Kamala Harris, Donald Trump ramp up fight for Michigan in final weeks of campaign

• Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are returning to Michigan this week to barnstorm the state
• Harris was in Detroit Tuesday answering listener calls with popular radio host Charlamagne tha God
• In the election’s final weeks, both candidates are pushing to attract crossover voters in the metro Detroit area

In the final weeks of Michigan’s presidential election, both major party campaigns are fighting for the margins.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are each barnstorming Michigan this week, including multiple stops in the Detroit area, as they look to cut into each other’s support. 

“The race is that close,” pollster Richard Czuba of Lansing-based Glengariff Group Inc. told Bridge Michigan. “It's going to be decided by who can reduce the margins of their opponent more.”

Those margins, Czuba said, rest in significant part with voters without college degrees, in particular young Black men and white women. And Trump, the Republican nominee, is also wooing conservative Muslim voters away from the Democratic Party.

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As Trump peels away some working-class voters with his messaging on electric vehicles and trade, Harris is doing the same among suburban women concerned about abortion access, Czuba added.

Harris has recently been playing defense to counter some Trump efforts, seeking to shore up support with groups that Democrats have long leaned on to carry the state in presidential years. That became plain with Harris’ recent rally in Flint, which she used to rebut Trump’s auto industry rhetoric.

Now, Democrats may be correcting course with a renewed emphasis on Detroit, the state’s largest city, where turnout can decide elections. Harris spent an hour in Detroit’s Eastern Market Tuesday for an interview with radio personality Charlamagne Tha God that was broadcast nationwide.

In an hour-long appearance answering listening questions, she noted Trump wants to promote controversial “stop-and-frisk” police tactics and said she thinks reparations for Black Americans “has to be studied,” while touting her new “opportunity agenda for Black men” released Monday.

"We have brought down Black unemployment to one of the lowest levels in history, but I'm very clear the community is not going to stand up and applaud just because everybody has a job,” Harris said. “My agenda is about tapping into the ambitions and the aspirations, knowing that folks … should have a meaningful opportunity to build wealth, including intergenerational wealth.”

Trump has made similar claims about record low unemployment for Black Americans as he seeks to appeal to traditionally Democratic voters. 

The Black unemployment rate did reach a record low of 5.3% under Trump in September of 2019. But the rate went even lower under Biden-Harris, falling to 4.8% in April 2023. The rate has inched up since then, however, and stood at 5.7% in September of this year.

'Not new work'

Harris’ radio interview featured one question from Detroit rapper Icewear Vezzo, who met with Trump during a campaign event in Detroit earlier this year, and later said he was “leaning” toward supporting the former president.

Vezzo asked Harris, “how do you view sentiment that support for Black men is only sought during election cycles?”

Harris rebutted, “A lot of what I’m doing with my opportunity agenda came out of what I did in the Senate. … This is not new work for me.”

Harris will be in the Detroit area again on Friday and Saturday for events, her campaign has indicated, along with a Friday stop in Grand Rapids. Kent County, where Grand Rapids is located, has become more favorable territory for Democrats since Trump’s political rise and an important piece of Democrats’ electoral strategy.

Trump and Harris will also be in Oakland County around the same time Friday evening, as Harris is scheduled to hold a rally there. Oakland County, like Kent, has become more blue over the past decade.

“You cannot win Michigan if you lose Oakland and Kent County,” Czuba said.

Trump, meanwhile, will be participating in a roundtable event in Oakland hosted by a conservative dark money group, Building America’s Future. 

Recent reporting from The New York Times revealed the organization was the primary backer of two super PACs, Duty to America PAC and Future Coalition PAC, which have both been active in Michigan, targeting voters respectively with advertisements aimed at aiding Trump.

Trump will also hold a rally Friday night at Detroit’s Huntington Place in downtown Detroit. The convention center, formerly called the TCF Center, was the site of turmoil during the 2020 election, when Trump supporters attempted to disrupt absentee vote counting being conducted at the location.

The former president’s campaign staff and advisers actively worked to foment attempts to “stop the count” in the building the day after the 2020 election, according to recent reporting and Special Counsel Jack Smith. 

Still, support for Trump among non-white voters has improved since the 2020 election, according to recent polls in Michigan. So as Harris peels off disaffected Republicans in west Michigan, Trump is doing the same in communities like Detroit. 

Detroit 'grit'

Democrats were quick to attack Trump last week when at a gathering of the Detroit Economic Club he disparaged the city, claiming “the whole country will end up being like Detroit” if Kamala Harris is elected — “a mess.” 

Trump is also expected to stop by a makeshift GOP office in Hamtramck, according to a source familiar with the former president’s travel plans but not authorized to publicly discuss them. U.S. Secret Service agents were documented preparing the location earlier this week.

GOP attention turned to Hamtramck last month when the city’s mayor Ameer Ghalib publicly endorsed and met with Trump and his campaign. Hamtramck, a diverse enclave within Detroit’s boundaries, is the first city in the U.S. to have all Muslim elected officials in local government.

“President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles,” Ghalib wrote in a post on Facebook, calling him “the right choice for this critical time.”

During her Tuesday visit to Detroit, Harris was effusive about the city. She stopped at the Norwest Art Gallery in the Grandmont Rosedale neighborhood before the radio show, and later met with supporters who had gathered for a watch party at Cred Cafe on East Jefferson Ave. 

“It’s a tight race, but here’s the thing I know about everybody here: We like hard work,” she said. “This is a town of people who have grit, who have determination, optimism and ambition, and apply to that a lot of hard work — which makes Detroit a first-class city in the United States of America."