Welcome back to OTR.

Our guests this week is Adrian Hemond.

He's a political consultant with his take on all things political in our state.

Our lead story, government reforms in the works.

Do they go far enough?

On the OTR panel, we have Craig Mauger, Elena Durnbaughl and Jordyn Hermani.

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 service 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.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C. Another edition of Off the Record.

Well, this week we all feel good because now we have ethics and disclosure.

What's going on in the legislature is beside itself trying to clean up its act.

I know it's Sunshine Week.

So this week we had the Senate report FOIA bills that would expand, who can ask for what from the legislature and the governor.

And then the House also introduced a packet of sunshine bills to increase the requirements for reporting tickets and increased disclosure.

The lawmakers always say these are steps.

I want to know, is this a baby step, a giant step or somewhere in between?

Well, I guess it really depends on who you ask, because right now, Michigan's transparency laws with respect to government are abysmal.

We don't have any we're, I believe, one of two states where you cannot FOIA the governor or the legislature.

So in that respect, this is a huge step forward.

But if you look at the meat of the bill, there are obvious exemptions for what can't be FOIAd that do somewhat make sense.

You know, you can't ask for Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist wife's phone number.

Obviously, that seems like that should go without saying.

But as part of those bills, you also can't FOIA constituent communications between lawmakers and in district constituents.

There is a little bit of a caveat for if that in district constituent is a lobbyist.

But that's the same thing for the governor to wear any of her constituents, which is the whole state.

You can't FOIA for those kinds of conversations which, you know, obviously if it's you or me, we're sort of just normal, everyday people.

But if you're a CEO or a businessman, you're reaching out to Governor Whitmer and saying, hey, you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, there is something wrong with these properties that I'm looking at buying or, you know, I'm just kind of making things up.

But, you know, that would be completely covered under these FOIA laws, which somewhat kind of spits in the face of the attempt to try and reform ethics in Michigan.

Is is there an attitude in town that we want the entire world on our platter, we being the Capitol press corps, and, you know, we'll never be satisfied.

You're looking at me with that question.

Yes.

I mean, I think I think the Senate FOIA package is a half step.

It's trying to get something that can be done.

They're trying to get something that will get some votes.

They're subjecting the governor and legislature to FOIA, but they're treating them differently than all other government officials in the state.

I mean, think about this.

They're select every saying lawmakers are different than the mayor.

Lawmakers are different than the city council.

Lawmakers are different than the state police because they want to treat themselves differently.

At the end of the day, that's what this comes down to.

They say we have to protect our constituent communications if they get it.

Communication from a constituent has a very sensitive need.

They then take that to a State Department.

That's what happens.

So they're going to be protected when it comes to them.

But we'll be able to get that information from the State Department is illogical.

This whole thing is illogical on the constituent communications.

It just is.

When you talk about the House transparency package, what I've seen from that, that looks like a sincere effort to take on what is ailing Lansing.

Will it pass?

I don't think so.

Probably not.

Who knows?

But they're really trying to take on in that package what the problems have been in state government.

It kind of reminds me of what happened in the fall with the proposal on financial disclosure bills where we had a house package that had a lot more substance to it and got watered down, which we ended up with the Senate package that had a lot less.

And lawmakers said that they're going to come back to address their stance.

And I'm saying that through we're taking steps to address that.

That is, are they going to come back to that?

Well, one area that I found interesting is that they finally addressed the revolving door.

And for those that don't play the game, if you're a state lawmaker, you could theoretically, as you're going out the door, pass legislation that would feather your nest in a new job that you would go to.

So the proposal is to put a stick in the door, but they only did it for a year.

Now, think about it.

If you want to feather your nest and vote on a bill and you're going to make big money on the end, are you willing to take a year of delayed gratification to get into a job, yay or nay?

Yeah, you probably are.

Or you could work as an unregistered consultant for a year and then all of a sudden register the next point.

But I mean, at that, it's hard to get around that without completely overhauling the lobby law, which these individuals could do if they wanted to.

But I mean, don't they don't but but exposing the tickets that the I mean these these lawmakers are not supposed to be taking gifts, but they're sitting in box suites and courtside at basketball games.

I mean, exposing that who's providing those tickets?

How are they getting them exposing the free travel?

I mean, our legislators are getting tens of thousands of dollars, in some cases in free trips in secret, exposing that is I mean, how you could say the capital press corps wants the world.

If you put this on the ballot, what would be the vote on exposing that type of unanimous?

Well, except for the wives and husbands of lobbyists or whatever.

How did the R's in the House respond to all this?

Crickets.

Well, Republicans in the House have had their own transparency FOIA package that they have been very focused on taking up the conversation from the Republican side of the aisle was more about, hey, why hasn't our ethics committee met and not so much about this bill package.

All right.

So it's on the table.

They go on spring break.

Nothing will get done until after spring break.

Do they get something done before the election?

The election, huh?

I mean, and that's not like a ringing endorsement of your guys.

If they follow their past statements, The people that make these decisions have come out in support of this before.

If they follow their statements that they've said publicly, this should be easy to do.

Now, that's what it is.

If they want to play politics and just use this to get a press release and move on and just kind of wait around and hope the clock ticks, it's not going to happen.

So I mean, that's what it's going to come down to.

How seriously does House Speaker Joe Tate want want to do I mean, take this, Does he believe that this is a priority or not?

That's the person that's going to decide.

All right.

We have some new polling data.

I can never pronounce this university.

How is it?

Quin-Pataki or How is it?

Quinnipiac That's it.

Thank you very much.

I would gladly invited you guys along.

The head to head between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump is different than the five person race, which is the reality race, right?

Right.

So, you know, the head to head Trump comes out ahead and with with with more people in the mix, it's it's too close to call.

There's a problem for Mr. Biden with more people in the mix.

What he needs to do is get Jill Stein out of the race and the other guy name Kennedy.

Well, I mean, it's interesting and I think back to 2016, you know, with Hillary and being an unpopular candidate for some Democrats, Trump being an unpopular candidate for some Republicans trumping new on the scene, you know, we're all shook up.

People went third party a lot in that race because they didn't know who to vote for.

Could that happen again this time around?

Potentially.

I mean, people always vote third party in every presidential election.

But given this year, we have, you know, many Republicans, not super excited that Trump's running again.

Very many Democrats not entirely thrilled Biden's running again.

We saw this with the uncommitted vote protest, 100,000 people, more than a hundred thousand people in Michigan decided to vote uncommitted on the on the Democratic ticket due to Biden's stance on the Israel Hamas war, which also in that poll that's not being very well-received either.

He has abysmal numbers with that.

People are not happy with the way that he's handling that.

So, you know, could this be an issue for Biden?

Yeah, I think that he should be taking this seriously.

And, you know, I don't think that, for instance, what we saw this week, his stop in Saginaw, where he was extremely sequestered away from voters, the visit to Saginaw did not move the needle.

No, I mean, the visit this happened on May as well not even have happened at all, frankly.

He had no public remarks.

He spoke to a private greeting excuse me, meeting group of politicians, some local supporters.

He met with no members of the Arab-American community in Michigan who have been crying, screaming for some kind of visit from the president.

People from his staff have met with him, but not Biden.

And he's been back to Michigan twice this year so far.

And he putted some golf balls with a dad and his kid.

I mean, these these poll numbers that we're talking about are are incredibly striking.

17% want to vote for one of these third party candidates who has no shot at winning just because they're upset with everything else.

I mean, they don't like the two main choices and they're willing to cast the protest vote.

If you go back to 2016, when Trump won Michigan narrowly, I mean, Jill Stein got like 3% or one marginal number, 17% voting for someone who's not going to win.

I mean, that's striking.

Biden has to do something about that, but he has to give people a reason to vote for him coming, making a whole trip to Michigan and not making a public statement at all.

Can you imagine?

I mean, I can't imagine that I've covered these races before.

The media is gathered there waiting to hear from the president.

And he says nothing.

He could have said he could have said one sentence about one priority.

It would have been the headlines everywhere, chose not to.

If he had to write a story out of the poll, what would it have been?

You didn't like any of it.

I mean, I think that the story there is that, you know, Biden needs to give Michigan voters a reason to support him.

And I'm thinking about the like Gen Z, younger voters who are especially unhappy but have been very influential in Michigan elections, who I mean, you have people who are willing to vote third party.

What about the number of people who just decide not to vote at all?

To that point and to Craig's point a second ago about there being a teen level number of people willing to vote third party again, going back to 2016, there was also a record number of people who sat out.

Yeah, there was a big lack of turnout out of Detroit, which really hurt Democrats.

And so you think if this is how high people are already saying, I'm going to vote third party, what is the lack of turnout going to look like?

And that's something that the Biden administration really needs to start considering and factoring in when they make these appearances like this, where, again, for many people in the state, I mean, my own husband barely knew that Biden was going to be in the state.

And I have been talking about it offhandedly throughout the week, just like, oh, he might be here.

He's going to come in.

But I'm saying, like, if you were at that level of politically connected in the know, what's the average person going to know?

Yeah.

If they see you when you come into town, stay on message.

He didn't have to worry about that because there apparently was no message.

Yeah, and that that seems to be where the race is at this point.

If Biden has all of these campaign consultants, campaign operatives, and they seem to be trying to make this race Trump versus Biden's campaign team, that's not going to work with voters, especially in Michigan.

Michigan voters are not going to be tricked into voting for somebody.

You have to put your candidate out there.

He has to do interviews.

He has to make statements about where he stands.

They want to hear from him.

We've seen this before.

Some Senate candidates in the state that try to play this into ground game.

It does not work in Michigan.

Right.

Quickly, Donald Trump decided to endorse in the US Senate race.

Mike Rogers, recipient of same plus or minus I hate throwing it to this but it depends on who you ask I mean in my view and who out election.

Yeah well who else was he going to endorse frankly I mean you have Justin Amash who publicly came out against him and said, I'm no longer a Republican because I dislike President Trump.

You have Peter Meijer who voted to impeach him.

You have Sandy Pensler, who, Okay.

Businessman.

But what kind of political pull does he have?

And then you have everybody else who I can't even name because I don't frankly know.

You know, there's a ton of other people in the race.

But as far as we're concerned, these are kind of the four main guys.

So, you know, Rogers.

He could have sat it out, though.

He could have.

He could have.

But the thing is, I think that Trump is not.

You don't think so?

I think that he would jump in to endorse, to have a voice.

I mean, this is a very influential Senate seat.

So I don't think that, you know, that would be one to sit out.

I'm going to be honest.

I think that Trump is a little bit smarter than what a lot of people give him credit for in this, in that he knows he sees the writing on the wall with a lot of things.

For instance, on on abortion, he has gone public and kind of walked back.

I mean, and we can project 2025 aside, we can just, you know, judge him based on the merits of the statement.

He's walked back and said, you know, we might not need to do, you know, as strong of an abortion ban because it doesn't play well to people nationwide.

I think he sees Mike Rogers as, yeah, he's not the greatest for all Republicans that are of, you know, under my umbrella personally.

But he's going to be the guy that can bring in these centrist Republicans who will in turn win elections.

And that's the reason why in past recent elections, you're thinking, Karamo Dixon, DePerno those are the people who sat out those races and those are the people that Michigan Republicans need back.

On Mike Rogers and Trump, It seems to me what's going on here is the national Senate Republicans have picked Rogers.

He's the candidate.

They have all these options across the country of states to play in.

They have a lot more appealing states in terms of partisan breakdown, like Ohio, Montana, West Virginia, where they can flip seats.

And they've probably you know, it's likely they've sent signals to Trump's team.

If you want us to spend money in Michigan this fall.

Mike Rogers is the guy that we want.

And I think it shows where Trump is in this campaign.

He's in this self-preservation mode.

He wants to win.

Trump is thinking, how do I win?

I have a Senate candidate where there's millions of dollars being spent.

Slotkin is going to have, if she's the nominee, millions of dollars on her side.

Let's put popular wisdom on the Off the Record table.

The popular wisdom is a Trump endorsement is gold in a primary election.

But then in a general election, you got all those people in Michigan who don't like this guy.

He they'll be.

Rogers can't win with just a Trump base.

Am I right or wrong?

No, he can't.

But that's that's kind of the play here I think for Rogers now he's got the Trump endorsement and he can also point to the fact, like I've criticized Trump before, I was on CNN saying this about him, saying that about him.

Well, which is it, then, Mr. Senator-would be?

That's the risk he's going to play this whole this whole campaign season.

Where are you at on this?

Where are you on a whole bunch of different issues?

I mean, that's what he's going to have to figure out how to navigate, because frankly, it's the flipping of the script in my mind.

I mean, we've seen these past candidates where they've come out of sort of the Make America Great Again Trump kind of umbrella.

They get endorsed by him.

They have that base, that grassroots base, and then they need to court the centrists to come on their side, which historically has not worked.

The pivot.

The pivot.

Right.

So they're inverting that pivot where this time around we're saying, hey, we have the more establishment, the more RINO, depending on who you're talking to backing here, we have money.

We have a candidate that's won before we have a candidate who knows what he's doing in office.

Now, we're going to try and come back around and grab the individuals who support President Trump with the hope that, hey, you see he endorsed them so he can't be all that bad right?

Wink.

like, Yeah.

All right.

Let's call in our guest today.

Mr. H, are you there?

I'm here.

How you doing, man?

It's good to see you again.

Thanks for doing Off the record.

Let's cut to the chase here.

Is Mr. Biden, Could he theoretically at the top of the ticket, hurt the Democrats, where they could lose control of the Michigan House?

Yay or nay?

Yay, absolutely.

Based on the poll numbers that we've seen, the most recent poll that just came out and the polls we've seen consistently in Michigan for the last several months, if those are the final numbers, which is an open question, Democrats will lose the House.

They need the president to perform a lot better than he's performing right now.

Well, yes, but the speaker is going to say, look, we're not running for or against Joe Biden.

We're running on our record that we produced in the legislature.

Democrats took control and we got things done.

One of the reasons I'm so popular in the Michigan House of Representatives is I'm so fond of telling them that each of you represents 90,000 people on a majority of those people don't know who you are.

That's where members of the Michigan legislature stand right now.

They are running as Democrats and Joe Biden is Democrat in chief this year.

They need him to do better.

Elena.

I mean, I think the House Democrats do face an interesting position.

Do you think there's any way for individual members of the House to kind of get out ahead of what's happening on a national stage?

Unfortunately for them, I don't really think that's the case.

And that's not unique to Michigan, right?

Our politics in this country are so nationalized.

Most voters are not focused on things that state representatives actually do.

They're focused on things that national politicians do, particularly the presidency and the federal bureaucracy that's controlled by Democrats right now.

And so in order for Democrats at lower levels of office like state representative to perform well, the brand has to perform well.

And Joe Biden is the face of the brand right now.

You know, we actually talked, you and I, about the uncommitted effort during the primary.

And I remember when we chatted, you said that the 100,000 plus people that turned out it was a huge gamble that that didn't pay off.

I'm curious now, seeing these poll numbers continuing, do you have any concern that this uncommitted will translate into further losses for the president come November?

Or do you see them going third party or staying home or Heck, I understand that the American voting bloc has become more conservative, even going towards President Trump.

How do you see that kind of shaking down in the in the general?

Yeah, I think it's a mistake to view the the folks who voted uncommitted as a singular bloc of voters.

I do think a number of those folks that came out to vote uncommitted either aren't Democrats or aren't regular voters.

Right.

They're angry about this issue.

And they wanted to express their anger.

And, you know, the polling place was the place to do that.

But I do think it's a legitimate concern for Democrats.

This race was close in 2020 and it's going to be close again.

And they're going to need every vote that they can turnout of people who are willing to vote for Joe Biden as opposed to Donald Trump, the third party candidate, or staying home.

And, you know, they've got some work to do.

They're not just with the uncommitted folks.

That's the least of their problems.

And the latest polling numbers that we've seen, Democrats have a problem with independents much more than they do with base Democratic voters.

Honestly, President Trump is the one with base problems, not Joe Biden.

Joe Biden has an independents problem.

You're a very honest campaign consultant from my dealings with you.

what kind of message is Biden's campaign sending to the people of Michigan by bringing their candidate here, not making public statements, limiting which members of the press can cover the events and doing what they did yesterday was about seven and a half million adults in Michigan, and most of them don't know.

The president was in our state yesterday.

So it's hard to say that there was any message being delivered at all when the people you're trying to deliver whatever that message do, don't know that you're here to that point.

I mean, he was in Saginaw yesterday.

Obviously, he was in metro Detroit last month.

He seems to have sort of keyed in on black communities in specific, as you know, where he's making these stops recently Warren Evans put in the Detroit Free Press that Joe Biden has a problem with with black voters.

I mean, do you see an issue there?

Where do you see that that kind of breakdown?

Do you personally see a breakdown?

And, you know, what do Democrats have to do to maintain historically a voting bloc that has routinely kind of gone for them?

I think that some of Democrats problems with black voters are overblown, or specifically Joe Biden's problems.

He doesn't have any problems with black voters that Democrats don't have more broadly.

Right.

There is certainly a perception amongst a slice of black voters, particularly black male voters, that Democrats take them for granted.

But that's not unique to Joe Biden, Right?

That is a problem with the Democratic brand in general, and it pre-dates Joe Biden.

Frankly, it's part of the problem that Hillary Clinton had in 2016 as well.

It'll be a huge problem for Joe Biden if they're not able to turn out black voters on the I-75 corridor.

But I would need to see more evidence that that's that that's the case.

But if they're not able to, then this could look a lot like 2016.

So we've talked about how there wasn't much of a message with Biden's visit yesterday.

What what should have the message been coming to Michigan to reach voters?

I mean, there's really only one issue nationally that favors Democrats consistently in polling.

It's women's health care, whether you're talking about abortion, whether you're talking about, you know, research and development around health care for women, women's health care polls well for Democrats, it polls abysmally For Republicans, It's not very often that you are gifted a wedge issue.

And it boggles my mind that the president's campaign is not talking about this more.

It's the best issue they have.

There was an interesting finding in this survey that in Michigan, 22% of the people listed preserving the democracy is their major concern.

Now, clearly, the economy was right behind that, along with immigration.

But that was interesting that Michigan would be concerned about preserving the democracy or is it not interesting?

I don't know.

I think people's views about that are essentially priced in at this point.

Right in this question largely revolves around the former president, Donald Trump.

People's views about Donald Trump are calcified at this point.

You like him, You don't like and you're indifferent.

Nothing that either of these presidential campaigns is going to do is going to change how you feel about Donald Trump.

Democrats simply making this a referendum on Donald Trump is a losing strategy because he's not the president right now.

Democrats need to be able to lay out a vision about what they're going to do for voters as opposed to relitigating the first Trump presidency.

If they keep relitigating the first Trump presidency, they're going to get a second one.

Some have suggested that Governor Whitmer has this magic sauce that if she were to give some to Joe Biden in the state of Michigan, she could pull him to the finish line.

Do you buy that theory?

I don't know that she can do that single handedly, but she's certainly the most popular politician in the state of Michigan.

It's become something of an anomaly in the 21st century for a politician with a major public profile to have to be popular.

Right.

Governor Whitmer is popular.

They, the Democrats, ignore that at their peril.

She should be campaign surrogate number one for the Biden campaign for Elissa Slotkin.

She's the most popular Democratic politician in the state.

So maybe instead of making beer over in K-Zoo, she should have been in Saginaw, Ah, you know, I assume.

What was the “Ah ” for?

What was the “Ah ” for?

I-I'm not going to comment on the governor's schedule and why she keeps the schedule that she does.

Hopefully for the sake of the president.

She had something nice to say about him while she was brewing beer.

Why aren't you going to comment on it?

I just don't know anything about it.

Well, you don't have to have a Ph.D. to figure it out, can ya?

Yeah.

Look, the the more the president or the more the governor is talking about the president, the better it is for the president, Right?

Having popular politicians talk about you when you're unpopular can only be helpful.

Is it possible you know, you hear this a lot from Democrats in the state particularly.

Is it possible these polls are wrong?

I mean, is it possible that the Democratic Party's turnout operation, that the undecided voters will break toward Biden and all of this will shift in his direction?

I mean, that's the argument you're hearing.

It's not necessarily one that, you know, I can dismiss out of hand.

Is that possible in your mind when people start talking about un-skewing the polls?

I start laughing.

I will say that Democrats do have an organizational advantage in Michigan right now because the Michigan Republican Party is trying to rebuild itself out of the ashes following the Kristina Karamo era brief as it was.

But the Michigan Republican Party, from an institutional perspective, is in wretched shape right now.

So there is an argument to be made that Democrats will do a better job of turning their voters out.

But in terms of how the public perceives these two candidates right now, I've seen no indication that there is anything wrong methodologically with the polls that we've seen, and they're all in a similar sort of band.

So there would need to be a major correlate did error in the polling across the board for that to be true, The Trump endorsement of Mr. Rogers plus or minus.

I think it's I think it's overall a minus for Mike Rogers in the in the general election.

The thing that Donald Trump has going for him in the presidential election is that he is running against a very unpopular president, but he is himself incredibly unpopular.

So certainly this endorsement is helpful for Mike Rogers, securing a primary victory for U.S. Senate, but I don't think it helps him at all in the general election.

And he's got an uphill battle to begin with, notwithstanding the weakness at the top of the ticket for Democrats, the last Republican to be elected U.S. senator from the state of Michigan was Spence Abraham.

And the woman who beat him is retiring this year.

All right.

Quickly, the House control for Democrats.

Will they get it or not?

50-50 chance.

I'm rooting for 55-55 because that that makes consultants like me the most money.

I think right now, based on the numbers at the top of the ticket for President Biden, you have to say that Republicans are a slight favorite to flip it.

And I mean, when I say slight, I mean like 5 to 4.

You got to go make some more money, apparently.

Thank you for joining us on Off the Record.

Good to see you again.

Thanks for having me.

Good to see you.

All right.

Thank you to all of you.

Welcome to the off the record family.

Nice to have you on board.

See you.

All right here next week.

For more off the record, 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