the new chai of the state Republican Party.

And former West Michigan Congressperson Pete Hoekstra is up next on OTR.

our lead story.

New polling data in th presidential race in our state.

Note our conversatio this week is with Dave Boucher Jordyn Hermani, and Chad Livengood sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record.

production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Martin Waymire a full servic strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at Martinwaymire.com And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thanks very much.

Welcome back to Studio C. We are taping on Thursda because of the holiday weekend.

I hope everybody has a safe one.

We have new polling data in the governor's race, two polls, Emerson and also the folks for Channel 6 and the Nexstar people.

A statistical dead heat.

Anybody surprised by that?

No, I think that's what we've seen everywhere right since Vice President Harris came into the race.

It's kind of been a shift.

It was obviously President Trump's race seemingly to los when when President Biden was in and that we've seen kind of this this meeting in the middle now that Vice President Harris is the candidate.

Is the Trump campaign in trouble, yay or nay?

Well, I mean, it's hard t determine at this point, right?

I mean, they were enjoying a quite sizable lead when Biden was still in the race.

But from the polling, it seems like Harris has made up a lot of that lost ground.

So if I'm the Trump campaign, I'm definitely trying to figure out whateve kind of weakness that they have, because clearly the playbook that was trying to be run during Biden as the candidate of choice, it's not going to translate with someon like a Harris and Walz ticket.

It does seem like Donald Trum is trying to find new footing in what is the new message is going to win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which we all know is what this race is essentially coming down to.

We can see right now these candidates are crisscrossing the state.

They are crossing back and forth over Lake Michigan, almost seemingly near-daily basis.

And and this is just the end of August.

And we've got 60 more days of of of this fun.

And so you're looking like Donald Trump was in Howel last week kind of a small event.

60 people in a sheriff's office garage.

Not a big, huge rally and just giving a speech and and then moving on.

Not and then like on Monday, he was at the National Guard Association and he even noted this is not the usual raucous kind of crowd I'm used to.

And it was, you know to sort of use Trumpian terms, super low energy of of an event.

And he's looking for what is the new energy that he can that he can grab on to.

Well, in that he' in Pottersville later on today.

Yes.

Well, Potterville The road to the White House goes through Potterville.

Here is here's the defens of Potterville and the gizzards at Joe's Gizzard Cafe, famous in Potterville, which has a gizzard festival every June for those who don't know.

So Eaton county has become a battleground in this state.

Trump won Eaton county by 499 votes in 2020.

He won Eaton County by five and a half points.

In 2016, Obama won by three points.

Obama won in 2012 and by eight points in 2008.

It has become more and more of a must win area.

Its is like kind of a mini McComb County in many ways.

It's got a little more of a of a Lansing suburbs, some affluence, but also a lot of working class voters.

And so Trump's going there to appeal to that, to that voting class.

Let' do a little bit of a deeper dive into some of these numbers on the Emerson poll.

Independent voters, they're very close, 46-43, 46 for Harris, 43 for Mr. Trump.

But women, check this out.

She's got a 15 point lead and he's got an 11 point lead lead with men.

But here's one under the age of 30.

She's at 62-32.

That almost sounds inaccurate.

I actually don't thin that's that big of a surprise.

I think that the Democratic Party has don more to appeal to young voters.

I think we saw at the DNC that there were influencers and podcasters and other people that, again, in theory appeal to a younger audience.

The case with younger voters has always been turnout, like, will these voters, will that enthusiasm translate to people voting?

Historically, sometimes it' happened, sometimes it hasn't.

Of course, Democrats focus on that turnout rate.

If they get those people to come out, if they get that high enthusiasm that we've seen.

Post VP Harris coming into the race to translate to the polls, then President Trump could be in trouble.

Also Harris leads in all of the seven swing states with independents, except in Michigan and North Carolina, where it is tied.

Will this race be decided by independents?

Absolutely.

I mean, there is not a lot on the margins here.

Some some of the people may be on the fence or looking at like Robert F Kennedy Jr.

They're going to start breaking in different ways.

Obviously, Trump thinks he's going to get a bunch of RFK votes, which in some of the previous polling last month where RFK was getting close to 10% of the polls.

So.

So there is there is some independen voters still up for grabs here.

But you just go back to like going Eaton County can trump appeal to women in Delta Township and Grand Ledge That is kind of the question, because if you can get if you can get into Delta Township and Grand Ledge, that translate in a whole lot of other suburban areas around Kalamazoo, around Detroit, around Grand Rapids, and and even around Flint and Saginaw.

I mean, can we honestly be surprised that they're trailing with women?

I mean, speaking as a woman, been a woman fo nearly 30 years of my life now.

I mean, the comments that hav come out of the campaign about, you know, against childles cat ladies, against, you know, the concept of tampon Tim, how Tim Walz, you know, oversaw a bill that went into effect in his state that put tampons in all all bathrooms across Minnesota like that To me, as a woman, you hear tha and you hear that there is and I don't want to go so fa to say an attack, but I somewhat is like an attack on femininity, on women, on women's choices.

You couple that with Democrats continuing to hammer home the concept of tying Projec 2025 to Trump and his campaign, which goes into large detai about how it would curb abortion at the federal level.

What if I am a young woma looking towards my two options?

Are there really two options, frankly, because one side i saying, Yeah, do do your thing.

Be a young woman in America o the other side of saying, well, be a woman in America, if it fits my specific definition of what that means, not just young women.

If you are a Gen X woman and you're hearing Donal Trump saying how Kamala Harris is stupid, you know, that's not going over well with independent voters or even some Republican women who who voted for him in back in 2016.

Well, is it true that his people have sat him down?

If you can sit Mr. Trump down and say, look, you need to get off of that message and get on to policy?

And he asked his audience the other day, should I do policy or attack my opponents and guess which side they came down on attacking opponents.

I think that's not a huge surprise given that people typically, especially these large event who attend these events.

Right.

Like but the whole concept is President Trump doesn't need to win the vote of people coming to his rallies, in some cases, traveled hundreds of miles to see him.

They're probably safe, Trump voters.

He needs to get to some of those people that you talked about who are either independents or somehow haven't created an opinion about Mr. Trump.

I think we've seen many, many times, though, where he as a candidate will say, well, my advisers say this, for example, about whether or not to mute microphones at a at a debate.

My advisers sa that we should have them muted.

That's how they were before.

But I don't really care whether that happens.

So you'll see him tal out of both sides of his mouth on not just that issue, many, many issues, But to Jordyn's point, if you're talking, you're trying to get people to talk about the economy, which every poll indicates most voters broadly say tha the economy is this main issue.

And then you come out you call your opponents stupid, or you talk about some of these other ideas that are just frankly less complicated than how to fix the economy.

It distracts from this message that seemingly by vice presidential nominee J.D.

Vance and others want to focus on it just takes away from some of that messaging that, in theor could help Republican campaign.

By the same token, with the enthusiasm that the Trump people have, I think he is also hoping that these people will just not go home from this rally, but they'll go home and knock on doors, make phone calls, talk to their neighbors so that you get a synergy there out of that out of that group of people.

I think for looking at enthusiasm that the Harris campaign is the campaign that is really pushing wit this, again, this this vibrancy that was, frankly, because of this transition from President Biden.

Certainly former President Trump had this enthusiasm edge when it came to whether or not it was going to be Biden versus him.

But now with the Harri campaign, again, I think that's that's invigorating voter that were just going to sit out.

All right.

We recently had the two party conventions, state part conventions, these poor people, and do the Democratic thing and come back and do one.

You covered the D convention.

What was the lead story out o the Democratic state convention?

Well, so, you know, it was pretty run of the mill to start considering that all but one of the seats that were up for selection were uncontested.

So the ballot was effectively decided.

However, there was a position for U of M Regent, an individual by the name of Huwaida Arraf and I apologiz if I've mispronounced that name, but she was backed very heavily by students and faculty, specifically those who are supportive of Palestin and the ongoing Israel Gaza war.

She did not end up getting the Board of Regents seat.

Two other individuals were tapped and said close.

Two other individuals were tapped.

Was it close?

It was you know, each of the candidates did get around 2000 votes, but the way that they tallied those votes was through a specific weighting formula.

All that to say the entire time of that convention, Democrats were stressing unity.

They were stressing that, yo know, here are our candidates.

We need to get behind them and then fast forward to the end.

When they announced the regents and those same individuals who were there to support Huwaida ended up get rallying at the front, yelling, show us the math, yelling.

We will remember in November towards these individuals at the party, implying that because they did not get this position, they did not have their candidate of choice, that that's a direct attack on these individuals who are Pro-Palestine.

That was on the heels of not being able to get on the podium at the national convention, which was a cause celeb there as well.

This is still a ticking time bomb for Democrats.

They had 100,000 people sit out and protest Joe Biden in the presidential primary.

There is well over 300,000 people of Arab and North African descent living in mostly in metro Detroit.

And and half of them are adults and voters.

This is this is an are that they are blindspot there.

They're are they're walking into an election.

Not sure how it's going to work out when you have things like thi where you have weighted formulas and basically progressives yelling some of the things we hear from Donald Trump.

It's a rigged election.

The the the the distrust on that side is palpable.

Where is the weighted formula in our democracy?

Do the founding fathers put that in the democracy?

That sounds to m like a convenient political tool to get where you want to go.

And guess what?

Denise Illitch from the billionaire family.

And Shauna Ryder Diggs essentially establishment Democrats.

They get they pull away wit the victory at this convention.

I mean, this this could lead to some you know, some some some angst within the party about these where these conventions are set up.

By the same token, however, Mr. Hoekstra, our guest, who's about to come on and defend himself here shortly, said that the party was unified.

The Republicans, if you're sending the cops to take somebody out of the hall, is that unification?

I don't know if it speaks to unity or not, but this is this is in theory, this is democracy, right?

You're having these open ideas, these open this these areas.

We're supposed to share ideas about your party.

You're supposed to debat that.

You're supposed to vote.

The people who attend these conventions are going to vot for the parties already, Right?

You're not probably coming to a Democratic convention.

And but for the formula for how you're counting those votes, deciding to vote for Donald Trump, there might be one perso I'd love to talk to that person if they're out there.

This is a very, very insidery argument that almost never translates to those independents that we talked about deciding these elections for either party.

One piece of final business.

Last week on the show, the question was raised, Do the Democrats at the convention talked about their mothers a lot and somebody asked the question, has Donal Trump ever talked about his mom?

I actually did some research which is a very dangerous thing to do.

Okay.

Yes.

He gave a you gave a very interesting interview to the Hill.

He said, I had a great mom and she loved me and I could do no wrong, which may have been a big problem.

But he did speak in glowing terms of his mom.

Just to clear up the record on that point that we left open ended last week.

Now let's call in Pete Hoekstra.

All right.

Welcome back to the program.

The new chair of the Republican Party, Pete Hoekstra.

So what did you find offensiv in the first part of the show?

What were we dead wrong on?

I would never call you guys being dead wrong on anything.

I did find your back behind your back.

Absolutely.

Everything's fairplay behind your back.

But I find out, you know, you're you're absolutely consumed by Donald Trump.

I would guess that a high percentage of the first part of the program was Donald Trump this, Donald Trump that we lov you talking about our candidate.

Does Donald Trump need to change his messagin to get off the personal attacks on Miss Harris?

I think attacking Miss Harris and talking about her policies is exactly the right thing to do.

He was calling her ugly is not a policy.

The the focus of the campaign is talking about the difference between Donald Trump's policies, the impac that they will have in Michigan and, you know, the Harris policies and the impact that they will have in Michigan once more that they will have in Michigan.

Can I try once more should he stop...You can try as many times as you want.

But I'm not going anywhere else.

The policy is where the campaign is talking about the policies because that's what the people of Michigan.

I didn't ask you about policy.

Why does he keep talking abou her looks and her intelligence?

Because the her policies are not very smart.

All right.

Embracing the new Green Deal putting an end to fossil fuels, Embracing the new Green Deal putting an end to fossil fuels, Those are devastating policies to the state of Michigan.

So her policies, you know, are hurt the people of Michigan being the deciding vot on the Inflation Reduction Act, which all it did was create inflation, which is probably the number one issue on the minds of some of the people that you were talking about today.

20% inflatio over the three and a half years that the Biden-Harris team has been in place.

All we hear abou is people saying, you know what, I'm not sure my paycheck can make i to the end of the month anymore.

One aspect of the Inflation Reduction Act is subsidies for converting assembly and build assembly plants to EV plants.

And right here in Lansing, they're going to take a Lansing Grand River and turn it and spen $500 million of taxpayer money to turn the Cadillac plant into a EV plant.

Yes.

Okay.

What would Donald Trump stop that?

Well, I mean what Donald Trump is saying is let the consumers make up their mind.

I mean, I found the stor very interesting this morning.

It is politicians talking to politicians in Washington, talking to the mayor, talking to business groups.

And I forgot one component of the equation.

Nobody's talking to consumers.

Oh, you know, the mayor of Lansing thinks everybody ought to be driving EVs.

And man, am I glad I'm getting this money.

Well, you know what?

EVs are not ready for prime time.

Sure.

If you're a commute and you're going 30 to 60 miles, 30 to 40 miles, one way to work and you're doing that EV's Perfect.

If you're going up to the U.P.

I'm driving 1000 miles a week.

I don't have time to stop and get charged.

Would he stop the subsidies to EVs.

I don't kno exactly what he'll do on this, but I think.

Should he?

I think that what we have said as a campaign is very, very clear.

Let this move by market forces and not skew this by massive government spending, because what have we done the last three and a half years?

We have done massive government invest investments into EVs.

And what have we seen in the last 30 to 60 days?

Ford scaling back thei investment and saying, you know, maybe we didn't get this right.

We're going to write off $1.9 billion because we're not going to go to EVs anymore.

We're going to hybrids.

GM What are they doing?

I think we got this strategy wrong.

Stellantis The massive government investments have skewed the market and it's forced the companies to make decisions not in their best interests, their shareholders best interests or taxpayers best interests.

Mr. Chairman, how would former President Trump's plan to increase tariffs on China and Chinese products make those products cheaper for Americans who are already saying to your point that things are too high, it's not necessarily going to make them cheaper.

But when you're saying think about think about the American worker, you got you got the American workers here who are in the tool and die business, they're going to lose their jobs because of unfair competition coming from China.

All right.

It's unfair, unfair competition coming coming from China.

And it doesn't matter about what the cost of something is at this point in time.

If you're out of work, yo can't afford anything anymore.

Just earlier, you said that people were telling you that they were concerned that their paychecks wouldn't make it far enough.

I know.

I understand the concept you're saying about not having a paycheck, but for the people who are going to have jobs, how would increasing the price on products from China make it cheaper for people who buy many products from China?

The what you'll do is you'll ultimately move some of that production back into the United States.

Are there costs with restarting that.

that'll make those products more expensive?

Of course, there are costs associated with this, but subsidizing China.

Okay.

Putting billions of money, billions of dollars in a key industry.

Okay.

For Michigan, which is the automobile industry, 70 I think it's 79% of the people of Michigan believe that the auto industry is extremely important to the economy of Michigan and our governor and the federal government subsidizing Chinese investment in growth in the automobile industry.

Tell me how that helps automobile workers and the economy of Michigan.

It just doesn't compute.

Well, why would you want Goshen in the country you're talking about?

Why would you want Gotion to go to Mexico and build that plant in Mexico and then sell that product into the U.S.?

We're not talking about just E.V.

batteries.

We're also more energy storage systems, which are going to be crucial for storing all this electricity we're capturing from the sun.

You know, it's amazing to me that when you have people like Leon Panetta, former I think director of the CIA, former secretary of defense, saying Gotion and these plants are a threat to America's national security, that we have people in the media, we have people in the Michigan government, in the federal government, arguing that we ought to be we ought to be subsidizing Gotion when Leon Panetta calls it a national security threat.

That doesn't compute.

That makes no sense.

We're, you know, collectively around the table.

And Michigan taxpayer are sending money to a company and a country that is a threat to our national security.

That just doesn't work.

And yes, under Donald Trump, those subsidies to China will stop.

You know, if we're going to subsidize and, you know, and create investment in the US through the government, it needs to be into American companies.

And let's go back to the original question.

Is Donald Trump going to stop the $500 million grant to convert the Lansing Grand River plant to an EV plant?

I on that one specific, I don't know.

But I think in the lon run, he's what we said earlier, he's going to let consumer and the evolution of technology make that decision not the heavy hand of government that says, oh, that's the technolog that I think is going to work.

We're going to pour a bunch.

And that's what's been happening for three and a half years.

And where we are at now, Ford, GM, Stellantis have all said what the federal government has been pushing us to do hasn't worked.

How many billions of dollars?

Ford has scaled back their plant in Marshall.

Tesla is heavily subsidized in California and Texas where they built plants.

Yeah, yeah.

And they've also lost billions of dollars.

Well I mean and so there's no, like foolproof plan here.

Business plan in Tesla i held up by a lot of Republicans these day as as the gold standard of EVs.

Maybe the gold standard of EVs.

They're making 800,000 cars a year.

I mean, why should GM and Ford not be responding to that?

Why should the federal government why is it conservatives and is taxpayers?

Should we be encouraged?

Should we be encouraging companies to make decisions that do not work in their economic interests?

What is it on the Ford F-150?

Right.

The what are the lightning?

The lightning, how much are they losing for every car that they every lightning that they built?

I think it's over $100,000.

Jordyn has a question.

Yeah, I have.

Excuse me.

I kind of just taking a step back here.

When we were talking about polling earlier today, we mentioned that the Trump campaign is very far behind with young voters and somewhat far behind with women.

What do they need to be doing to make up those losses?

They don't focus on specific categories.

Okay.

I think we've got messages for young workers, you know, in terms of creating an economy that will create jobs so that when they actually get out of school or when they finish their journeyman training and those types of things, there will actually be jobs for them.

And, you know, so you go through there.

But the bottom line about the polling is this is a dead heat race which is what we always expected it would be.

And if the when we get down to the economy, security, the border and those types of issues, which I think folks, people will focus on over the last 68 days, we're going to do we're going to do well.

I mean, but it's not not undercut by, again, your candidate of choice going out, calling women stupid like Kamala Harris stupid, saying that, you know childless cat ladies creep J.D.

Vance out.

Like, what are women supposed to hear when That's what you guys want to focus on.

But that's what they're saying, sir.

I'm talking t people every day on the street and they are talking about they'r are talking about their economy.

They are talking about where their paycheck can go.

They're talking about, wow, if Kamala, she wants an open border, All right?

She wants to get rid of fossil fuels.

No fracking in Pennsylvania.

Those are jobs in Pennsylvania, in Michigan that go away.

If that's what people are focused on, you can create whatever dialog you want around this table.

But I don't think it matches the dialog that I hear when I'm talking to actual voters and what they're concerned about.

You know, when when you go and you know you didn't talk about the poll that comes out and says, hey what are people interested in?

Economy, economy, inflation, economy, inflation, the border, they're not talking about you know, I don't like what Donald Trump says.

They're going in.

They're saying it's the economy, it's inflation, and it's the border.

Some of the foreign policy stuff, that is what they are talking about.

And in fairness to that, though, but suburban women are largely credited with the reaso why Donald Trump lost in 2020.

So, I mean, again, though, going back to gender specific kind of attacks, like you're not at all concerned that that's going to be more concerned about getting them.

But I mean, the problem, the issue that you have today is, you know, suburban housewives, the are concerned about the ability for them to provide a lifestyle and the quality of life they want for their kid because it's been eroded by 20%.

We talk about young people, people going out and trying to buy their first home.

All of a sudden, they find tha that part of the American dream is not available to them anymore because we have 7% mortgage rates and housing prices have skyrocketed.

That's what you know, I've got kids, you know, they all have had their first home.

But, you know, they're thinking about scaling up.

They can't do it anymore.

Mr. Chairman you want to stay for over time?

I love over time.

Absolutely nothing better than over time.

There you go.

We're going to go to close credits, go wkar.org for more of Mr. Hoekstr right after all of this stuff, production of Off the Record is made possible, in part by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at Martinwaymire.com For more off the record, visit wkar.org Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of off the record