GOP seeks to win back Lansing influence in Michigan House races

Polls suggest the presidential race in Michigan is a toss-up. The U.S. Senate race remains within the margin of error. A few swing Michigan congressional seats will help determine the balance of power in Washington.

And, adding to the existential worries of Michigan politicos, a handful of state House races will decide whether Democrats will continue to control Lansing for another two years, or if Republicans will take the helm for the coming term.

Statehouse Democrats had a good run for the past two years with Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on the same team and ready to sign their bills. The Senate also has a slim Democratic majority. But the Senate and the governor are not up for election this year.

State House seats — 110 of them — are on the ballot this year. Facing a two-vote Democratic majority, Republicans only have to flip one seat for a tie or two seats for the slimmest of majorities.

State Rep. Bryan Posthumus (R-Rockford) is bullish on GOP prospects this year. Posthumus, a leader of the House GOP campaign team, said Democrats are playing defense across the board.

“You have a Biden-Harris presidency and you have complete Democrat control of the state of Michigan,” he told the Michigan Public Radio Network. “This is going to be a referendum on the California-style progressive policies. It’s made our state [a] more expensive place to live, more difficult to raise a family, more difficult to find a job. That’s what voters are going to be voting on.”

Posthumus said he thinks the House races will be won or lost mostly on local candidates and local issues. He expects House control will come down to three or four races in Battle Creek, Downriver Michigan, Macomb County and Traverse City.

Part of the dynamic at play here is districts recently drawn by the state Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission with the constitutionally assigned task of creating as many competitive districts as possible. It appears to have succeeded.

“That’s kind of what these new districts are about,” said Rep. Penelope Tserneglou (D-East Lansing), the House Democrats’ campaign chair. “We’re going to have more competitive districts as we continue to move forward, and the majorities will always be slim.”

Tserneglou said she is looking for Democratic incumbents, in particular, to outperform the presidential and Senate races at top of the ballot.

“So I think we can [keep a majority], even if we did lose one or both of those other seats — although I don’t see that happening either,” she said, “but I do know that it’s going to be close on all counts.”

Democrats have leaned into some marquee accomplishments of this term — repealing abortion restrictions, for example, along with repealing Republican labor laws, including the anti-union right-to-work law.

Those laws were signed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder during a period of GOP control.

Republican Brian Calley was Snyder’s lieutenant governor and is now president of the Small Business Association of Michigan. He said the now-repealed labor laws improved the state’s business climate, and dramatic policy shifts from term to term are not good for business.

“Michigan is not a state that operates on the political fringes,” he said. “This is a purple state. It may be the deepest color purple state in the whole country.”

Michigan was the first state to reverse a right-to-work law since the 1960s. Changing longstanding workplace rules was one of the arguments put forward by unions and Democrats when the right-to-work law was adopted in 2012.

Michigan’s competitive House districts in many ways reflect the state’s political complexion as a whole, said Michigan State University political science professor and director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research Matt Grossman. He also said  tight margins mean the minority party still has the ability to block legislation, which is an important political negotiating tool.

“So part of power is stopping things from going through as well as getting things to go through,” he said.

That small measure of political power could have a longer-term effect of moderating policymaking at the state Capitol, Grossman said, even if that reality is not reflected so much in apocalyptic political campaign messaging.