Two political consultants in the queue this week on off the record including Republican John Sellek and Democratic consultant Adrian Hemond.

They're up next with their debrief on the election.

We'll take the full broadcast to unbundle what they have to say.

And we'll also be joined by Emily Lawler, Jordyn Hermani, and Cheyna Roth sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record production of Off the Record is made possible in par by bellwether public relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com.

And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to studio C, an unusual pre-Thanksgiving I guess we're thankful for the you two guys showing up and also our great panel.

Let's let's start with a debrief on what happened on Election Day.

And Adrian, let me start with you.

What surprised you the most of all of the stuff that happened that day?

You know, I don't think that there was too much that was super surprising.

But I will say I was surprised at how many misses Democrats had in terms of the basic mechanics of campaigning.

We saw that in really sharp relief here in Michigan with the state House races, but we saw some of that with the Harris campaign and just Democrats didn't hit their marks where they needed to.

Mr. Sellek, I think overall, everybody missed that it was going to be a change election about the economy.

It was lik one on one campaigning.

Right.

And that's what happened.

Donald Trump knew how to talk about the economy and break through in the dems, kept running ads saying he's rich, he does understand you.

And I think people understood that Donald Trump's whole brand was that he was rich and successful.

And that's part of the attraction, that he wil somehow get the economy going.

That' why when they poll test people, they say, how is the first term economy under Donald Trump?

They said it was really good.

It was a lot better than Joe Biden's.

And then I think the other sort of surprise for me was Kristen McDonald Rivet.

She's gone from never being in politics to being in the Senate for a hot minute.

And now she's sitting in Congress and what's next?

She proved that if you're actually likable in politics on the air, you can win no matter what's going on with the Democrat the demographics of your seat.

And now she's getting pointed out nationally in The Washington Post this morning for being one of those Dems tha want a trump seat.

Cheyna jump in and welcome back to OTR by the way, I'm so excited to be back here, especially with you guys.

So it's seems like Democrats right now might be falling into the trap of like overanalyzing and overextending and taking too much from what just happened in this election.

What is each of yours like?

One piece of advice for Democrats going into the next election?

Learn how to talk to people who didn't go to college.

It's becoming a huge problem for Democrats.

They are becoming the party of the college educated, particularly of college educated white ladies, and they're being punished for it.

They have forgotte how to talk to people who don't obsessively pay attention to politic like college educated people do.

I've had so many conversation with people, college educated, affluent people, who are astonished by how little most people know about politics.

That's because they have lives and people who love them and hobbies and they don't doomscroll social media constantly.

Democrats need to figure out ho to talk to those people again.

Are you saying we're not normal?

Yes, that's correct.

Also not normal Are the people who are being the loudest.

If I was giving advice, the people are being the loudest in the Democratic Party right now are the people that should be listened to the least.

They're still sitting in seat that Donald Trump couldn't win.

They're not connected to the rest of the state.

If you're sitting in a seat that literally looks like it was carved out for Democrats in Leelanau County and Traverse City, then you're probably not the person to be leading the charge to run to the left for the rest of your party.

The party missed the economic message, and that's what they got to get back to.

John, what is the you know, there's this push and pull within the Democratic Party right now over how to respond to this election.

And I think there's a group that's saying we didn't go big enough.

We're far left enough with our policies.

There's another group that more like Adrian is saying, like we didn't speak to the working class of this country.

You know, where do you sort of fall on that analysis?

Well, I unfortunately, I agree with them right now.

We try not to agree on everything.

But if you look at the demographics of what's happening in America, college degrees for men are stagnant or dropping over the last 30 years and they're greatly increasing amongst women.

And that's the only crew of people that Kamala Harris won officially.

Everyone else, if we look a what the media is spazzing out about, like, oh my gosh, Donald Trump won Hispanics, a Hispanic man and got 46% of Hispanics overall, even though he wanted to do it to poor people.

It's because you need to look at them as Americans, not just Hispanic Americans.

And they want to have safe cities and they want to have higher incomes and they want to have good jobs.

And that's why they went and voted for Trump.

It goes back to those numbers.

They remember in the first term he had a better economy than Biden.

And now he's promising to crack down on crime.

So you see Trump win all those border communities in Texas.

So that kind of gives the answer to that question.

I also wonder of the leadership of Governor Whitmer, Boy, she's been like a really good politician.

She's been one of the only politicians, if not the only one, to have approval rating over 50%.

I praise that many, many times.

There is a market for positivity.

I think that's what we saw with Rivet as well.

But I wonder the 2024 for Gretchen Whitmer is not the same as the 2018 Gretchen Whitmer.

She was someone that was saying, I'm going to fix the road when the fill up potholes, I'm going to take care of the day to day.

Now, she would say, kitchen table issues.

The 2024 Gretchen Whitmer i the Dorito video is positioning for something after Michigan.

We didn't see her in a single advertisement for bringing a Democratic state legislator back to Lansing.

And I think that's in part because she was positioned in a way that wasn't useful When we got down to brass tacks at the end of the campaign.

You agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely I do.

I think the the governor is one of the more popular politicians in the state, and she was not deployed correctly for the campaign.

I think that applie to the Michigan House Democrats.

I also think it applie to the Kamala Harris campaign.

You know, you're trying to launch a candidate nationally with 100 days.

You've got to be leveraging every tool in the toolbox.

You have a popular Democratic governor in a swing state that you absolutely must win.

And they didn't use her.

Do you think Whitmer is focusing too much on what's next for her, as opposed to staying focused on being governor right now?

I mean, I can't speak to her motives, but I certainly think that her leadership has been missing in a political sense for these campaigns.

But also just in terms of the legislative agenda, you know, the stat legislature has done basically nothing other than pass a budget this year, and they didn't do muc at the end of last year either.

They came shooting out of the gate when Democrats got this new majority, they passed a bunch of, you know, high priority, you know, Democratic bills.

And they basically haven't done anything but pass a budget since then.

So how do you excuse me, how do you square that line with you know, we were just talking about how Democrats seem to only be speaking to lik the white college educated lady.

You talk about how the House Democrats especially spearheaded a bunch of Democratic long wish list priority items.

But then, you know, this year we're saying, well, they didn't do enough, they didn't move and they obviously didn't hold session, hold on a time.

How do you thread that needle then?

How do you see Democrats having to push their own priority policies while also being able to say it while they were in town and off?

I guess, how do you how do you see that being possible?

I think it starts with listening to voters and what they're telling their elected officials that they want.

Right.

Voters are concerned about the economy.

Voters are concerned about crime.

And look, a lot of the places where Democrats lost the House this time are i de-industrializing communities.

Right.

That are looking pretty bleak, where 30 or 40 years ago you could go get a job in a factory and you could make a nice living on that.

Maybe on a single income.

And now those folks work at the gas station or they deliver packages for Amazon.

Right.

And that looks pretty bleak to them.

Democrat are not speaking to those voters and how they're going to earn a living, how they're goin to keep their communities safe.

You know, I think that focusing on those sorts of issues as opposed to policy service for interest groups is the way back.

But but I guess I guess I'm a little confused there, too, because we talk about these these industries that are going away.

How do you legislate looking towards the futur while trying to assuage people who might be part of a dying industry or a dying field, investing in communities?

Right.

It's it' hard to pick up the dry cleaner and move it to Mexico.

Right.

It's hard to pick up local small businesses and move them out of the country.

That might happen in 30 or 40 years, but you have to build a domestic economic base that can't be backed up and moved.

I mean, we're sitting in Greater Lansing right now, which will probably be the last community in America that GM pulls out of, but it will happen someday.

And if you don't diversify your economy with businesses that can't easily be moved this is what's going to happen.

You know, And they they have a limited amount of time left to actually make a difference with that that control they have right now in the state house.

And it doesn't loo like anything's going to happen.

And I think the the answer is, as Governor Whitmer, she has to come back and take charge of what's happening in there, because amongst themselves, they have bad feelings for each other.

They're fighting.

We have a state representativ who's going to keep apparently collecting a paycheck through the end of the year, but announced I'm not even coming back to work again.

Where else can you do that?

I can't do it at our businesses.

All right.

I can't do that for my clients.

But she is like proud to say she's not going to do that and she's got some hard feelings.

Talking about Rachel Hood Correct.

Yeah, I don't like it because in fairness, she did say that she would come back if they weren't moving legislation.

It's not like she's just taking a paycheck and going home for the rest of the year, unless I'm misunderstanding, I suppose, where you're going to disagree with that.

The job is to be in Lansing, in session is called, and you're going to try to ignore being called.

And even when they do call the house, I mean, that's a threat to say I refuse to work.

It's a work stoppage.

It's not like people don't have like They call that leverage.

For wha though?

To get what you want.

But right now, that means that she wants to get leverage to make sure that she can get condoms to my kids at high school.

Lik that's where the Democrats are going to recover their losses in this election.

I don't think so.

I like Representative Hood.

I just think she's wrong to be doing that.

I would call out a Republican for doing the same.

The public is pissed off.

They don't think any institution of government works.

Donald Trump is going to be able to push the limits on everything again and again we decide.

I don't know why I keep mentioning Kristen Rivet, but she said in The Washington Post this morning, people are frustrated.

They don't think those institutions works.

So stop being surprised when they're okay, but they get run over.

Representative Hood is contributing to that, and I don't think she should.

Okay.

We're never trying to put word in your mouth, but let me try.

Is the governor disengaged from the process?

Feels like it.

I mean, you can only say yes.

Right.

And that legislature is thirsty for her leadership.

Right?

She could have it in with the legislative leaders.

She's been talking about the lame duck agenda.

She said she's engaged.

Okay.

But what are her priorities other than handing out a bag of money to get a chips factory?

But what are her legislative priorities?

What does she want to see this legislature passed before the end of the year?

I don't think we know the answer to that question.

I don't think most lawmakers do either.

Adrian we have those, you know, first in 40 years, Democratic trifecta.

He's the guy Obviously, at the beginning, they did a lot of undoing.

And in terms of like right to work, things like that, they also got, you know, ELCRA in state law with some civil rights protections.

And then, you know, I think we've we've all acknowledged that the pace has certainly slowed since then.

You know, if you're if you're coming from a Democratic perspective and you are, what could you do in lame duck to recover and like leave a legacy of the first tim in 40 years Democratic control that's meaningful for the people of Michigan, they need to pick a couple of issues that the public actually cares about and get something done right.

They do still have control of the agenda in both legislative chambers.

And, you know, they could pick any of a number of economic issues that aren't just specific to one locality and go along on those.

There are plenty of folks that are out there asking for stuff.

I know my frien John here is working on a bill around aggregates and road funding, just to name one thin that my firms not involved in.

Pick some issues like that on issues that people actually care about, that they're telling us in polling that they care about and go long on those not on ideological stuff, not on policy service for interest groups, on policy service for people, because as John pointed out, trust in institutions, particularly governmental institutions right now is in the toilet.

You only get that back by delivering things that people want.

But how did they work this out?

Because it seems like you have a coalition of progressives within the Democratic caucus who really want to see those, you know, the more social issue type bills getting passed.

And then you also have some of the more middle of the road typ Democrats who maybe want to do more of the economic things.

But you nee you pretty much need all of them to really make an impact.

So I don't know, I guess how is it do you guys think it's possible that they're going to be able to herd all of these cats together and say, hey, this is our big legacy that we are going to leave before you know, the clock is up on us?

There are ways to do that.

And I think one of the ways to potentially do that is to actually attempt some bipartisanship, which potentially, you know, which they haven't really done this time.

So your options are you can either herd your members like lead your members or you can try and work with the other side.

Either one can work, but they're not doing either.

Yeah.

And you would think if you're looking at who apparently is like the new power in town.

Matt Hall My former coworker speaker to be you know we, I always think back to like when I worked for speaker Craig DeRoche you call them a street fighter Matt is that you know times four and he was able to hold his caucus together to be a block of no's even though there are a lot o people who wanted to do things like be bipartisan at times, but it served a purpos to get them back to the majority and he's very successful, so he gets rewarded for that.

But there are things that would be easier for Republicans to cu deals on now, like road funding, then have to wait until next year to do those things.

There's lots of things that you would think the Democrats wouldn't want to give to Republicans like fixing the tipping issue, the fix that now take credit for it, because we know from our work on that issue there's a ton of Democrats who are on our side.

I think if you put that on the board, I would get 75% of the vote in the House.

So why won't they put it up?

Because of the interest groups.

It's the same problem that Democrats keep running into is you have a very nice, very small slic of ideological interest groups that are demanding this right.

And they have their own reasons for doing that because they want to increase union membership.

And I'm a pretty pro-union guy, but this is actually a great example of where Democrats are fallin down in Michigan and nationally.

Right.

Is these are working class voters.

They're also women, which is one of the constituencies that you're actually still doing okay with.

They're overwhelmingly women.

And they are telling you loudly, we had 750 of them out at the state capitol a couple of months ago chanting at their lawmakers to save their tips because they like the way that they're earning a living now and they don't want to work for a $15 minimum wage.

If they wanted to work for $15 an hour, they would go apply at Target.

They're hiring.

But Democrats aren't listening to those voters.

Well, and the change happened right before that big rally that he's talking about that we held in September, the AFL-CIO put out and a group of unions in Michigan put out a letter saying, ah, don't talk about this.

The Democrats who were scheduled to come and speak at our event and talk to that group of people, didn't show up.

And I think they thought well, let's just wait this out.

We know we're going to fix this.

We have to fix this.

This will get done.

And now we're left with the issue turning into what looked like a GOP issue during the campaign.

We had all these Republicans campaigning on this issue.

Lisa Trombley had an ad in the newspaper in Traverse City on the tips issue.

That was never that' not the intention of our group.

We don't see this as a partisan issue.

It's a bipartisan issue because it goes back to the same thing I said about the election overall.

It's about the economy, it's about economics, it's about income that covers everybody and both parties.

And what we're trying to do right now is show that the front group One Fair Wage is is just there's no there there.

It's an empty shell.

It's just a PR front for some national union group who have money to throw around.

And while they just came here again to Michigan and Detroit, this week and said, we're going to have a rally, and they had three paid staffers and a state senator show up in the rain, that it just keeps exposin that they don't have the support of any of the people that they claim to speak for.

So we're trying to make sure that especially Democratic legislators understand there's not as much to be afraid of as you think.

There's nothing behind the curtain.

John Democrats have typically courted the working class vote through unions like that's been a big venue for them.

We've seen union membership a little bit more divided perhaps in the last in the cycle than in previous cycles.

Is it still, you know, to the Democrats benefit to court the working class through unions, or shoul they be pursuing other routes?

Yeah, I think they definitely have to pursue other routes.

There's no doub that they're not going to change the relationships with the heads of unions.

The only serious alteration maybe we've seen on that is with the Teamsters and President Trump has done a lot of interaction on that front.

But they've got to figure out how to talk to the workers directly, because my favorite U.S.

Senator, John Fetterman, talked about how he went to the steel mill and was talking to the people with truck nuts on their car and they were all coming out of the steel mill and they were voting for Donald Trump.

And he's saying, look, we have to do something about this now because we're not communicatin to the rank and file, Trump is.

So they definitely have to go around that.

I can't think of a better issue than on this tipping issue for a whole bunch of people who are working class who aren't listening to whateve the union leadership is saying because they kno the job better than anyone else.

So they're saying, don't take away our income.

Why would you do that?

It works for us now.

Leave it alone.

So we talk about a second ago tackling thing that voters really care about.

You've mentioned the tipped wage issue.

You've mentioned road funding, I suppose.

What do you see as achievable lame duck priorities that if put up tomorrow?

You feel like that they could pass through especially a very divided house?

I definitely I definitely think that road funding is that issue because the problem i that we've hit a funding cliff, the bonding program for $3 billion that Governor Whitmer put in place served a great purpose.

We've got construction cones all over the place.

That's a good thing, right?

Drive down I-96 they're finally finishing that stuff.

And I think praise Lord, and we're moving forward on those projects.

But that money has come to an end.

It's run out and they have t figure out some way to do this.

If you are going to be Matt Hall and you were going to allow some Republican votes to join with a Democratic majority, you would want to do that now.

If there's going to be some kind of messing with revenue that causes you some heartburn, then do that now, don't have to do that next year because you end up having to sort of be the no vote again for the entire next two years, an issue that does matter to people.

Yeah I think that's a great example.

I think the tip wage is another great example.

I think there are a lot of other issues that are hanging out there and lame duck that could get worked o that people actually care about, whether it's the auto no fault issue, you know, the tipped wage issue that John mentioned, the road funding issue.

I think that there are a lot of economic issues like tha that have been hanging out there that people have been asking for votes on for the last six months, 12 months, 18 months.

And the House just isn't passing legislation.

Women are supposed to delive the presidency to Miss Harris.

Well, as it turns out, the only demographic group in the entire country that moved right or that move left was college educated men.

Kamala Harris actually got slightly lower percentage of the women's vote than Joe Biden did in 2020.

That's not what was supposed to happen.

No, it wasn't.

It wasn't supposed to happen And part of what happened nationally in this election is that voters owed us, th Democrats, a receipt from 2022.

Joe Biden is a deeply unpopular president.

Right.

He was set up for a 2010 styl wipe out in the 2022 midterms.

And then the Dobbs decision happened and voters never got to hand u a receipt for what they viewed as a presidency that they did not like a deeply unpopular president.

He dropped out of the race way too late to allow Kamala Harris or any other candidate on the Democratic side to establish themselves as an independent entity.

And so in some ways, the 202 election was a referendum on Joe Biden, and voters still owed us a receipt from 2022.

They handed it to us.

You agree?

Yeah I think that's essentially true.

I mean, I keep coming back to the economy and over and over again, but it's what drov so many of these votes across.

And then when you combine that with the talking down aloofness part, where there are only speaking to essentially a small group of colleg educated people, men and women, Donald Trump won white women overall.

I mean, the gender gap was showing up on the male side big time toward the end of the campaign, when we saw Curtis Hertel and hi ad that I thought was hilarious, you know, he smokes meat and he drinks cheap beer and he starts his own lawnmower.

Like that's how desparate they were feeling about men.

I don't think they thought they were going to lose women as badly as they did in some ways.

But I the easiest way to tie all those dots together is still about inflation On the economy.

Was it a mistake to focus so heavily on abortion?

For Harri and the Democrats, this cycle?

I feel like they may have fel they didn't have anything else.

There only one record in the legislature.

They remember all this.

They passed tax cuts for the for senior citizens and all sorts of stuff.

And the candidates who led with that won.

Right.

You look at someone like Angela Witwer over in Eaton County, you look at Kristen McDonald Rivet, right?

There are examples in Michigan and nationally of people who leaned in to that sort of message.

And they were successful, right, because they didn' talk about the abortion issue, but they talked about other issues, too.

They actually pointed to some of those accomplishments from the beginning of this legislative term a yea and a half ago, two years ago.

They actually did do that, were voted things that voters cared about, you know, repealing the pension tax and, you know, delivering delivering funding, you know, for agriculture, for small business.

They talked about issues that people cared about and delivering things for their community and voters rewarded them.

It's when they got these cookie cutter messages about social issues and relied wa too much on the abortion issue that they got punished.

It's not that the abortion issue was bad for them to talk about.

It's a winning issue.

Voters in deep red Missouri, you know, passed a pro-choice ballot initiative at the same time that they were overwhelming early voting for Donald Trump.

It's a potent issue, but it can't just be that you have to talk about issues that impact people on a day to day basis in terms of how they're going to feed their kids.

And abortion's a supe potent issue with female voters.

With male voters, it's less so.

It's still works but it doesn't work the same way because it's not as immediate for them.

I do think that to some, some level, the Democrats in Michigan were a victim of their own success in 2022, the governor made tha the issue.

She was out in front.

To her credit, she was way ahead.

Everyone else, the constitutional ballot initiativ that locked it into the, gosh, the Constitution here, they were all like, job done, like we fix this.

This is all good.

The other thing I think that happened over time is while it remains a potent issue, the Dems kept pushing that button over and over and there's a diminishing return on anything.

Shock, value, whatever you want to talk about that happens.

And voter we saw in other states that had constitutional amendments on their ballots, elected Republicans to office and then also voted yes to enshrine abortion into their constitutions.

They started to figure out, I can vote my economy, vote for the Republican, and I can still protect my rights for reproductive rights by voting separately on this other way.

It's become more sophisticated and be able to handle it.

Excuse me, Can a mayor of Detroit become governor of Michigan?

You have to call him the odds on favorite.

He's certainly going to have more money than anyone else.

He currently dominates the state's largest media market.

About 50% of Michigan's population lives in that media market, and they see Mayor Dugga on a regular basis on their TV.

Also Mayor Duggan has a story to tell that's very compelling and is the antidote to what got Democrats clocks cleaned this year right?

Detroit's population has grown for the first time since the fifties.

There's economic development in Detroit.

Crime is way down, especially violent crime.

That's exactly on point to what voters were telling Democrats They wanted this election.

But isn't there an out state anti Detroit bias?

I think that that's true to some extent.

And I mean, to be blunt, he's probably going to be able to dull some of that because he's a white guy from Livonia who moved to Detroit to become mayor.

I think that that' going to dull that a little bit.

But also, I think that the anti Detroit bias thing I think is also mitigated somewhat by the fact that he has this success story to tell.

You know, in his press conference announcing he wasn't running again, he said, I did what I set out to do.

I'm how about on the R's side?

Who's the front runner right now?

Exactly.

I mean, I want to say I agree with a lot of what Adrian just said about Mike Duggan.

I mean, the thing that we we have what we haven't mentioned and I'll get to the Republicans for sure, is that there's not much better of a political mastermind for getting things done than Mike Duggan.

He's not only the candidate, he's the campaign manager.

He's the general consultant.

He's all those things.

He's got a bipartisan finance network built up with the.

And quickly, I think wha the Republicans need to hope for is that John James will do it.

It seems like counterintuitive to think he finally won the seat and he did it.

He's the rising star.

He's the next generation.

that would be the righ candidate for the Republicans.

But there could be others.

And we're going to see maybe some more rich guys and gals get in the race.

Aren't the rich guys going to buy this thing?

Could be.

But in the end, Donald Trump actually decides.

So all this way for him to le us know, let's write that down.

All right.

Okay on that happy note.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Nice to see you.

Thanks.

Panelist Next week, off the record, we're going to be talking about good government talking.

Never mind.

See you then.

Okay.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by bellwether public relations, a full service strategic communication agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com for more off the record, visit WKAR.org Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of off the record.