Analysis-Harris' Michigan loss highlights Democrats' many weak spots

By Andrea Shalal

DEARBORN, Michigan (Reuters) - Democrat Kamala Harris lost Michigan by more than 80,000 votes amid a nationwide shift to Republicans, as union workers, Black voters, Arab Americans and Muslims either failed to show up at the polls, or cast their ballots for Donald Trump.

It was a bracing loss, given the state is run by a high-profile Democratic governor who expanded voting rights and it had only backed a Republican president once before in the past 22 years - Trump in 2016, and then by fewer than 11,000 votes.

What happened in Michigan highlights issues that ail the Democratic Party nationwide, community leaders, voters and political experts say. Working class voters, people of color and immigrants voted in lower numbers or moved to Trump, high grocery and housing prices loomed large, and national party leaders ignored local organizers.

Exit polling offered some insights about challenges Harris faced in her three-month campaign:

The economy was the top issue in Michigan, as across the country, said Ameshia Cross, a Democratic strategist, but the Arab American and Muslim vote, immigration concerns and a high concentration of Black voters also played a big role.

"There's only so much you can do in 107 days," Cross said, referring to the amount of time Harris' campaign had after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. "However, I do think that there should have been more time spent in Michigan."

Harris visited the state 11 times, and high profile Democrats campaigned here, including both Barack and Michelle Obama.

Cross faulted the "consulting class" of the Democratic Party for relying too much on polling instead of local organizers.

"Listening to people on the ground is always going to be more vital than the modeling and the projections that we've seen," she said.

Local opposition to U.S. support for Israel's wars in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon also loomed over the campaign.

The Harris team said the vice president held closed-door meetings with some Arab American and Muslim leaders, and pointed to outreach efforts in Michigan that included a large ground presence with 52 offices and over 375 staff.

TRUMP WINS OVER MUSLIMS

Michigan is home to at least 300,000 Arab Americans and Muslims, who overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020.

Both Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Trump spent considerable time in Dearborn, the biggest U.S. city with a majority-Arab population. Harris never visited.

Harris did meet privately in August outside the city with Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a Democrat who later declined to endorse any candidate, and with selected community leaders who did endorse her.

Dearborn backed Trump by 42% to Harris' 40%, with Stein receiving over 15%, city data showed. In 2020, Biden won 69% of the city's vote to Trump's 30%.

The issues may have reverberated in other states too. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy group, said Stein won 53% of the vote in an exit poll of 1,575 verified Muslim voters. Trump won 21% and Harris 20%.

Trump's campaign blasted text messages and mailers to a list of 100,000 mostly Democratic-leaning Arab Americans in Michigan in the last months, portraying Trump as a "president of peace" and linking Harris with the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

They seized on Harris' town halls with former Representative Liz Cheney, whose father former Vice President Dick Cheney played a large role planning the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they sent a mobile billboard truck with the words "Stop Kamala, Stop the Wars" driving around Dearborn.

Harris did not meet "Uncommitted" organizers who mobilized 101,000 votes during the Democratic primaries, and Democrats did not allow a Palestinian speaker at the August party convention, angering these groups and progressives.

"We have failed leadership. It's exhausting, it's daunting, it's frustrating, because it didn't have to be this way," Lexis Zeidan, a Democrat and co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement told reporters in Dearborn.

BEGGING FOR YARD SIGNS

In Detroit, the largest majority-Black city in the U.S., where the Harris campaign had hoped to offset expected losses among Arab and Muslim voters, city data showed turnout fell to 47% from just under 50% in 2020, despite new laws on early voting and absentee ballots.

Hazen Turner, a 24-year-old Black auto worker who canvassed for Harris in Detroit, said many of his friends and co-workers felt defeated by rising costs and their inability to get ahead.

“A lot of the young Black universe, they don't really have faith in the system," he said. "The more we work, we really don't have anything to show for it."

Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, a Detroit school board member and former Democratic member of the Michigan House of Representatives, said officials with the coordinated party campaign were dismissive of her concerns. She said she had to beg for yard signs to help energize voters in the city who were less inclined to vote.

"I'm telling them we're getting 20 to 30 pieces of mail from Trump daily, and we've heard nothing from Harris," she said. "And then you see on TV they're raising a billion dollars. Like, what the hell?"

Michigan's voters without a college degree make up 62% of the state's total, and they remained skeptical of Democrats.

The campaign also failed to address concerns including around electric vehicles that were raised by many United Auto Workers, a growing number of whom backed Trump even though Biden and Harris supported their strike last year against General Motors.

Isaiah Goddard, 24, a white UAW member, said he met Trump when he visited a non-union shop during the strike. He said he trusts him to protect his job and keep out illegal immigrants.

“We were better off when President Trump was president," said Goddard, who attended two rallies with Trump and his running mate JD Vance before the election.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Heather Timmons and Daniel Wallis)