transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] You know, every day on Up First, NPR's Golden Globe-nominated morning news podcast, we bring you three essential stories. At the heart of each story are questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow Up First wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why.

Speaker 2:
[00:24] This is Mich Mash, a weekly conversation where we try to unjumble an important and sometimes under-the-radar, statewide story that affects you. I'm Zach Gorchow.

Speaker 3:
[00:33] And I'm Alethia Kasben. A key milestone for the 2026 elections passed this week, the filing deadline. Candidates who want to be on the August ballot were required to either turn in signatures or pay a fee to formally get access.

Speaker 2:
[00:47] So there's still a bit more to go from here. Candidates who turned in signatures, those running for governor, US. Senate and US. House, need to have those verified. And we've seen many instances of candidates falling short of having enough ballot signatures. Other candidates who can pay a fee, those are the state legislative candidates, could still lose access to the ballot for things like residency or campaign finance issues. And candidates can withdraw by 4 p.m. Friday, April 24th. And we are recording on Wednesday the 22nd, so lots more to come.

Speaker 3:
[01:20] All in all, there weren't many surprises on filing day. The biggest drama, though, came in the 13th US. House District in Detroit. Congressman Shree Thanedar is the incumbent there, and Democrats have tried unsuccessfully multiple times to unseat him. A major focus here is Black Detroiters seeking Black representation in Congress. It seemed state Rep Donovan McKinney, who has been running in the district for a year, was set to be the main candidate against Thanedar. But nope, Detroit City Councilmember Mary Waters, who lost to Thanedar in 2024, despite backing from Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and others, filed just before the deadline.

Speaker 2:
[01:59] So Waters entering the race makes it much more likely that Thanedar will win another term. Two known Democrats who are Black going up against Thanedar, who is Indian American, splits up the vote enough to make it easier for the incumbent to win the primary yet again. Well, we have a lot to talk about this week. Not just the filing deadline, mind you, but the recent Democratic State Convention was a doozy. What do you say we get another voice involved? Let's take a short break and bring in Jonathan Oosting from Bridge Michigan.

Speaker 3:
[02:35] As promised, joining us now is Bridge Michigan Deputy Editor, Jonathan Oosting. Jonathan, thanks so much for coming on MichMash today.

Speaker 4:
[02:42] Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:
[02:44] So Jonathan, a lot has been happening this week on the political front. We had the filing deadline that just passed on Tuesday. And then there was the Michigan Democratic Party State Convention last weekend. So we just broke down for listeners the basics of the filing deadline. What were you watching for on Tuesday with that deadline?

Speaker 4:
[03:06] You know, any surprises, of course, like any filing deadline. You know, we largely knew who the candidates were going to be for the big the big races, Governor, US. Senate. And there was, I'd say, the most surprising in those races was Bernadette Smith filing her signatures. She's a long shot, you know, grassroots Republican trying to challenge Mike Rogers. And she announced on social media, I think last week, that she was launching her signature gathering operation, which was very last minute. I was also curious to see, for instance, I knew in Rashida Tlaib's congressional district, I knew there was some last minute efforts to try and get a Republican even on the ballot there. You know, one of the candidates from last year, James Hopper announced again last week that nobody had filed, so he was gonna give it a go. And he did, you know, it's usually important for political parties to have at least one candidate on the ballot. It would be kind of embarrassing if they did not. And because, you know, Rashida Tlaib is probably a lock for re-election, especially if she makes it through the primary in a very, you know, Democrat-heavy district. But what if something happened to her? What if she had a scandal and needed to resign? I mean, all these different factors, you know, say you always need a candidate on the ticket in some capacity. And there were some questions on the GOP side, especially how much the state party was actively working to recruit candidates this cycle. I know the state party had a pretty good convention of their own recently, but it's not kind of the robust machine. The Michigan GOP might have been in years past. So yeah, those are some of the things I was looking at. No, I wouldn't say any huge surprises this time around.

Speaker 3:
[04:59] Yeah, it was, I think it was kind of a boring-ish filing deadline. I mean, we knew, like you said, going in that most of the gubernatorial candidates, including Chris Swanson, the main Democratic opponent for Jocelyn Benson. There were some questions from Zach.

Speaker 2:
[05:18] I really wondered whether he would file, be able to file the signatures. But he did. The prior week, I think he said he filed something like 26, 27,000 signatures. So he has a shot now, assuming that that's enough cushion to get him the 15,000 minimum that he needs. So that was a significant achievement for him.

Speaker 4:
[05:39] Yeah, I was curious about that one too. I mean, he did say when filing, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not a lieutenant governor. I'm in this thing to win it. That, you know, suggesting he's not just doing this to build his name profile for some sort of other race. But I think, I don't know about you guys, but there was an email advisory went out to reporters saying a major announcement coming from Croissantz. It didn't say anything about what it might be. And I think a lot of people were wondering, wow, is this going to be, is he going to pack it in? But, you know, you look at that closer and sort of if you looked at the address, it was the Richard H. Austin building in that thing. So then, oh, because I mean, you know, a signature gathering press conferences are, let's face it, a little bit lame usually. So I probably wouldn't have sent a reporter necessarily to everyone. But maybe it was an effective strategy there to send out a very intriguing advisory teasing not so major announcement as a major one.

Speaker 2:
[06:39] Well, if there's one community that always is fairly interesting and provides the occasional surprise on filing day, I think it's Detroit and that was the case again. Jonathan, can you walk us through what happened in the 13th Congressional District where Sreet Tanudar is the incumbent? There has been a push among a lot of Democrats to try to oust him in the last cycle or two and they have not been able to get it done. What happened this week?

Speaker 4:
[07:07] Well, the same thing that happened in previous cycles. A last-minute, high-profile-ish name anyways, Detroit City Councilwoman Mary Waters jumped into the race. Donovan McKinney, the state legislator was already in this thing and very vocal that he's going to try and make a concerted effort to take on Sreet Tanudar this year, but for that to be successful in Detroit, you kind of need a small primary field, like head-to-head ideally for McKinney. So Mary Waters getting into the race complicates efforts. I don't know if McKinney is making this a staple of his campaign, but certainly some of the push in that area has been for black representation. And now you've got two black candidates, and McKinney and Waters in the race that could limit his ability to get over the top and a really tough primary against Shree, because we know Shree Tanadar has a lot of money, both stuff he already has in his campaign, but he could inject his own money into the race at any point. And we did see a relatively lackluster campaign finance report from Donovan McKinney just last week. I think some folks thought he'd be raising more money in that race as the most viable challenger to Shree Tanadar. But Shree is still going to have a decided advantage in the money race.

Speaker 3:
[08:34] Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how Mary Waters jumping in changes things in that respect, right? Like if people will say we want to take McKinney more seriously and maybe try to get him more backing. But she ran, she was the candidate basically in 2024 after former Senator Adam Hollier was kicked off the ballot and she still couldn't really make that much of a dent. I think she got 34-ish percent of the vote. So, you know, it's really a surprising decision to jump in when, you know, it kind of feels like you had your turn maybe for some of these Democrats who would like to see Shree out of there.

Speaker 2:
[09:13] A lot of jokes on social media yesterday, basically congratulating Shree Tanadar on reelection just by virtue of Waters jumping into the race. But of course, the voters will eventually have their say in August.

Speaker 3:
[09:27] So jumping back to Governor, I think, you know, what let's talk about what happens next. So all of these candidates have turned in their signatures like we talked about. There really wasn't a huge surprise and maybe someone not turning in signatures or dropping out last minute. None of those surprises came up here. But there is still plenty of time for us to be surprised about who is on the ballot. Just because all of these candidates have turned in signatures does not mean they will appear on the August ballot.

Speaker 4:
[09:57] Yeah, I mean, Perry Johnson, of course, knows this all too well. He was one of, I think, five gubernatorial candidates that got disqualified or withdrew because of signature verification issues four years ago. You know, the process is the Michigan Bureau of Elections is going to review these signatures and come up with an estimate of how many they think are valid, and then recommend whether the board of state canvassers should certify the petitions to actually get the candidates on the ballot. In years past, I mean, that was kind of a, you know, it seemed like a given major party, well-funded candidate would make the ballot once they turned in their signatures. But the last, you know, 2022, but now 2024 as well, some congressional candidates had signature verification issues. Adam Ollier, you mentioned just before this. So it has become a bigger issue. So I guess in that respect, I would say it was surprising that Perry Johnson didn't file exactly 30,000 position signatures. It was somewhere between 29,000 and 30,000. But, you know, a lot of times campaigns are trying to get the absolute maximum they're allowed to submit in case some or many of them are invalidated. So Perry Johnson knows the press as well. He claims he's got this whole new system in place where they were like sending text messages to everyone who signed the petitions to say like, do you remember signing this? You know, was it really you? And stuff like that to try and verify it. But, you know, time will tell how effective that approach was. Certainly, outside groups are going to be looking very closely. They can challenge signatures and they're going to be looking very closely at all these petitions.

Speaker 2:
[11:42] You know, the other piece to look at too is this relatively new law that says you can't be on the ballot for state office if you do not have all of your campaign finance fees and paperwork in order. We've seen a number of candidates for the legislature kicked off the ballot in the last couple cycles under the statute. And that'll be another item to watch here. Usually, the Board of State Canvassers complete certification of the ballot late May, just before June. So this really kicks off a really interesting next phase. So I thought it'd be fun to maybe go around the room and just offer like one quick takeaway that you got from the filing deadline. I'll go first because I don't want to put everyone on the spot right away. I'll give you some chance to think about it. I thought it was interesting that obviously the Michigan House of Representatives 58-52 Republican majority Democrats are going to work very hard to try to change that and take control. And so what I noticed is in a lot of these key competitive districts for many months, we saw multiple Democratic candidates lining up to run against Republican incumbents. And then interestingly enough, as we got to the filing deadline, a lot of these other candidates got out of the race or withdrew and left one higher caliber candidate remaining. And that didn't feel like an accident to me. The last thing a party wants, and I think we'll talk about the US. Senate race in a minute. I don't care what the Democrats say about how primaries are great. The last thing a party wants is a lot of money and resources getting blown in a primary. And by winnowing these fields down to one candidate in key Michigan House Districts, that's probably a step in the right direction for Democrats. All right, Alethia, you're up.

Speaker 3:
[13:32] Well, that was mine. So it was that Democrats in the House particularly seem to whittle away their primaries. I think I'll mention the fun thing that I noticed yesterday that a Republican named Matthew Stafford filed in the 11th House District where he will not win even if he makes the ballot, but that is always fun. Jonathan, I think you re-tweeted that and noted the Tom Izzo in the Lansing area seat who filed I think last time. So that's, you know, always fun.

Speaker 4:
[14:04] Yeah, it turns out a name is not everything. You know, Tom Izzo couldn't win on name alone. We had a reporter go to his house. He had one campaign sign in his yard. I think that was his entire campaign and being named Tom Izzo. So it turns out that's not it. I mean, there's a great tradition of this. And remember, there was another Candace Miller running for some office again the other year. You know, so the name soundalikes are always interesting. I mean, the biggest takeaway for me is that this is just the beginning of a process, right? Now that we have this track record of recent years of the state, you know, invalidating so many signatures, and we know the policy hasn't changed, you know? Lawmakers knew this was a problem four years ago. They knew it was a problem two years ago, and they really weren't able to push through any reforms to the signature circulation process, laws that govern it. State Senator Jeremy Moss is running for Congress now, has long tried to reform petition process. One of his proposals, for instance, would prohibit pay-per-signature circulation campaigns. That can be a big problem. I mean, we knew from the fraud four years ago, that these circulators had a big incentive to get as many signatures as they could, including forging them because they were getting paid by the signature. It seems like low-hanging fruit, some of those ideas. But they've gone nowhere in the legislature, so we're dealing with pretty much the exact same regulatory framework that we had when this really became a big issue a couple of years ago.

Speaker 3:
[15:44] Yeah. I do want to go back to what you said earlier, Jonathan, about Perry Johnson in particular not putting in 30,000 signatures. It does seem like we're watching candidates who are aware of the fraud issue and are actually looking at their signatures. Because in 2022, I don't think that was the case. I mean, there were pages upon pages of just very clearly the same handwriting. I think Perry said he had collected 38,000. So you have to think if what he's saying is true, like the campaign did take out signatures that were clearly not good because he could have turned in 30,000 if he collected 38,000. So I guess, and I think we saw that with a lot of candidates where they were like just under, you know, they were like, this is 27,000 or something. So it'll be interesting to see like, are they, you know, how on top of this they were.

Speaker 4:
[16:33] Yeah, I got one more takeaway real quick. And I got a credit group material candidate, Tom Leonard, with this one. How many boxes does it actually take to carry these petitions in? Tom Leonard did it in, I think, three boxes in a small children's wagon that he brought it to SOS, whereas other candidates are carrying 20 boxes. Volunteers are holding them by their pinkies, suggesting there's probably not much in those things. A lot of this is really a pomp and circumstance, you know, looking like you're filing an incredible amount of petitions when, you know, we know paper's not really that thick.

Speaker 3:
[17:09] One box per page is what you mean. We're going to take a quick break here and we'll be right back with more discussion with Jonathan on the Michigan Democratic Party Convention. So let's switch gears a little bit here and talk about last weekend's Michigan Democratic Party Convention. Jonathan, the results from this convention where they endorsed the Secretary of State candidate and Attorney General candidate as the biggest ones, but also the U of M regent race was pretty big for a university board race. Were you surprised by what happened there?

Speaker 4:
[17:49] Yeah, I was. I mean, we heard of course and talked to some of the groups like the People's Coalition that were recruiting new delegates to go to the convention. I mean, the thing about the Michigan Democratic Party Convention that separates it from the GOP Convention is, you get into the GOP Convention as a voting delegate, you needed to get through a county level process, then go and then pay $50 to get to the convention. Michigan Democrats allowed anybody to register to become a member of the party for free, and anybody who was a member of the party could register on-site at the convention to vote. So we knew there was going to be potentially a big turnout. And what we didn't know was how many people, newcomers, first timers, were actually going to make it to the convention. Seems like a whole lot made it, right? These groups were pretty effective. The progressive groups were pretty, and anti-war groups specifically, were pretty effective at recruiting people to not only sign up to become members, but then to actually get themselves physically to the convention center. Which one you're dealing with, like college kids on a weekend is sometimes an open question. So they organized quite effectively, probably more so than I thought they might have. But with all these new energetic voices, of course, came some chaos, came some very interesting scenes, and some decorum that really turned off some of the long-standing establishment Democrats who have been going to these things for years.

Speaker 2:
[19:23] So I think you hit the big overall, which is that historically, and this has been on the wane a little bit, but historically, it's been the United Auto Workers, especially, but also the Michigan Education Association and other unions that control these Democratic conventions. They bring the troops, they have the votes, and whoever they've endorsed, usually, not always, but usually wins. While it's not like they got clobbered here, one of their candidates did win the Secretary of State race. That Attorney General race, I think, spoke volumes that this was the progressive movement, you mentioned the People's Coalition, that brought the votes in and ran this thing and really held sway. So let's get to this Attorney General race. So going in, we had Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald as the just clear favorite. She had an avalanche of endorsements, not just unions, but also leading Democratic elected officials and other groups. As the prosecutor of Oakland County, she's very well known. She had an electability factor at a November election on her side, and she was up against Washtenaw County Prosecutor Ellie Savitt, less known but a favorite of the progressive movement. There were whispers that maybe Savitt might have a chance, don't count them out if the progressives show up. But by and large, the sentiment in the capital community in Lansing was that McDonald was a borderline lock. Well, Savitt wins. How did he do it, and what are the implications of this?

Speaker 4:
[21:05] Yeah, well, I mean, he himself was recruiting new people to the convention as well. He was very much part of that effort. I don't know if he was working with any of those outside groups. He himself was saying, look, the people who wrote the Constitution set up this system where people in cigar smoke-filled rooms get to decide who your nominees are. You need to get to the convention. So that was part of it, the big turnout. Yeah, I think in the Secretary of State race, Garland Gilchrist, before he joined the Whitmer ticket, was fairly progressive himself. So I think there was no clear super progressive alternative to him. You had Barb Byrum and Susanna Schiacrelli, who are both longtime party insiders. So there was no clear insurgent coming from the left in that race. But you had one here in the Attorney General's race. Eli Sabbath, or Eli Sabbath is, of course, quite progressive. One of his first actions in Washington County was to announce elimination of cash bail, which was a real progressive, popular policy reform at the time. Republicans have been really pushing back against that now, and I think are salivating at the prospect of raising issues like that in the campaign. Or, you know, Sabbath's decision not to prosecute people for possession of psychedelics in Washington County. Those are all issues that, you know, make him vulnerable to Republican attacks, potentially. The Republicans certainly think so. But endeared him to progressives writ large. And then, you know, he is Jewish himself, but, you know, not a supporter of Israel, which of course was, or generally a supporter of Israel, which of course was a really big issue in this convention race. I mean, I think the UM race might have actually been most impassioned of all of these, but Savit, you know, certainly was the obvious progressive choice in that race. Now, a lot of Democrats are, you know, I think they're going to back Savit. He's not, you know, he's not Christina Caramo, just to make that clear from four years ago, when Republicans nominated Virtual Unknown. So I think he's going to win over the establishment support. But he was, you know, clearly much more progressive than Karen McDonald, who ran as a moderate and, and, you know, has generally operated one like one as a prosecutor.

Speaker 2:
[23:47] It's going to be interesting because I've seen a lot of Savit supporters scoffing at Republicans kind of salivating and people wondering if the Democrats handed the Attorney General's race to the Republicans and saying, Savit's ideologically pretty similar to Dana Nessel, who of course won in 2018. To me, the big difference, and again, who knows what will happen, but, you know, Dana Nessel had mostly practiced privately. She had not been a county prosecutor attorney and definitely had not decided and very publicly announced, we are no longer going to prosecute certain crimes. And, you know, what you referenced earlier about getting rid of cash bail. So it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out. And, you know, it just seems to like McDonald was not able to resonate at the grassroots. Like you said, that insurgent quality that Savit had seemed to prevail. So Jonathan, you mentioned Garland Gilchrist winning the Secretary of State race. This was, I think, less surprising. You know, he seemed to have most of the advantages going in. But there was some doubt. How do you pull it off? And how does he look going forward?

Speaker 4:
[25:05] Well, we don't know what the vote was. So I don't know exactly how we pulled it off. Unlike the GOP convention a couple of weeks earlier, Michigan Democrats keep it pretty close to the vest, how that all plays out. They use kind of an interesting proportional voting system or vote allocation system. So we don't know how it played out. I mean, there was speculation that if there were a runoff, this might have been much closer. I mean, the big knock against Gilchrist, of course, is that he's never run elections. So he's never been an election administrator. That's a very key part of the job of Secretary of State. Senator Byram certainly had that going for her, which would have given her advantage on paper. She had some baggage with a lawsuit that she was subject to previously. And Susanna Schiocchelli, I think, ran a pretty decent campaign, just wasn't as well known and didn't have the election administration either that would have separated her from Garland Gilchrist. So I mean, Garland, like I said, it was fairly progressive on his own, before he teamed up with the Whitmer administration. He's made fighting Trump administration attempts to go after voting rules, laws, or even the process in Michigan, a central part of his campaign. And he's very well spoken on that front. So he positioned himself as a fighter and defender of democracy, even if he has never run elections and in fact, lost his race for city clerk in Detroit before he was Whitmer's running mate in 2018.

Speaker 3:
[26:48] Yeah, for me, I thought the biggest surprise with Gilchrist was that he won it in one ballot. Like I think, it's not a huge surprise that he won, but I kind of thought it would at least take two ballots. But then looking back now in retrospect, in hindsight, it's like, well, he had the progressives on his side and all the major unions that we talked about. So it really makes a lot of sense that he was actually able to get through in one round. I wanted to touch quickly too on you mentioned decorum of the day. We've heard a lot about the booing, about the various negativity from certain delegates to the attendees, mainly US Rep Haley Stevens, who was running for US Senate, was booed by, it seems like, Abdul El-Sayed supporters. He even put a video out that was like, we should not do this. Does this, you know, portend anything for August, or is this just something, you know, fun to talk about on Twitter?

Speaker 4:
[27:45] Well, I mean, A, it's not a great look for Haley Stevens, right? She, that video was very widely spread. You know, Abdul El-Sayed, as you did mention, had to do a little damage control too, by, you know, saying to his supporters, you know, this is not what we're all about here in this campaign. But, I mean, you know, I covered a lot of the GOP conventions back, you know, in 2022 and before, when they were going through sort of this grassroots uprising as well. There's, took, had a little longer tail, I think. But, you know, in those conventions, every time I talk to people, they said, well, yeah, it's kind of a mess. But like, can you believe the energy here? Like, Democrats don't have this energy. We are all fired up. And I think you saw that this weekend, you know, whether, you know, that energy is harnessed behind a specific set of candidates in the fall will be the key. Whether, you know, a Savitt or a Gilchrist can appeal to, you know, the moderate and independent voters that usually decide close Michigan elections, along with the energetic progressive base. I mean, those are the big questions time will tell. You know, I'll just go back to 2022, when this happened with the Republicans. You know, insurgent grassroots uprising controlling the convention. I mean, they walked out of it with a couple of candidates who had even less experience running for the post than Gilchrist does, right? I mean, Gilchrist has been the lieutenant governor of Michigan for eight years. He is not a political nobody by any means. So, you know, I think despite all the hand rigging, Gilchrist and Savitt are going to be well received by the Democratic establishment moving forward. You've already seen Jocelyn Benson, the presumed front runner for the gubernatorial nomination, come out and say they're going to be great to run with. I don't think it's going to be quite as much consternation as maybe Republicans did have four years ago.

Speaker 2:
[29:47] To me, the biggest thing was, what does this mean for Haley Stevens? There'll probably be a million people voting in the Democratic primary in August, and this was a lot of people at a convention, but it was only a little over 7,000. But boy, when her main claim to Democrats to nominate her is electability, and you go to your party's convention, and just viciously booed and chanted against it, it feels to me like that is a dent in the electability argument when you can't even show up to your own convention and not only you're not, it wasn't that she was tepidly received, but she was viscerally hated, it felt like. So I think that is a real challenge for her. She published a sub stack earlier this week that said, I'm still fighting, which I thought was very interesting. Basically say, no, I'm not going away. So that'll be something to watch. The other thing I'll say is this wild and woolly Democratic convention reminded me a lot of 2010 Republican Convention, which was at the dawn of the Tea Party Movement. There was incredible energy among Michigan Republicans. They filled half the Breslin Center, which is a 10,000 to 12,000 seat venue in East Lansing, where Michigan State University's campus. I mean, it was a mess in many ways. People wanted to throw then nominee Rick Snyder's choice for Lieutenant Governor overboard in favor of random activists that nobody had known. There was booing, there were cat calls, there were chants. But for a moment, people wondered, boy, are they just too much energy. But what happened that year was really the greatest Republican election year of, I don't know, the last 100 years. I mean, they won everything nationwide and in Michigan by massive margins. So I think you do raise a good point, Jonathan, that the question is, can Democrats just carry all this energy forward? So we've talked around the University of Michigan Board of Regents race. We haven't really addressed it head on yet. This was a Donnybrook is probably putting it mildly. We talked on the show last week about text messages and mailers that were going around. That continued into this convention. Jonathan, can you just describe what went down at the convention, the outcome, and what the raw feelings are emerging from the convention?

Speaker 4:
[32:23] Yeah, as I said earlier, I think this was the most actually contested election. I think this is what drew a lot of those progressive college age activists anyways to the convention. Folks usually don't pay that much attention to these races for regents or university boards. But in the case of University of Michigan, we'd seen for years this tension between pro-Palestinian protesters and the university festering. Jordan Acker, the incumbent regent, was part of that. I mean, he was targeted in protests even at his home by student activists who wanted the university to divest from Israel. And then on top of it, the Guardian publishes this rather shocking report, I think, the day before the convention, maybe two days, detailing alleged slack messages that were pretty lewd from Jordan Acker about both a Democratic female strategist and a student at the University of Michigan. So I think those two elements combined, I mean, I think Amir Macklod already had a lot of support from these progressive activists coming in. And perhaps some establishment folks or previous Acker backers grew some cold feet because of that report. I'm speculating, I don't know that for a fact. But anyways, you combine those, and yeah, Macklod, you know, knocked them off. It was, I think, a little surprising because unlike the Secretary of State and Attorney General's race, you did have really high-profile endorsees like Governor Gretchen Whitmer had endorsed Jordan Acker for re-nomination. And he did not get it. So, you know, it was in many ways a proxy battle over the university's handling of pro-Palestinian protests and its relationship with Israel. But there were other factors at play as well.

Speaker 3:
[34:29] And I think when we're talking about the Republican sort of being giddy after this convention, like this is the race. So Macklin, you know, for his part had, you know, some text messages that were not text messages, I'm sorry. Social media posts that were deleted that said some controversial things, some retweeting of Candace Owens. And that's what, you know, Republicans are really running away with, right? They're trying to tie every Democratic candidate to this U of M Regent candidate and, you know, certain posts that he has made. You know, I saw a picture on social media yesterday of Jamie Church's, who is a state house candidate, you know, with Amir Macklin at the convention. And I thought, wow, you maybe don't want that picture right now because in your down river, you know, state house race, this might come back. And I think we're going to see that, you know, up and down the ticket, whether that's valid or not. And of course, it's another conversation. But this is what Republicans are going to try to tie, you know, every candidate to from now until November.

Speaker 2:
[35:28] And we saw Congresswoman Kristin McDonald Rivet with a lengthy thread on Twitter slash X earlier this week, distancing herself, basically repudiating Macklin, saying, these are not my values. And I would imagine we're going to see every Democrat in any competitive race down the ticket tied to him. And we'll see if it has an effect or not.

Speaker 4:
[35:52] Yeah. And of course, like with the Republicans four years ago, Zach, I know you were kind of joking about this the other day, but you've got some long time Democrats saying it's time to get rid of the nominating convention process. It's not a fair way to elect people. Of course, they weren't backing the Republicans who wanted to reform it four years ago after the same thing happened at their convention. So we'll see whether the critics on either side of the aisle can get together and actually do something on this. But it's really hard to change the process. Some of these offices are by convention in the state constitution. So changing that requires a heavy lift either in the legislature to get a ballot proposal or a petition drive to get on the ballot, which it's too late to do that this year, of course. But a lot of hand wringing and soul searching about this process. Michigan is one of only three states that, you know, routinely nominates folks in this way rather than public primaries where voters could maybe decide instead of party activists. But I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] Well, Jonathan, thanks so much for joining us. It was a big week. I'm glad we had you with us to break it down.

Speaker 4:
[37:05] Thanks. It was fun.

Speaker 3:
[37:07] Thanks again to our guest, Jonathan Oosting, Deputy Editor of Bridge Michigan.

Speaker 2:
[37:11] Mich Mash is produced by WDET, Detroit's NPR station, in collaboration with Gongwer News Service and State Affairs. Mich Mash is hosted and produced by Cheyna Roth, Alethia Kasben and me, Zach Gorchow. Additional production and editing by Ernst Laguerre Jr. Mixing, Mastering and Music by Sam Bobian.

Speaker 3:
[37:31] Theresa Cardone handles our digital assets. Our news director is Jerome Vaughn. As always, if you listen to this podcast and you want to support it, you can do so by leaving us a review or comment wherever you listen. You can subscribe or follow us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2:
[37:48] Mich Mash is a great opportunity to get your message out to state and local policymakers. To learn more about sponsorship, contact this email address, info at gongwer.com.

Speaker 3:
[38:01] Remember, we're produced by a public radio station, which means we are listener supported. So if you really, really like this podcast, you can support WDET by going to wdet.org. We'll talk to you next week.