WYOMING, Mich. — While advocating for a Republican revival here at a neighborhood steakhouse, former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder abstained from red meat.
“We need to bring back the civility and relentless affirmative action,” said Snyder, who is leading the party’s effort to regain the majority in the House of Representatives, as two dozen GOP operatives, some nibbling on locally famous windmill cookies, listened politely.
“I don’t think we’re calling anyone names,” Snyder added. “Or yell at someone.”
Snyder’s plea for positivity is at odds with the political hostilities of the moment, especially in a battleground state like Michigan. There’s none of the fiery ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!” rhetoric that Republicans have rallied behind since the attempts to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
There is also no Trump.
Snyder purposely avoided talking about him last week during an 11-city bus tour, fearing that any mention of him would upset swing voters here in suburban Grand Rapids and in other districts from metro Detroit to Battle Creek and Traverse City. deter. The base GOP voters Trump is most focused on are not necessarily the same voters who are key to the coalition Snyder is trying to build. In some places there may be more overlap with center-right voters. Vice President Kamala Harris is hoping to win the endorsement of Fred Upton, a Republican former congressman from southwestern Michigan.
At a time when Trump has a vice-like grip on the party, few Republicans who spoke to NBC News at Snyder’s events were enthusiastic about his third bid for the White House.
Some pointedly refused to say whether they are voting for Trump. Peter Meijer, a Republican former congressman who lost a 2022 primary after voting to impeach Trump and briefly ran for Senate this year, winced when asked whether Trump had earned his vote.
“I’m not talking about the presidential election,” he said at the steakhouse outside Grand Rapids, where Snyder was promoting Tommy Brann, a state representative candidate whose family has owned the restaurant for decades. “I’m here to support people like Tommy Brann.”
Paul Hudson, the Republican congressional candidate seeking to dethrone Rep. Hillary Scholten in the Grand Rapids congressional district that Meijer previously represented, also dodged.
“I just decided early in this race that I’m going to focus on my race and I’ve stuck with that this whole time,” Hudson said after praising Snyder’s efforts on behalf of the state House candidates and the “great campaign.” . ” by Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate of Michigan.
Snyder and Republicans are trying to chip away at the Democrats’ “trifecta” in Michigan, where they have a hold on governing with Snyder’s successor, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and a two-seat majority in both the state House and Senate. Democrats also have a majority on the state Supreme Court). The next elections for governor and Senate are not until 2026.
In their quest to win back the state House, Snyder and Republicans are emphasizing pocketbook issues and arguing that the unchecked power of one political party in Lansing, the capital, has pulled Michigan too far to the left. They complain that Whitmer and Democrats were wrong to let an income tax cut driven by higher tax revenues expire this year.
Democrats, meanwhile, counter that their tax policies have brought relief to those who need it most. They also argue that new gun safety laws and a repeal of the anti-union “right to work” law — signed by Snyder in 2012 — would not have happened under Republican Party rule.
“The only advantage they have is old ideas,” Whitmer said last week at her own event supporting statehouse candidates in Oakland County. “Because the facts are on our side.”
Snyder, who supported Joe Biden in 2020, also does not want to say how he will vote in the presidential election. In an interview in his “van” — a sleeker van with cans of Diet Pepsi chilling in a soft-pack cooler — he said his goal is to reach voters disillusioned by the nasty tenor of politics in national level.
All of the districts he’s targeting “could go either way,” Snyder said.
“That’s one of the reasons I stayed out of the presidential race,” he added as he prepared to visit a local radio show en route to tape another interview at a TV station.
The hosts of both programs also asked who he was voting for, and both received the same answer: he doesn’t want to dilute the positive message of his take-back-the-House campaign.
“If I said I’m a person somehow, everyone who comes to these House events would have a distorted view of where I come from, whereas I’d say, ‘Hey… I’m here to to talk to you about this’. lane in our backyard,” Snyder told NBC News. “This is all about Michigan.”
Snyder said he sees about “nine or 10” statehouse races playing out — a mix of opportunities for Republican and Republican-leaning seats at risk of falling to Democrats. His “Mission for Michigan” trips last week took him to the steakhouse owned by Brann’s family; to a pool and hot tub store in Utica, where a city councilman, Ron Robinson, is running for a league seat; and to a beer and wine store in Troy, where he campaigned for state Rep. Tom Kuhn.
They all sounded the same conciliatory tone as Snyder.
“I think Governor Whitmer has done some good things — I’m not against the gun laws that she’s done,” said Brann, who also praised Snyder’s expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which has long been a lightning rod has been. for right-wing Republicans.
Democrats aren’t happy with the kinder, gentler approach.
Tommy Kubitschek, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Michigan, referred to more tumultuous moments during Snyder’s governorship, including the Flint water crisis.
“It is no surprise that disgraced former Governor Rick Snyder is openly trying to get MAGA extremists elected to the state House,” Kubitschek said. “Not only was Snyder one of Michigan’s worst and most destructive governors, causing long-lasting damage to our great state, but he now seems determined to crawl back onto the scene rather than fade quietly into the history books.”
State Rep. Jennifer Conlin, a Democrat whose Ann Arbor-area district is not among those Snyder visited last week, acknowledged that Snyder is “trying to separate himself from politics in general and the Republican Party at the national level.”
“But there’s basically no way a Republican could win his primary here without taking the oath of allegiance to the Trump side of the party,” she said. “So everyone they’re pushing for is actually part of that group no matter how you look at it, and so it’s not like you’re going to have a normal Republican Party by supporting the people who are running for office.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
