It got here well after midnight.
There was a manic grad-school vibe within the war room, where the spreadsheets kept sending staffers leaping out of their chairs to high-five and “f— yeah!” and sometimes get shushed by Grundhauser. With excellent news for the team got here some bad news for other Democrats, though ultimately not so many; Slotkin was back within the room after a schmoozing tour, getting excellent news from South Lyon, when CNN called the lack of her friend Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria, one other Democrat with a national-security background. Slotkin was briefly distracted from her own excellent news. “That’s an actual kick within the jimmies.” However the lists posted on one wall of competitive Democratic races showed mostly victories, as Cook monitored races across the country and systematically circled Democrat victors in blue.
After 1 a.m., the last stalwart watch-party goers had straggled out and the remaining hard core of staffers and family got a final spreadsheet readout and an update from Slotkin herself. She was still losing by 9,000 votes but feeling “extremely confident” — all of the votes outstanding were from precincts that favored her. The Michigan State push to the polls had yielded hours-long waits on campus, but some students had stayed in line until three hours after the polls closed to forged votes. The 13-vote win in Howell, of all places, had vindicated the speculation of showing up in red territory, and there was a pleasant counter-extremism ring to the thought of a Jewish woman winning in former KKK territory.
After which, right around 3 a.m., the primary big batch of absentee votes began coming in from Ingham County, and she or he pulled ahead. She and her team knew then that it was over. In a short time, so did her opponent, State Sen. Tom Barrett, who called her to concede at 3:30 a.m., in a conversation Slotkin described to reporters as “temporary” and “polite.” (Barrett had raised questions on Biden’s 150,000-vote win in Michigan in 2020, and had visited the Trump White House in the times after the election to debate the outcomes, so the concession was noteworthy.)
As for the teachings of her race nationally, she was still sorting through implications. Midwestern Democrats had an unusually good night, including encouraging leads to House races in Michigan, Ohio and Kansas. But several coastal Democrats, including the leader of the congressional campaign arm in Recent York, had lost. “I don’t totally understand it,” Slotkin said. “But I can just say for the Midwest, you possibly can’t have a full conversation on this a part of the world unless you’re talking concerning the economy and the longer term of labor. … You’ve got to take the problems of the day and ensure that it’s relevant to someone’s actual life. And I feel within the Midwest, we were capable of try this.”
Results elsewhere indicated that, while perhaps essential, such a message was insufficient: U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan had lost his Senate race against the Trump-endorsed candidate J.D. Vance in Ohio. But he, too, had overperformed expectations.
Slotkin’s still wishing for an America of two healthy parties arguing over real, actual policy, not least because she is desperate to enact policies to make things in Michigan. She told me that Michiganders had been warning about outsourcing supply chains for 30 years, and that Covid had dramatically proven them right, not only within the scramble for masks but additionally within the microchip shortages which have shut down automobile GM plants in her district. “I feel a variety of people in Washington speak about supply-chain issues, and particularly of microchips, as a policy issue. In here, it’s an economic security issue. On this state, it’s like whether you go to work tomorrow or not, and also you don’t make your full salary in the event you’re sitting at home.”
She noted, also, the national-security implications: It’s not as if the supply-chains have shifted to Canada, but to China and places vulnerable to China. The U.S. has law and policy around supply-chains for military equipment. “We are able to’t outsource our tanks to China. But so, I extrapolate that very same sort of policy after I take into consideration certain critical items.” That features food; she’s seriously considering joining the Agriculture Committee. “I feel we’d like to treat our food security as a national-security issue.”
The following Congress was still taking shape when Slotkin and I last spoke by phone on Thursday. Republicans seemed prone to take a narrow majority, which some speculated might mean an era of Republicans in disarray: Internal divisions might limit the caucus’s ability to legislate, because it did for the narrow Democratic majority in much of 2020. “I hope they [Republicans] don’t spend the subsequent two years doing Hunter Biden investigations and so they actually need to reveal to the American people who they’ll govern,” especially after spending a lot of the midterm cycle talking concerning the economy. “But in the event that they go that route, we’re going to need to allow them to carry their very own rope.”
The excellent news was that she wasn’t aware of any major race during which the outcomes were being contested — even the 2020 election skeptics topping Michigan’s ticket had conceded their races. “I personally imagine that Michigan and other places demonstrated that we’re coming back to a more practical and reasonable approach to electing officials.” If not, though, she knew what her own role was.
“What I can do is win.”
