The battle for the soul of the Republican Party in Michigan

The former two-term Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is doing it. So too is the former Republican vice president Dick Cheney, as well as his daughter. Barbara Bush, whose father and grandfather were Republican presidents, is also joining in – even knocking doors in a swing state.

They’re all Republicans vocally announcing their support for Democrat Kamala Harris against their party’s nominee, Donald Trump.

“I have never voted for a Democrat,” said Liz Cheney, the former Republican Congresswoman, at the start of October. “But this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” She then toured Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan with the Democratic presidential nominee, calling on other anti-MAGA Republicans to do the same as her.

In response, Trump just said: “I don’t blame [Dick Cheney] for sticking with his daughter, but [Liz Cheney] is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She’s a radical war hawk.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her… Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

For Cheney, that has reinforced her decision to vote Democrat. “This is how dictators destroy free nations,” she wrote. “They threaten those who speak against them with death.”

And here in Michigan, there are many more pushing the Cheney message.

At an induction ceremony for the state’s military hall of honour in the capital, Lansing, I meet Robert Schwartz, the Michigan director of Haley Voters for Harris. He comes to events like this simply to sound out people and potentially recruit voters to his cause. He is one of the more than four million who cast their ballot for the more moderate, traditional Republican Nikki Haley in the party’s presidential primary. While Haley has now backed Trump, Schwartz is not following her and he believes many other Republicans could vote for Harris like him.

“In 2016, Michigan was decided by 10,000 votes,” Schwartz says. “The point is that the margin of difference in Michigan will likely be which way Nikki Haley voters go.” One New York Times/Siena poll found nine per cent of Republicans saying they were planning to vote for Harris – that had risen from five per cent the month before.

He meets one woman, Rebecca, who is indeed a Republican, voted for Haley, and is not a Trump fan at all. “I’ll tell you, I wish I could have Liz Cheney on the ballot. I saw her on Tuesday. I love that woman.” Robert asks Rebecca to get the word out for Harris. She says she will.

Yet it is noticeable that Trump’s rebranding of the Republican Party has enticed in a wave of new voters and the number of registered Republicans has increased. I point out that this is Trump’s party now, it’s popular, and potentially on the cusp of winning a second presidential election.

“There were Republicans that were Republicans before MAGA and those are the people that we’re talking to. They’ve been Republicans their whole life. They want fiscal conservatism. They want a strong foreign policy. So they would say that they want the Republican party back. That they’re more loyal to the Republican party rather than to a single person.”

But if Harris is to appeal to that cohort, it could run a risk for her campaign: alienating other voters among her base who may not approve of her appearing on stage with people like Cheney, someone who is pro-life.

Schwartz admits that there is a fine balance here. “We have advocated that in order for her to win these potentially decisive Nikki Haley voters, she has to talk to the middle of America. We want her to win, and so we do worry whether some of her messages are losing the Arab-American vote or the white, working-class union voter. Does appearing with Liz Cheney help her? We think overall it’s a net benefit, but we would also prefer that Harris talks to the issues that most undecided voters right now are voting on, which is economic issues.”

As Schwartz tries to eke out those potentially pivotal voters, I head over to the Saginaw Republican Party headquarters. This is a bellwether county: it voted for Trump in 2016 and narrowly for Joe Biden in 2020. The local party has changed in that time, with local MAGA recruits taking over the running of the operation. A purge of the “RINOs”: Republicans in name only. People like Schwartz.

The party headquarters are actually a “Trump Shoppe” where every piece of merchandise is on display: signs, hats, key rings, Christmas decorations. Gary Ell runs both the store and the Saginaw County Republicans. As we talk, people come in to buy merchandise and proclaim their support for Trump. These are the type of people who were never involved in politics before 2016.

“We use the Trump Shoppe to bring people in and we sign them up as precinct delegates, sign them up as voters. And we have built a huge grassroots army,” says Gary Ell, once never interested in politics, now the chair of the Saginaw Republican party. He says those who used to be in the party did not do enough to find those new voters that Trump does so well. Speaking of any Republican Trump-doubters, he says: “If they weren’t for Trump in 2016, they say they are now or they have lost their position, by and large, in the Republican party.”

One such convert to the new-look party is Paul Billow, who comes into the Trump Shoppe to pick up a few signs. “I’m tired of being afraid to put out a Trump sign,” he tells me. “I believe that he’s the best for America.” Why was he afraid to put up a sign, I ask. “Because I was afraid that some people in the neighbourhood would think I’m racist just because they associate Trump with racism, which is the furthest thing from the truth.”

I ask whether Billow worries about the warnings from Republicans like Liz Cheney. “No, not really. They’re all ‘RINOs’. I have no trust whatsoever in them. They don’t care about the American people.”

But the problem is that since Trump won in Michigan in 2016, things have not gone well for the Republican party in the state. Andrea Bitely, who used to work for the former Republican attorney general, told me: “We had the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office, the secretary of state’s office. We also held both chambers in the Michigan legislature. Basically, the entire state was Republican controlled. And in the years since Trump, we’ve lost all those offices.” She blames Trump: “I think that the changes that have come about as a result of Trump have made moderate voters such as myself really uncomfortable with voting for people who have fully dedicated themselves to the MAGA movement.”

Ell says the Michigan losses were due to the party having still been mainly in the control of the so-called “RINOs” – and he disputes some of the previous results. In Saginaw county, Trump won in 2016 and Biden narrowly took it in 2020. “We believe Trump won in 2020 if it wasn’t for some of the illegal activity. So that is our opinion. And many of the grassroots Republicans and probably the entirety of the executive committee believe that there was enough fraudulent election activity that Trump would have won Michigan and Saginaw County.”

I point out that all that was investigated and there was no evidence of any fraud. “By the same people that may have caused it,” he replies.

So this election in Michigan, and more broadly the United States, is not just a battle of Trump vs Harris, but a final head-to-head between MAGA and the Old Republicans.

Both sides of that rivalry feel bullish. When I said to Ell that the polls suggest it’s tight in Michigan, he said, “I probably get two or three requests to do polls a day. A lot of Republicans do. The bottom line is we are not filling out those polls. So those polls that say the race is tight are not getting a true reflection of the voters.”

On the other side, one Republican told me that, with more moderate, less MAGA candidates running for the Senate and the House in Michigan, people within the party tell him privately that their ideal outcome this election is for them to make gains in those races – but lose the presidential race.

Bring on election day.