Peter Trumbore talks about Mike Rogers/Abdul El-Sayed election after Haley Stevens endorsement

Welcome back to our Fox 2 election preview coverage here on a Sunday night. Of course, so many people are talking about the big bombshell today of Haley Stevens throwing her support to Mike Rogers. But beyond that, even if that had not happened, this race is being watched so carefully across the country. One person who's been watching it very carefully is Dr. Peter Tremblor, the chair of political science at Oakland University. It's not every day you get someone in his position on a Zoom call with you close to nine o'clock at night. But he understands the. The import of this election and, of course, this day and this time. Thanks for joining us here tonight. Your reflections on what we've seen happen today. We'll begin there. It was a wild day. I think certainly when I got up this morning, I had no inkling that that that Stevens was going to endorse Rogers, you know, despite all the rumbling over the last couple of days, certainly with her fiance saying that he was going to vote for Rogers. But as far as we knew, even up until last night, you know, plans were still on for this unity event with El-Sayed today. And so this is a really stunning turnaround. I don't know how much of an impact it's actually going to have. I was watching some of those clips of your interview with Mike Rogers, and I think he is wildly overstating the extent to which there are Democrats who are going to vote for him as opposed to voting for the Democratic ticket. I could be wrong, but it seems if that's what they're counting on to make it to the end, I think they're going to be disappointed. Don't you think that all of these groups, the four people who are running these major offices and of course the others, are depending on, in a sense, margins and fragments of demographics out there in order to make things work for them? And so shouldn't we give import to all of those fragments, even if they be a few thousand here and a few thousand there? Of course, right? Certainly we should, right? And the last time that Rogers ran for the Senate, he lost by what, 18,000 votes, something like that? Pretty small, pretty small given the size of the Michigan electorate. But we also need to keep in mind the extent to which El-Sayed is peeling away disaffected Republicans and disaffected former Trump voters. And, you know, I don't know how much we can read into rally attendance. But I will tell you, El-Sayed is drawing huge numbers at his events in places that you wouldn't expect. You're at Northern Michigan, up in the UP, in rural communities. And we would have thought of these as solidly Republican areas, solid Trump country, and yet these folks seem to be turning out. And so, yes, small groups may make a big difference in Michigan in this cycle. But we need to look at that on both sides of the equation. So if Rogers strips away some what would otherwise be typically Democratic voters and El-Sayed is able to do the same with what we would think of as typically Republican voters, then it's going to wash. So it really is going to come down to things like enthusiasm, turnout, energy, the sort of stuff that we know determines outcome in every cycle. So wouldn't energy then be displaced from Al-Sayed by Haley crossing the line? Uh, you know, I don't know how many people were really sort of being brought along by Haley Stevens. You know, she has, since the primary in August, she has tried to keep herself in the spotlight a little bit. And I'm not saying that this decision today, which took even her own staff by complete surprise. I'm not saying that it was driven purely by sour grapes and being a poor loser and not being, you know, sufficiently courted, but it sure feels that way. You know, it's hard to reconcile the very strong criticism that Stevens had of Mike Rogers, that she was... quite forceful about, up until relatively recently, it's hard to reconcile those past positions with this embrace of Rogers today. So it's a little, I think it caught people by surprise because it seems so abrupt and unexpected. And also, I think it's curious that obviously, you know, one of the main messages that you're hearing from the Democrats has been, let's stop Trump. And we believe that Rogers rubber stamps everything that Trump wants, even though Rogers has said, hey, I've broken on the trade war with Canada. I've broken on the war in Iran. Do people question the timing of why he broke so late and whether he's doing that for campaign convenience? And then you have Haley saying, OK, you know what? Forget everything I said before. Now you should believe me. I don't know that. That we're giving enough credit to voters who are undecided, or albeit Democrat or Republican, who would actually say, oh, okay, let me go with the flow with Haley here. Yeah, you know, I don't know how many of Stephen's former supporters in the primary decided that they were going to wait for her to tell them how to vote. I suspect that most folks have already made up their minds. And we know that we're probably... Approaching, if not over, 2 million early votes cast already so far in Michigan. I didn't see the numbers today, but we were on trajectory to have the largest early voting margins in the state's election history. So, you know, a lot of folks have already made their minds up, but a lot of folks have already submitted their ballots. And so, you know, this turnaround two days before Election Day, I don't know how much impact that's actually going to have. For the five million remaining that will be casting their ballots, perhaps, you know, in the next few days here. And then, of course, on Election Day, what is it that's going to drive the undecided vote one way or the other in your mind? You know, honestly, I think, and I've said this to you before, you know, El-Sayed's message discipline is pretty remarkable, including today when he was like, look, if you're going to ask me questions about this Haley Stevens business, I'm just really not going to respond to them. I'm going to continue to come back to the issues that I think people care about. And these are, frankly, economic issues, right? It's affordability, it's gas prices, it's grocery prices, it's the It's the affordability of health care, the lack of access to health care. It's all those things that have been the bread and butter of his campaign from the jump. And I think that that's where he's going to stay. And I think that's what most voters are going to vote on. And the fact that, you know, for all of Mike Rogers' efforts to distance himself from Trump in these last couple of weeks, it's not much distance that he's put between himself and the president on the president's policies. And so, you know, given the president's historic ...historic unpopularity, given his policy's historic unpopularity. I think the argument that the Democrats are making, not just in Michigan, but across the country, that we need to elect a new Congress that is going to put a check or reins on this administration, I think that's a really powerful message. And I think that is what is motivating a lot of Democratic voters and a lot of independents who are, frankly, deeply, deeply disappointed with the last two years. You know, and our producer, producing team said And so far, it's 1.5 million of those early voting ballots that we've seen, and of course, more, I'm sure, from the last few days. But I do want to talk to you a little bit about, my last question is about what it is that we're going to be seeing relative to momentum leading into these final days. What is the message, if you're Mike Rogers, what's the message, if you're Al-Sayed, that you're trying to take to the finish line? It's got to be show up. It's got to be show up and cast your ballot. That if you had an absentee ballot and you haven't mailed it in yet, bring it to your local ballot drop box. And if you haven't voted yet, show up on Tuesday. And I think that's going to have to be what the message is. I think it has to totally swing to get out the vote. And if you haven't cast your ballot yet, then you need to get there on Tuesday. Tuesday. And... And that's where we can come back to this question of enthusiasm . . and energy and whichever side can make that to sort of make that real for their people. That's what's going to determine things. Dr. Peter Tremblay, political science professor and chair at Oakland University. It's so great to talk to you, as usual. Thanks for being with us. I hope we can lean on you in the next week or so as we unpack this, you know, just really historic election here in Michigan. Absolutely. You know where to find me. Thank you so much. We appreciate you.