(soft electronic music) - Greg Bowens, thanks for being with us today.

Primary's over, and this governor's race is on, as well as a lot of other races.

So far, it's been one bizarre political year in Michigan, particularly in the Republican gubernatorial campaign, but they appear to have settled on a choice.

Tudor Dixon will represent the party in its challenge of Governor Whitmer this fall.

I described her in a column yesterday as perhaps the longest shot gubernatorial candidate I've seen in 40 years of doing this.

I don't know if you would agree or not.

- But longer than Geoffrey Fieger?

(Bowens laughs) - I think so, because I was asked that.

I think Fieger was not so long because he had name ID.

Everybody knew who Geoffrey Fieger was.

He had both money and he had a voter base in Detroit.

I don't see Tudor Dixon with any of those things.

- Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, she's a total newcomer and she doesn't have that sort of aw, shucks kind of appeal that Rick Snyder had when he popped up on the scene, if you recall.

- Yeah.

- And so it should be interesting, how this works out.

I mean, wow.

Just, you know, from James Craig to, you know, the guy, Kelly, Kelly Ryan, is that his name?

- Ryan Kelly.

- Ryan Kelly who got arrested and who now won't concede the race, you know.

(Bowens chuckles) - Even though he finished almost last.

Yeah, it's bizarre.

I mean, we had the first tier, most of the first tier of this race got wiped out for invalid signatures.

And Tudor Dixon turned out to be the best of what was left.

I do think she's an engaging candidate.

She's charismatic, I think she connects with people.

I do think she has to hone her message, have a stronger message.

And you know she has to also unite this Republican party.

It's, you know, still, despite her endorsement by Donald Trump and the DeVos family.

Still, a lot of people in this party perpetually unhappy and she's gotta bring them together.

She's gotta raise a lot of money.

She's gotta raise her own profile.

She's gotta do a lot of things in a short amount of time and she's gotta get it all exactly right.

- Nolan, I don't know.

We might, you remember the Tea Party people?

- Absolutely.

- And how they, they stormed through Michigan?

- Yeah.

- And that kind of thing?

This seems like a real, you know, extreme version of what had occurred with the Tea Party, not so long ago.

And the politics of grievance has turned on the Republican party itself.

I'll be honest with you, I've missed, you know, establishment Republicans.

May disagree with them on a lot of issues, but at the same time we could, at least, have those discussions.

You can't have discussions with people who are caught up in QAnon and, you know, these crazy conspiracy theories.

And, Nolan, I don't know if you heard this, but part of the reason why 63 of the 83 counties' election returns were delayed, was because you had some of these MAGA folks all up in these clerk's offices, insisting that cops, you know, ride behind people who had to hand deliver the tabulations from the precincts.

- Well, we also had a lot of computer problems, modem problems, that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's office should have gotten well ahead of before people went to the polls and the local clerks shouldn't have had to deal with this.

But we got a gubernatorial candidate, two women running in a year when abortion's gonna be a major issue.

Gretchen Whitmer is all in on the pro-choice side.

She supports this ballot measure, which would make abortion an unregulated environment in Michigan.

Tudor Dixon is all in on the other way.

She says no exceptions for anything.

And I think once again, on this issue, the majority of Michiganians won't be heard, won't be represented because I think they're somewhere in the middle on this.

- Nolan, you raise a good point with that.

I will say this, that the abortion issue is pouring kerosene on a gas fire, man.

(Bowens laughs) - I think abortion will be the rock that this expected red wave crashes on.

You already see Republicans down-scaling their predictions for their House gains, their U.S.

House gains.

One time it was 50, 60 seats, they hoped to pick up.

Now they're looking at 19, 20, realistically.

Still enough to give them a majority but not much.

Beyond the gubernatorial race, though, we had races all over, the ballot and in every, you know, in every county in this state yesterday.

And one of the most interesting, I think to you and I, was that 13th District congressional race, where Shri Thanedar, State Representative and millionaire, put five, six, 7 million of his own money in that contest and prevailed over a pretty good slate of candidates.

He was the only non-African American in this race.

And his victory means Detroit, for the first time since Charles Diggs won't have an African-American representative in Congress.

- No, that's true.

And, you know, Nolan, you keep up with this stuff in ways that I wouldn't think that a conservative political commentator would, writer would and, you know, you noted a long time ago, downtown, you wrote the column that said, "Where are all the black people?"

- Yeah.

(Bowens laughs) - Well now, guess what, when it comes to Michigan Congressional Delegation, you know, that same thing is going to be true.

And we run up against as a community, as a society, trying to balance out this push, pull between the need or recognizing that representation really does matter but then how much does it matter?

And so, when it came to Shri Thanedar, you know, here's a guy that popped up on the scene, ran against the governor, got the most support in Detroit.

And so he moves into Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest, and wins a seat there.

And now his "aw shucks, I'm harmless" kind of approach has won him the congressional seat.

And Nolan, now, you know, you know every single person that was in that race, with maybe with exception of Mike Griffie, but you endorsed him.

(indistinct) You guys endorsed him, so you know him now, but you know, Nolan, there were some people in that race that just shouldn't have been in there, man.

- Well, there are too many in the race.

And that helped Thanedar, and you know, the redistricting commission has to take some fault here, as well.

Perhaps, maybe not in this race, but black representation overall will- - Right.

- Go down in January when these new bodies are seated.

That's the fault of a redistricting commission that didn't prioritize creating black representation in these new boundary maps.

- The redistricting commission was a failure in a lot of ways not the least of which that Democrats, communities of color, we need to have an honest conversation about race.

And we didn't have that during the redistricting process because you have these other rising communities of color that are represented in Hamtramck, that are represented with Shri Thanedar and the Pacific Asian Indian community.

And along with the Arabic Middle Eastern community.

And there was no serious discussion about how do we give them the same kind of opportunity to have fair representation without diminishing the opportunity for African Americans to have that representation.

- [Narrator] The Detroit city council has cleared the way for developer Dan Gilbert to receive a huge tax break