In Michigan: Will ‘secret women’s vote’ or ‘Crazy Uncle Earl’ be decisive?

ROCHESTER, Mich. — As she neared the end of a long Senate campaign, Rep. Elissa Slotkin told a room full of supporters gathered to hear from her and leaders of the nation’s largest reproductive rights groups that the “secret women’s vote” could be key to her winning a high-profile Senate race.

“I feel pretty good, and it’s deeply connected to this issue and to women,” she told the crowd. “We have going on right now in the state of Michigan — what I call the secret women’s vote. We have women in red areas who are not telling their husbands how they vote, who are not talking about it with their friends and family, but are going to vote for [the] Democratic ticket.”

She pointed to women putting Post-it notes or posters in women’s restrooms reminding them that their vote was secret and encouraging them to vote Democratic, prompting one woman in the audience to say she brought them to the community center where Slotkin was campaigning on Oct.27. She also said women will quietly tell her while she’s knocking on doors that they support her.

“The fact that I’m seeing constant evidence of women in red areas peeling away from their husbands is definitely, definitely important, and we want to talk about that as much as possible. Give other women permission to do that,” Slotkin told reporters after the rally. 

For that event, Slotkin was focused on reproductive rights, one of Democrats’ top issues in this year’s campaign and an issue Slotkin has pointed out to draw a contrast with her Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers.

Credentials

On paper, the two share major similarities, coming up through the national security ranks, she as a CIA analyst and him as an Army veteran and FBI agent who chaired the House Intelligence Committee before retiring in 2015.

Both also have bipartisan credentials. When he assumed the Intelligence Committee chairmanship, Rogers worked closely with Maryland Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, the panel’s top Democrat, to foster a more bipartisan approach.

Since her election in 2018, Slotkin has scored well on the Lugar Center-Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Bipartisan Index.

In 2014, Rogers’ last year in the House, he voted with his party 94 percent of the time, according to CQ Vote Studies. Slotkin’s most recent party unity score was 86.74 percent.

Slotkin has argued that Rogers has changed since leaving office nearly 10 years ago. And she said he voted for “every bill, ban and restriction that came across [his] desk,” when it came to women’s health issues.

Democrats up and down the ticket have been courting female voters this year. Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has put a premium on reaching young women, while former President Donald Trump has gone after young men. Nearly all Democrats have made reproductive rights a focal point of their campaigns, arguing that Republicans would seek to further restrict abortion rights and could target contraception and IVF access. 

Many Republican candidates have sought to be more open about their stances on abortion limitations and exceptions, banking on voters being open to their views and also prioritizing other issues. Rogers himself released an ad in which he said “Michigan voters have already decided the issue and I respect that decision. In the Senate, I won’t do anything to change it.”

Rogers said he’s trying to focus on a broader set of issues, like children’s literacy and crime, when speaking with women voters.

“My wife and I have been really engaged in literacy programs and we call it ‘reading reclamation’ to try and get people reading again,” he said. “Eighty percent of Michigan students can’t read at grade level. This is a crisis, and so we’ve got really aggressive plans about how to try and help local schools and other communities get back in the reading business.”

He called his wife, Kristi, “a phenomenal partner in this race,” saying she’s been on the trail talking to women about small-business issues and safety in their neighborhoods and schools. 

“I don’t believe that women are single-issue voters,” he said. “Some are. So are some men … What we’ve done is broaden our conversations with women about what’s going to work for women, and as we do this together. Because at the end of the day, we’re all going to be together in this.”

Rogers and other Republicans have also focused on Title IX, which he hopes will sway women. In one ad last month, he argued that students can’t read at grade level, but alleged that Slotkin “wrote the bill to force schools to let men compete against our girls in their sports,” citing a 2021 vote on an LGBTQ rights bill known as the Equality Act which Slotkin, along with most House Democrats at the time, was an original co-sponsor of.

High impact

The high-profile race between Slotkin and Rogers is one of several that will determine the Senate majority, or give either party a cushion on the size of their majority. 

Polls show a tight race. Most have shown Slotkin with a narrow edge, although one poll last week showed Rogers had taken a 2-point lead. 

In Michigan, more than 3 million people had cast their ballots early, according to University of Florida Election Lab data last updated Monday. Of those, 55 percent were female voters and 44.9 percent were male. 

 As Slotkin has said she expects women who have previously voted for Republican candidates to support her campaign, Rogers is also courting groups of voters who have historically voted for Democrats,  including Black men, as he seeks to be the first Republican elected to the Senate from Michigan in 30 years. Rogers campaigned on Oct. 29 alongside South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate, meeting with Black faith leaders in Detroit.

“I start all of those meetings by saying, ‘I don’t want you to be a Republican. I just want you to listen to our ideas, listen to our solutions, and maybe this year vote for a Republican. And the response we’re getting is pretty tremendous,” Rogers said of his campaign’s efforts to reach Black voters at an Oct. 30 rally with the Kalamazoo GOP.

Slotkin, meanwhile, made reproductive rights a focus of her time on the trail as the campaign started to wrap up last month, but she didn’t reference the issue in her campaign’s closing ad. Instead, she emphasized her work as a national security official in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations and mentioned fighting health insurance companies when her mom was fighting cancer. 

“No one knows the future,” she says in the ad. “What I can tell you is I will always say what I mean and mean what I say. That’s who I am, it’s why I’m asking for your vote and why I approve this final message.”

Rogers also brought up national security as he closed out an event with Republican supporters on Oct. 30, tying Slotkin to the Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policy agenda and arguing that Republicans would support the military, police officers and help people afford their groceries. 

“If you don’t think there’s anything at stake, I want you to think about that as you go from door to door, or you make a phone call, or you grab that crazy Uncle Earl — we’ve all got one — who hasn’t voted and take them to the polls,” he said.