I mean Southeastern Michigan, where most people live,” she said.
Forty years ago, Detroit had a black mayor and two African-American members of Congress. Two years ago, there was a record 20 Black members of the Michigan Legislature, nearly equivalent to their share of the state’s population.
Today, Michigan’s largest city has a white mayor who is serving his third four-year term. Though Detroit is about 80 percent Black, not a single Detroiter is represented in Congress by an African-American. There are three fewer Blacks in the state legislature. And though 90 percent of African-Americans vote Democratic, Michigan’s only Black member of Congress is a Republican from the suburbs.
The top statewide elected African-American official is Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, but he, like a vice-president, was elected as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s running mate, not on his own. There are a few elected state board of education members, including that body’s president, Pamela Pugh, but they aren’t widely known.
When this year began, Michigan’s senior U.S. Senator, Debbie Stabenow, surprised the state’s politicians by announcing she wasn’t going to run for a fifth term next year, something no one had seen coming. “It bothered me that when they (the politicians and media) immediately started making lists of who might run, there wasn’t anyone Black on those lists,” Leslie Love said.
Actually, Gilchrist was on many early lists — but almost immediately said he wasn’t running. With remarkable speed, Democrats coalesced around U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a three-term congresswoman whose district is now centered in Lansing.
Not all African-Americans were convinced she was it, however. But what disgusted Love was that instead of Black leaders reaching out to someone like herself, a native Detroiter who served three terms in the legislature, they instead have attempted to recruit Hill Harper, the 57-year-old TV star of The Good Doctor.
Harper has an impressive background. He has a degree from Brown and a law degree from Harvard. He has expressed interest in the Senate race, but hasn’t made a commitment to run.
But as Love sees it, there are two things wrong with his potential candidacy. “Not to take anything away from him, but he has never lived in Michigan, and has no experience at all in politics or government.
“Why don’t they want to promote their own grass-roots talent who’ve proven they can get things done here?” The answer, of course, is that “they,” African-American and party leaders, think they need a candidate with a big name, the ability to raise money, or both.
Democrats do, however, have a potential problem with Black voters. Mostly not of them voting Republican, but the worry they may not show up to vote at all, which has sometimes happened.
“They tell us all the time we have to vote. You have to get your community to vote. But then what does that get us?” she said.
Too often, she thinks the answer is not much.
When African-Americans don’t vote in sufficient numbers, Democrats indeed lose. In the past, Republicans have nominated African-American candidates for both governor and senator, though none have won. But Democrats have never nominated a Black candidate for those top jobs. In recent years they have sometimes nominated African-American candidates for secretary of state or attorney general against Republican incumbents, and then gave them little support or other backing afterwards.
More than a few Blacks have been bitter about that – and some still are. Leslie Love, incidentally, has a more varied background than just politics. Now 51, she has degrees from three Michigan colleges, and has a background in human resources and the fine arts.
For many years she was director of theatre operations for both Marygrove College and Wayne County Community College, before being elected to the legislature. While she calls herself “the true progressive in this race,” she drives a Jeep Wrangler, loves to hunt and fish, and isn’t enthusiastic about gun control, other than background checks.
Term limits meant she had to leave office at the end of 2020, and she is now a deputy director for MDOT, the Michigan Department of Transportation, a job she’d have to quit if she becomes a candidate. Nevertheless, she is planning on an April announcement.
The odds against her seem very long. She has no obvious significant source of campaign funds, whereas Slotkin raised $1.3 million within hours of announcing she was a candidate.
Yet if Leslie Love can raise some issues and get some attention, she may at the very least provide her party with a valuable wake-up call. While Donald Trump lost Michigan in 2020, that was all because of lost support among white suburban voters.
He actually did slightly better with Black voters in Detroit. For Democrats, ignoring the implications of that would not be wise.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
