Very high winds in Copenhagen yesterday. It was Easter Monday, a day off for Danish working people, where even the grocery stores close. Takes getting used to for an American. I had just returned from Germany so had no groceries in the house - poor planning! I love the idea of working people getting a day off but I have gotten used to really instant gratification as far as shopping in the US.
Here’s how scared of Sherrod Brown Republicans are:
Ohio GOP polling must be terrible. Husted is caught up in the giant First Energy scandal. The sitting attorney general threw the prosecution of the First Energy crooks so the jury hung, leaving Ohians with yet another giant state corruption scandal ending with no accountability for any of the criminals.
I will still be in Copenhagen with the grandchild for the Michigan Senate primary, so I won’t be voting but I will be voting in Michigan in the general. I discuss races I can’t vote in anyway (so does everyone else, although they claim they don’t it when there’s a race they don’t want to discuss). Let’s take a peek at the Michigan Senate primary:
The likely Republican nominee is Mike Rogers, a former congressman seeking a Senate seat for the second time. In 2024, he lost by 19,000 votes to Democrat Elissa Slotkin, who moved from the House to the Senate.
I got involved in the Slotkin senatorial election in Michigan last time. I held a backyard event for fancy Lake Michigan ladies to promote Slotkin and also volunteered for her campaign as a canvasser. One of my beefs with the Democratic Party is I often support centrist and Right leaning Dems (like Slotkin) but centrist and Right leaning Dems never support my candidates who are Leftists or liberals. I imagine I’ll do the same this time around, although I have less and less patience with the lack of reciprocity from the Dems on the Right of me. It seem like Right leaning and centrist Dems are more than happy to accept my free labor and donations for their candidates while never returning the favor when there’s a candidate I genuinely want.
Anyway, here’s one of the contenders in the D primary lineup in Michigan. Stevens is the kind of candidate who often comes out of the Great Lakes states - pro labor, pro manufacturing but generally “moderate”. It’s honestly kind of old fashioned but it has obviously worked for her, which is great:
Fourth-term U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens has launched her run for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday with a video focused on the economic crisis caused by President Donald Trump’s volatile tariffs policies.
Stevens, a Democrat, is the fourth well-known candidate to join what is quickly becoming one of the nation’s most-watched Senate races, with the Republicans’ 53-47 majority at stake in a battleground state Trump won in November.
Quickly a top possible contender after Democratic Sen. Gary Peters chose not to seek reelection, Stevens will oppose State Sen. Mallory McMorrow and former gubernatorial candidate and public health official Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primary.
Stevens will seek to defend her tenure in Congress in the Democratic primary as McMorrow and El-Sayed establish themselves as outsiders. McMorrow is known nationally for her viral moments and El-Sayed has the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Before Congress, Stevens served on the U.S. Treasury’s auto task force following the 2008 financial crisis as President Barack Obama’s administration bailed out General Motors and Chrysler. She said Trump’s taxes on imports are creating another crisis for the Michigan economy, which rides or stalls based on the auto industry’s condition.
However, Stevens is among the Democrats who have sought to clarify they are not inherently anti-tariff. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently gave a speech in Washington calling for tariffs to be used like a “scalpel.” Shawn Fain, president of the nation’s top autoworker union based in Michigan, endorsed Trump’s auto tariffs as leverage aimed at bringing back domestic manufacturing jobs.
Stevens sailed to victory in her last election representing Oakland County, a key voting block in the battleground state. After flipping what had been a reliably Republican seat in 2018 and narrowly defeating her opponent in 2020, she cruised to reelection in 2022 and 2024 after her district was redrawn and became more favorable to Democrats.
Stevens is part of the New Dems in the House:
Haley Stevens was among the many women galvanized to run for Congress after Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
Eight years later and with Trump back in office, the Michigan Democrat is tasked with helping her party flip the House as the head of the campaign arm of the largest Democratic coalition in the chamber.
Stevens, now a fourth-term congresswoman, is hoping to be a “steady and stable force” within the Democratic Caucus while leading the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund.
“What we’re looking at is, frankly, how we get back into the governing chair and how we hold gavels,” she told reporters at a pen and pad last week. “It really is going to be through the New Democrat Coalition.”
With a membership totaling 110, the coalition, known around Capitol Hill as the “New Dems,” sees its members as crucial to winning the House, which Republicans now control by a threadbare majority. Ten of the 13 House Democrats in seats that Trump carried in November are coalition members
We’ll look at McMorrow and El-Sayed at a later date. The polling has McMorrow with a narrow lead, but the three candidates are all w/in 2 of each other.
