Chuck Schumer’s Primary Blues
About Maine and Michigan
Graham Platner became the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for the Senate election in Maine last week after sitting Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign. Mills announced on Thursday that she lacked the financial resources to effectively compete against Platner, who she’s consistently trailed in the polls, often by humiliating margins.
Platner has reportedly spent $6.9 million on TV and digital ads. Mills has spent less than $2 million on ads and was MIA on TV for much of April. Her campaign was reportedly so broke it could no longer make payroll. Meanwhile, Platner had already started focusing on Collins.
Mills’s Senate campaign collapse is probably only a shocking development to Chuck Schumer, super genius, who begged her to run. He’s repeatedly stated that Mills is the best candidate to defeat fake moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins because Mills has won statewide office multiple times and is thus more “electable.” The one flaw in Schumer’s super genius scheme is that Maine voters don’t like Mills.
A Pan Atlantic Research poll from March showed Mills with net negative favorability ratings (minus 6) compared to Platner’s plus 12. Collins is at minus 14 so she’d seem ripe for unseating. However, the larger problem is that Maine voters fundamentally aren’t pleased with conditions on the ground — 51 percent of total voters say the state is on the “wrong track.” Only 52 percent of Democrats and just 25 percent of independents think the state is moving in the right direction. Cost of living, high taxes, and healthcare access/affordability are the top issues for Maine voters. Although Mills ran negative ads about Platner’s questionable past, his accidental Nazi tattoos did not apparently make the list of major voter concerns.
A recent Emerson poll had Platner leading Mills by about 27 points. He was winning both men and women voters. Schumer’s electability argument hadn’t proved itself in the field: Platner was performing better against Collins in head-to-head polling than Mills. According to Emerson, Collins has a net 30-point unfavorable rating among independent voters (62 to 32 percent), and Mills has a net 13-point unfavorable rating among this group (52 to 39 percent). However, Platner has a six-point net favorable rating among independents. Skittish Democrats insist that Collins and the GOP will drive down Platner’s positive numbers with a barrage of devastating oppo: Maybe he has two Nazi tattoos.
Mills has served as governor since 2019. She has universal name recognition in the state. Those were terrible numbers for her, and it was unclear how she’d improved them. Mills turns 79 in December and would have served until she was 85. She promised to serve just “one term” because she was going to Washington to “get shit done.”
A sitting governor with decades of political experience can’t really claim the outsider mantle, and her low approval suggests that Maine voters don’t believe she can get much of anything done. Once she declared that “Washington is broken” she all but conceded the race to Platner.
Democratic National Committee leaders spoke with Platner not long after Mills dropped out, and now they are fully behind his candidacy. The DNC social media account posted on Thursday: “Maine, let’s send an oyster farmer to the U.S. Senate—and kick out Susan Collins.” Seems clear that the DNC at least doesn’t truly believe Platner is a secret Nazi. After all, these days you don’t really have to keep your Nazi inclinations secret to advance politically.
So, Janet Mills was a big swing and miss for Chuck Schumer, and it looks like he might strike out again with his preferred candidate in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. Rep. Haley Stevens has run a consistently mediocre campaign, which is what you’d expect from a consistently mediocre politician. She was publicly booed at the Michigan Democratic Party Convention in Detroit. You usually want the opposite of boos when running for political office.
Schumer’s allies, such as they exist, argue that Stevens will perform strongly with Black voters. My only question is “Who told you this? And how white were they?”
I don’t think Black Michigan voters are collectively anti-Israel or even prioritize Israel as an issue over, say, food and gas, but Stevens clearly seems to give more shout-outs to Israel and AIPAC than she does for Black people. That’s her right, of course. I just wouldn’t count on Black people pushing her across the finish line.
The challenge in the Michigan primary is that Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, who has a personality, are splitting the mainstream liberal vote. That is leaving a major opening for progressive candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, but my concern is that if he manages to win with around 25 to 30 percent of the vote, that could prove his overall ceiling. I can imagine Stevens and McMorrow voters will support the other candidate if they’re the nominee. I’m less sure about Stevens or McMorrow voters supporting El-Sayed. That’s not entirely due to sour grapes. I’m not sure Stevens or even McMorrow could credibly campaign for El-Sayed.
I personally thought McMorrow was the best candidate of the three in a general election. She’s a liberal but not as far left as El-Sayed (Michigan isn’t Oregon, after all), and unlike Stevens, when she speaks in public she doesn’t look like she’s filming a hostage video.
However, McMorrow has her own developing issue with indiscreet social media posts. CNN’s K-File published several of her old posts complaining about moving from California to Michigan. “Yesterday it was nearly 50 and now the sky is just shitting ice on everything,” McMorrow wrote. “I don’t like you, Michigan.”
“Normal people complain about the weather,” Hannah Lindow, a McMorrow campaign spokesperson, said. “The Michigan sky does in fact sometimes shit ice. She stands by that.”
Not exactly, though, as McMorrow has deleted almost 6,000 social media posts from before 2020. This includes one from January 5, 2017, just before Congress certified Donald Trump’s presidential victory: “There are days like these that make me miss California even more.” She also removed one that was a liberal mirror to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s calls for a “national divorce”: “I had a dream that the US amicably broke off into The Ring (coasts+Can+Mex+parts Mich/Tex) and Middle America.”
This is arguably worse than Platner’s Nazi tattoos or crude Reddit posts. That’s all baked into his entire “average guy” persona — if the average guy has Nazi tattoos, and he’s also apologized as part of a “redemption” narrative. McMorrow presenting as a “coastal elite” who looks down on the state she aspires to represent in Congress could prove a serious anchor for her campaign.
Stevens quickly seized on this — in a way that’s actually pretty clever. She posted on social media:
I’m a born and raised Michigander and damn proud of it. I love everything that makes us Michiganders, from our manufacturing heritage to our lakes and yep, even our accent.
That’s why I have pretty thick skin about people making fun of the way I talk or the clothes I wear—because this campaign isn’t about me. It’s about the amazing people who live in this state. About them having a real champion in the Senate.
So what actually ticks me off? Someone who wants that job—representing Michiganders—talking crap about us and our state.
Stevens acknowledges her limitations — the way she speaks, the way she dresses — but here she spins them all as proof of authenticity. Maybe she’s a dork but she’s Michigan’s dork and not some coastal hipster who’s using Michigan to advance her political career.
Maybe Stevens can pull off a general election win. If she does, then Schumer might yet keep his leadership position. That’s hardly an unqualified victory, but it’s best to focus on the big picture.
McMorrow also takes AIPAC money. I'm rooting for El-Sayed. I guess we'll see if Platner really is a progressive or just another Fetterman. I have a feeling we are going to hear more about his Blackwater career once he wins the primary. Schumer should have been out of a job years ago, just based on his deference to an imaginary (republican) couple. He sucks and I'd love for AOC to take his job, except I'd rather she run for President.
Very interesting analysis of the Senatorial race in my home state of Michigan. As a progressive, of course I'll vote for any Democrat who wins the primary. But in the primary I'll be voting for El-Sayed, if only as a message to Schumer that there is room for real progressives in our big-tent party as well as Neanderthals like Fetterman. True, Michigan isn't Oregon, but I think it will swing blue as part of a nationwide trend this November. The determining factor will be turnout, and Michigan Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents are champing at the bit to cast their votes. If El-Sayed fails in his Senate race, I hope he'll run for the House in 2028.