WYOMING, Mich. – As he touts a Republican revival at the steakhouse next door, former Michigan governor Rick Snyder avoids red meat.
“We need to bring back civility and relentless affirmative action,” Snyder said party effort to reclaim a majority in the state House of Representatives, said two dozen GOP operatives, some nibbling on local celebrity windmill cookies, listening politely.
“I don’t believe we should be calling anybody names,” Snyder said. “Or yell at someone.”
Snyder’s position of positivity contrasted with the political hostility of the moment. especially in a battleground like Michigan. There are none with flames “Fight! Battle! Fight!” Rhetoric that Republicans are rallying around after the assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump.
Neither does Trump.
Snyder deliberately avoided talking about her during an 11-city bus tour last week, worried that any mention of her could turn off swing voters here in Grand Rapids and in other districts, from metro Detroit to Battle Creek and Traverse City. The core GOP voters Trump is most focused on are not the same voters who are key to the coalition Snyder is trying to build. In some places, it may align more with center-right voters that Vice President Kamala Harris hopes to win. Endorsement from Fred UptonRepublican former congressman from southwest Michigan.
Amid Trump’s grip on the party, several Republicans who spoke to NBC News at Snyder’s events expressed enthusiasm for his third bid for the White House.
Some flatly refused to say whether they voted for Trump. Peter Meijer, Republican former congressman After voting to impeach Trump in 2022, he lost the primary and briefly ran for the Senate this yearhe flinched when asked if he won Trump’s vote.
“I’m not talking about the presidential election,” he said at a steakhouse near Grand Rapids, where Snyder was promoting state representative candidate Tommy Brann, 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 unseat Rep. Hillary Scholte in the Grand Rapids-area congressional district previously represented by Meijer, also ran.
After praising Snyder’s efforts and “fantastic campaign” for state House candidates, Hudson said, “I decided at the beginning of this race that I was going to focus on my race and I’m going to stick with it the whole way through.” By the Michigan Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Mike Rogers.
Snyder and Republicans are trying to chip away The “three” of Democrats in Michiganwhere are they there is A lock to handle with Snyder’s his successor, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a two-seat majority in both the state House and state Senate (Democrats also hold a majority on the state Supreme Court). The next elections for governor and state Senate are not until 2026.
Their push to win back the state House, Snyder and Republicans emphasize pocketbook issues and argue that one political party’s unchecked power in the capital city of Lansing is pulling Michigan too far to the left. They complain that Whitmer and the Democrats were wrong to allow it income tax cuts are associated with higher tax revenues it will end this year.
Democrats, meanwhile, argue that tax policies bring relief to those who need it most. They claim it too new gun safety laws and repealing the state’s anti-union “right-to-work” law — Signed by Snyder in 2012 – It wouldn’t happen under GOP rule.
“The only advantage they have is old concepts,” Whitmer said last week at an event in Oakland County to support state House candidates. “Because the facts are on our side.”
Snyder, Endorsing Joe Biden in 2020He would not say how he voted in the presidential elections. In his “bus” — a sleeker commercial van with cans of Diet Pepsi chilled in a soft-pack cooler — he said his goal was to reach voters disillusioned with the sordid tenor of politics at the national level.
All of the districts he’s targeting “could swing either way,” Snyder said.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m out of the presidential race,” he added, preparing to call into a local radio show on his way to tape another interview at a television station.
The hosts of both shows asked him who he was voting for, and both got the same answer: He doesn’t want to dilute the positive message of the Take Back Home campaign.
“If I say I’m one way or the other, everybody who comes to these events in the House is going to misrepresent where I’m coming from, and my ‘Hey…I’m here to talk to you about this’ is our backyard strip,” Snyder told NBC News. . “It’s all about Michigan.”
Snyder said he sees “nine or 10” state House races — a mix of pick-up opportunities for the GOP and Republican there is a risk that the seats will go to the Democrats. His “Mission to Michigan” travels last week took him, among other places, to a steakhouse owned by the Brann family; to a pool and hot tub dealer in Utica, where City Councilman Ron Robinson is running for a competitive seat; and a beer and wine store in Troy, where he campaigned for state Rep. Tom Kuhn.
All struck the same conciliatory tones as Snyder.
“I think Governor Whitmer has done some good things — I’m not against the gun laws that he’s done,” Brann said, praising Snyder’s expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a longtime lightning rod. for right-wing Republicans.
Democrats are not buying the kinder, gentler approach.
Tommy Kubitschek, a spokesman for the Michigan Democratic Party, recalled some of the more tumultuous moments of Snyder’s governorship, including The Flint water crisis.
“It’s no surprise that hapless former governor Rick Snyder is openly trying to elect MAGA extremists to the state house,” Kubitschek said. “Not only has Snyder done lasting damage to our great state by being one of Michigan’s worst and most destructive governors, he now seems determined to return to the stage instead of quietly slipping into the history books.”
State Rep. Jennifer Conlin, a Democrat whose Ann Arbor district was not among the districts Snyder visited last week, acknowledged that Snyder is “trying to distance himself from national politics and the Republican Party nationally.”
“But basically, it’s impossible for any Republican to win a primary here without pledging allegiance to the Trump part of the party,” he said. “So everybody that they’re kind of pushing is actually part of that group, you can look at it any way you want, and so you’re not going to get a normal Republican Party by supporting the people who are running.”