Thanks for turning it into ou overtime here on Off the Record.

So we talked about the governor's race.

I think the major story in our town is the complete debacle that the Republicans suffered in the Senate, in the House.

And what the heck happened?

Yeah.

And, you know, as the dust settles, that's what we're still trying to figure out.

We saw a number of House Republicans ousted, I believ at this point, the seat change now is 63 for Democrats, 4 for Republicans in the Senate.

We're looking at 23 Democrats.

I think that's the biggest seat margin gain to gain all five of the districts that they had targeted, Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans had targeted the same five districts, including an incredibly competitive one in the 13th in Oakland County, which was, Senator Rosemary Beye chose not to run for reelection.

Democrats got them all.

Democrats had a huge gains.

And now with this governing trifecta, which will be interesting considering it's our second trifecta of this decade and one that has a much larger margin, what they're going to be able to enact, because now they'll be able to withstand their Karen wits ups who might end up leaving, at the end of a session or defecting to Republicans or they, you know, form their own little cohort.

They still might be abl to weather that and get policy.

You got to wonder, did they learn from the first trifecta, which was not brilliant.

But I think they absolutely did.

But in the.

Beginning it was okay.

No, no.

And you're correct.

And what I'm going to say is that, you know, by learning from the trifecta, and I had mentioned this a little bit earlier, is that, you know, they earlier they had they had talked heavily about what they wanted to get done, the things that they wanted to repeal, and what we saw ahead of the November election, asking again, the House now elect speaker elect Ranjeev Puri.

He kept a lot of things close to the vest.

He was part of that last trifecta that crashed and burned.

And he said, you know, this time around, when we get our members in, we're not going to jump just to prescribing policy ideas.

Yes, we want to do stuff on housing.

Yes, we want to do stuff o health care, affordability, etc.

but we need to understan who our members are coming in.

We need to get a lay of the land, what they want to get done, and then adjust our policy priorities accordingly.

And I think that that's a very palatable answer, particularly to people who might not be feeling great about Republican governance at this moment.

Well, it's going to be interesting is do they just try to ramro everything that they've wanted for the last number of years straight through, realizing that they have the power to be able to do so?

Or do they try to reach out and come up with things that the Republican Party would want as well, and to look as thoug they're trying to be bipartisan?

The things you.

See that you should see the look on Mrs.

LeBlanc's face.

I know where I'm curious how they're going to play it.

Well, I don't think they need to do that at all.

They they've got a huge majority.

Do it in terms o if for no other reason, in terms of sheer public relations and realizing that four years down the line, they're going to be in front of the voters again.

Speaking for reelection to, former House speaker Tom Leonard about this yesterday.

And he had or two days ago, excuse me.

And he had a 63 member majority, too.

And one of the things that he was telling me, and I think it's going to b interesting in this legislature, is that having a larger majority for him was almost more difficult.

And that was because when you have more votes to burn, then that means that member feel more liberated to sort of come out with their own priorities.

That may not be as aligned with the majority caucus, the sort of center lane, as it were, with the rest of these legislators.

So I think that that's going to b some difficulty that they have, especiall when you look at the composition of this Democratic majority.

We have a growing ranks of people who, you know, label themselves as democratic socialist.

Chris Gilmer Hill, for example, in Detroit, is one notable member.

Wagela.

Yeah, Wagela has remained, you know, downriver in his downriver district.

And so for those folks, I think that they're going to feel a little bit liberated with a broader majority, and that while the governor wants to push on unity, she said she's going to.

I thought it was really interesting in your interview, Tim that she said she's going to be with every member of the legislature.

She's now in January.

Yes.

And is also invested in unity.

And she's, as you said at her press conference, that that's sort of more of a centrist sect.

That's more of a middle line.

But there's going to be members of this legislatur who say, we have this majority.

We need to pus to have more ambitious policy.

We need to go further.

And the things that felt like missed opportunities in the last trifecta, these are the things that they want us to hit.

So it is not just the members as well.

It's these interest groups that got behind these members that are going to be putting pressure on these various representatives to say, go to the governor, tell her we want this, this, this, and this.

Otherwise, you aren't going to get our supporting more from the UAW on down.

Yeah.

When you look at this.

Oh, sorry.

No, I was going to say one of the big tasks of that though, is like, you know, you bring up that Democrats, they can just pursue whatever policy that they want.

There has been a lot of bipartisan policy that has come out in this current legislature.

We just haven't seen those bills move, because this is one of the least productive legislatures in modern history.

Now, you know, we've seen things on prescription drug affordability boards.

We've seen, stuff on and you know, kind of blinking our road package, you know, we've seen a number of issue topics that have come out, housing.

There has been a huge bipartisan bill in the House that's been or a number of bills that have deal with housing and zoning reform that have stalled out in the House.

You know, we see that there are areas, medical debt forgiveness that there are an appetite to work for.

Yeah.

Benson said that she's going to pass the freedom of and for open up her office voluntarily to the Freedom of Information Act on day one.

We're the only state now in the nation after Massachusetts passed their ballot question to open up their legislature.

And, governor, we're the only state in the nation that doesn't allow us to do that.

There is plenty of stuff that they could feed on to give both Democrats and Republicans, at least in the interim, or at least in the Senate, you know, both wins.

I guess we'll have to see if they fall victim to the 2024 curse, which was onc you run out of those, you know, easy tackle issues, what's what's next?

And I'm really waiting to see on the for you because I remember, Governor Whitmer and Mackinac Island, in her very first debate, talking about one of the first things she's going to do is support FOIA.

And then she got in office and changed their mind.

So we've seen a whole lot of people, once they get to their executive position all of a sudden.

But now.

They forget what they said.

Is no excuse because the last time around it was, well, we would have done it if Karen Whittset hadn't defected at the very end of 2024.

And now we don't have the votes because the Republicans aren't coming back and yada yada yada.

There is no excuse now.

This will be firmly the Democrats fault if they do not ope the legislature and governor's office to the Freedom of Information Act.

And then on top of that, again, we're the only state in the entire or the entire country that doesn't do this.

It's a really bad look for a governor that has talked endlessl about the need for transparency.

What I though was interesting yesterday, too, when when speaker elect Puri held a media availability, I asked him, are you goin to pass these these FOIA bills?

And he hesitated.

And h he did not give a definite yes.

And I, I. Well she has said opening day for her office will open up to unilaterally.

Sure her office But what about the legislature?

That's 148 people whose emails the public cannot see.

And I in this is been this has been back and forth.

One chamber will pass it, the other won't.

It will block it years and years and years.

And that answer surprised me yesterday.

And I don't know if it was lack of sleep and not wanting to commit to something before talking to his members that possibly, you know, could have been the case.

But i it was an interesting response.

I'd like to know, too, that the legislation that's been stalled out is actually a watered down version of the FOIA that applies to the rest of the state government and that legislation.

If your FOIA is denied and you appeal it, you're talking to a legislative body to say, please let us have this.

You don' get to go to an independent body like you would, for, you know, any other executive branch department.

And Jeremy Moss is coming bac and I'm sure he's already in her ear saying, please do this.

I'm working on it.

For how long?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and I think too like those detail about the four year bill details in other policy positions that they might have, I think, you know that seem to be in 2023, 2024, where the Democratic trifecta tripped in the House.

Was these smaller details, these these efforts to water down a bill, these efforts to to have more extreme positions in a bill that was what tripped them up.

It wasn't necessaril the policy, it was the smaller details of people wanting to push further, people wanting to pull back and, some reins of, of, lobbyists behind them, pulling the string of, of where those bills went.

So I think.

Or any of you surprise that there was not a challenge, at least a tacit acknowledgment that somebody else might run against the gentlema who emerged as speaker was curt.

No, I and because of the fact that you know, he led them through, that whole speakership, he kept things together during that time.

And then on top of that, again, now they're sitting at a 63 seat majority.

What would be the the thought behind picking someone new?

Well, the progressives are progressives.

You know, they're a different beast.

But the one thing I think I have heard that Puri does well, though, is that.

And he said, you know, I was going through our clips from when he becam the minority leader in in 2024, and he said we're going to uplift all voices and listen to all voices.

And that is one thing I've heard while he's in the minority that he's done well, is that he has listene to a lot of different members, has, you know, doing that in the minority I think is a little bit easier than doing it in the majority.

But I think he, is trying to make the same commitment moving forward.

As much as I think a legislative leader, you can either be a coalition builder or you can be like a LBJ type where you're sort of a drill sergeant getting all your members into a line.

Right.

I think that's more the tac that we've seen Matt Hall take.

But being as a, a coalition builder, if that's your leadership approach, it does make things more durable from cycle to cycle, because you don't have to worry about getting mute need quite as readily.

You know, the Senate side, Darren Camilleri, his his telegraph for quite some time that he wanted this position.

So it wasn't a secret whatsoever.

He's been running for this.

And it's always funny because you can tell when they're gunnin for these leadership positions, because you see i in the campaign finance reports, they have leadership packs.

And the fact that and you can always tell who's someone is waiting in the wings for these leadership roles, because they're raising hundreds of thousands of dollar and distributing it to the folks who are going to back them for those leadership roles.

There's a clear financial aspect to this.

So how does the Michigan House change now with a different speaker, with Mr.

Hall out and Mr.

Kunse in?

Oh, it sounds like they want to have a much more productive legislature, in this coming term.

I mean, you've already heard that out of Camilleri sayin that he wants to make it, quote, the most productive legislature.

Did you hear his first statement?

The Democrats are not the enemy.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think that that's something also that people are searching for is, you know, a lot of people are tired of partizanship.

They're tired of constant bickering or tired of nothing getting done.

They're tired of roadblocks.

And so to hear a legislator say, hey, listen, we're going to get to work.

You know the other side is not the enemy.

Tom Kunse, who is the House minority leader elect, replacing, Matt Hall in the leadership position for House Republicans there.

He even maybe, you know, kind of a similar statement there to where he was like, you know, listen, we have our grounds that we're going to stand on, you know our caucus will never vote for something that would infringe on the Second Amendment.

But, you know, at the end of the day, we don't see, you know, we're out to get Democrats or, you know, that they we think that they shouldn't work with us or whatnot.

You're kind of hearing this like, as the dust settles this need for a Kumbaya of sorts and a focus on, much more policy productivity in the future.

The political paradigm right now is that if you're in the minority, the expectation both federall and at the state level for like the pas decade has been obstructionism.

It's why, you know, I think Congress has, what, like 11% approval rating right now because almost nothing happens.

They hardly legislate there.

And so I think, you know, if there's soul searching happening between the parties or even, you know, just just among Republicans as they try to, you know, learn the lessons of this defeat, if productivity is the answer for that, it would be interesting.

But I think I would also be a little bit surprised, because right now, I think what's electorally successful in America is combat.

People want somebody who's a fighter.

And when you look at Abdu El-Sayed's success in this race, he was not like a nice candidate.

He was not Kumbaya.

He was combative.

Yeah, but that's what people like when I'm out on the rubber chicken circuit.

I hear all the time, Scooby can't come.

There's no more.

Or how there is not more bipartisan cooperation.

I think the average Joe and Josephine wants both sides to work together.

I the I know, I know, it's in the data, the combat stuff we want to fight or in fact, cutter Sir Charles said that's wha we're looking for as fighters.

Don Riegle, who ran for the U.S.

Senate.

I'm a fighter.

You would take his coat off and rule his sleeves up.

The only thing was McQueen was the boxing gloves.

But I think at the end of the day, the common citizen says, let's have some civility and see some cooperation.

You think what?

You know, when we say fighter, they don't necessarily mean somebody that's going to go ou and say, you know, forget you, you know, screw this.

Whatever.

They're looking for somebody who's going to stick by their values.

You find a. Different can we find a different what's a synonym for fighter?

I champion yeah.

She's a fighter.

So much nicer.

Than.

Pugilists, I do.

You got one.

Principle.

I think somebody who stands by their principles.

A lot of voters are looking for that, and.

But I think to stand by it, you have you have to figh sometimes in these environments, but also build a coalition that that works.

The the other thing I'll say about Kunse is tone during during those questions with press is that I don't you know, it is easier for Matt Hall to take a very antagonistic or combative attitude when you have a 56 seat majority.

I think it's pretty difficult to do that when you have a 47 seat majority.

Your votes, I mean there will probably be instances where they're going to need Republicans, but I think i most circumstances they won't.

But the governor says she's going to restore the quadrant system.

What do you make of that?

I mean, you can have for those are the people that are going quantum.

What is Kubik talking about?

You could do two Democratic leaders, two Republican leader in the governor sit in the room and they try to work out policy.

You can have all the meetings you like, but I think the question will be in those meetings whether the peopl who are in the two minorities, whether what they say carries weight, whether that has cachet or.

Not, because, again, it doesn't have to.

But in a way it does.

Okay.

She's there's a fine line that she has to walk.

She can't be dictatorial.

And I take her at her word that she wants to do this in a cooperative way, if possible.

And this has worked in the past.

Okay.

The Bill Milligan' the guy that started this thing, bringing in all the sides, doe Whitmer started out doing that, but it came down to, you know, who and who Mr.

Hall and her.

The basically did the policy.

So is is this a new day or is this just another.

Tim is going to depend on personal relationships to a great extent when they get that and if they get in the roo and they kind of like each other out and are I'm a D we established that.

But we also have some common ground where we can like each other.

We can find some things that we want to work on and make it move forward.

So the both of us can come out of this room and say that we won something fine.

If it gets into personalities where one side is not getting what they want and it gets tough, and all of a sudden they don't like each other, then that whole formula falls apar and we just have to wait to see what the dynamics are in this and what type of leadership and stateswoman this the the governor elect.

Because I think, Senator, over in the Senate, the minority leader is not an old timer, but he's been in town.

He knows the ropes and he' not a confrontational type guy.

I think you could say that about the Hous minority leader elect in Kunse.

You could say that about Perry.

And I think you could say that about Kim O'Leary.

Actually, only where that woman, they don't they don't have these, like, you know, just toxic personalities.

They don't have this.

I'm going to shut out the other side.

Not none of them, to my knowledge, are the kind of people to throw bombs.

Apropos of nothing.

So I think that already puts some leaps and bounds a my above the, current quadrant.

I would say I'm going to have.

A weekly press conference trashing their counterparts, do you think?

I guess that stays up in the air.

That remains to be seen.

In all this, though, is the fact that the good news for the Democrats is that they won with a mandate.

The bad news is that they won with the mandate.

The people are restless right now.

They want to see chang and they want to see it quickly.

We live in this social medi world where no one sits around waiting for the 6:00 news with Cronkite anymore.

They want to see things happen when they do it.

And that's putting that's going to pu a tremendous amount of pressure, not just on the Democrats here, but all across the nation to be able to make these changes and make them fast.

And if they can't make these changes fast, you're going to see the wrath of the people.

Again, I think I think Chuck's absolutely correct.

And it's going to be I think the difficulty this is going to be compounded by the fact that the last Democratic trifecta, they had a $9 billion surplus coming in and beginning that first state budget.

This time around, they might be facing a budget shortfall because of federal policy changes coming down the pike.

So when you talk about things like a caregiver tax credit or eliminating the state gas taxes, Benson has been sort of cajoled into suggesting as a possibility, those things become a lot more difficult when in the current in our current economic environmen where the fiscal picture is at.

Well, and don't forget, we got a lot of in this in the Michigan Senate, there would be 23 new senators out of 38.

And now all of them are going.

Now some of them are former House members, okay.

So they know how the game is played.

But the new ones, you just don't walk through those red doors and all of a sudden be a senator.

So there's there's a lagging period there to bring those people on board as well.

In the house, too.

Yes, yes.

Yesterday when Puri brought the new members into the house, I mean, it was a long line of new people, I think he said 25, 26 new members within his own caucus.

He said they're still tryin to find the rest room as of yes.

No, I think yeah.

And I won't find it overnight.

You know.

They won't.

And that' just that's just the beginning.

So I yeah, I think it's going to take a while to bring everybody up on board and but look and.

Also poin out that over the years, okay, as you guys are all talkin about this, I'm thinking, yeah, every legislature started out with this great deal.

Wow.

We're going to work together.

And politics being what it is.

Do you set your watch and say we'll have a pool?

Okay At what point does this blow up?

Let let's give them the benefit of the doubt and.

Okay.

Is that fair?

I think the beauty of elections, right, is tha they allow both parties to mask over really significant intra party policy divisions.

Those are going to come to the for again, whether you like it or not.

I think part of the mirage of productivity where there was a productive Democratic trifecta, but it was almost like a mirage at the beginning because the policy items that they knocked off one by one were things that didn't have intra party policy agreement about them, like right to work.

These are things that engaged, right, major stakeholders protecting, you know, upholding rights for LGBTQ Michiganders.

All those things were not things that had broad divisions within the Democratic Party.

Some of the things that Jeff Benson has propose are more ambitious, I would say, and might in might, you know, really, excite some of the progressive members of her caucus in the legislature.

But it would be a little bit of a tougher sell to some of these centrists and moderates who managed to flip some of these really, really competitive legislative districts.

All right.

So which brings us to the US Senate race, which was to be should.

I think El-Sayed predicted his, his lead.

And he and he met at that seven point lead.

I mean, did the.

Republicans overplay the heat?

He's not one of us.

That kind of rhetoric did that cost them votes with independents?

Turnout in the city of Dearborn?

I think that probably some of that rhetoric helped propel them, given two years ago they were doing everything they possibly could to, you know woo Arab American Michiganders.

And then there's this immediate pivot away from that.

I think that they've lost any hope of regaining that part of their coalition, however slim it may have been.

I mean, yeah, you even look to the national level down and I mean, online down in Texas, there was a railroad commissioner race.

Bo French was his name.

And, you know, it just incited like a huge, anti-Indian racist remark, like online racist sentiment.

And when you saw that play out online of people seeing that it was not hard for people to also tie that sentiment what we were seeing with people calling Abdul El-Sayed all but a terrorist in name, making fun of the way that his name sounds.

Boogie banning the.

Oh, he's the first Muslim senator.

Well, guess what?

Now we we have the first Muslim Jewish coalition, and Elissa Slotki and, Abdul El-Sayed as our U.S.

senators.

That's a great story right there, honestly, of of coming together, frankly and proving that we're better than these these terrible.

I mean, you even heard Jim Rohn said the other day on Amazon, I will say that he wished that they didn't go down that path, that they wish that they didn't lean in to that Islamophobia and that scare tactic, because they really do feel like it caused some voters because at the end of the day, again, we go back t people are tired of of fighting.

I mean, I know they say we want a fighter, but fighting in the personal sense, they're tired of this name throwing.

They're tired of this mudslinging.

When groceries are high, gas is high.

Why are we talking about that when we should be talking about how I should get cheaper food on my table?

Yeah, the definitely overplayed their card and they keep forgetting that.

I think what people really want to see in their government is that it's a reflectio of what society is in general, and we are a very diverse country, a melting pot, and that is what buil this country to a great extent and all the innovation.

And I think people looked at this and said, we want our government to look like what we see when we walk out the door.

And while they were trying to ridicule and make fun of the fact and scare people that the first Muslim will be going to the United States Senate, there's a whole bunch of other people to say that's a great source of pride, in the same way that African-Americans were proud when Barack Obama became the first African-American president.

Not to mention Rashida Tlaib is Muslim.

She's a she's a U.S.

Jewish representative in Detroit.

We already have Muslims in Congress.

What is one more individual going to do, break the spine of the federal government?

No, he's one senator.

We already have Muslims in Congress.

I it was seriously such a disappointing play.

I also think it's like an example of a race becoming nationalized, to the point where they're not taking the pulse of people in the state.

I mean, you know, the vast majority of votes in Michigan are in southeast Michigan.

Everybody in southeast Michigan is is familiar with the fact that Dearborn is majority Muslim majority.

It's a diverse community all over.

The place is now I mean, you know, they also were playing on the the Israel issue, which, I mean, that was a legitimate source of disagreement between folks in Southeast Michiga and in other parts of the state.

But I think they really didn't understand that, like the electorate in Michigan, they're Muslim people are their neighbors, their people in in their community.

They go to their restaurants.

They, you know, they see them all over overnight.

So I think it's another example of getting basically national political consultants who aren' taking the pulse of the state, the.

The.

You know, do you think that it oh, sorry.

No, no.

Go ahead.

I do think that it had an electoral impact.

Some of the you know, pulling of the card, this Islamophobia and anti, Arab-American bias and what I think we're going to have a lot of arguments about over the next, you know, on the road to 2028, which I hate to invoke at this point, but.

You just did.

I know, but when you look when you look at outstanding looks statewide, Abdul El-Sayed did perform more, more popular than Jocelyn Benson.

She won by 11 points.

He won by seven.

There's a there' that four percentage point gap.

And I think where a lot of the argument is going to have is, was this identity politics and discrimination that accounts for this or is it ideology?

He ran an unabashedly progressive race, highly nationalized, and people were inundated with ads that were trying to pump up the negatives for him as a candidate.

I said it was a great campaign.

It did a great job in terms of running that campaign.

What I'm waiting to see i how well he can make the pivot from being a political campaigner to becoming a statesman, to reaching out so that he embraces the people who did not vote for him.

Does he become, you know a Carl Levin, a Debbie Stabenow, in terms of that type of reach, because I think they made that pivot very, very wel and got reelected as a result.

I think a lot of that will have to do with peer pressur within the body of the Senate.

Okay.

Those are those are some powerful people down there.

Okay.

And there could be some behavior modification there.

But I want to raise one point.

I think there may be some people in this town who watched Mike Rogers when he was a state senator.

It was a different Mike Rogers, they would argue, than the one we saw on the campaign trail.

And I just had this short the other night.

Maybe you're stupid.

Tell me if it is.

If Mike Rogers had been more conciliatory, had rejected the Trump endorsement and come out right off the bat, even, you know, and said, look, I'm my own man.

I respect what the president does, but I want you to know tha I want to appeal to all people.

Woul this race have been different.

If he could have gotten out of the primary?

I mean, keep in mind he only lost to Slotkin, who was a much more middl row candidate by 19,000 votes.

But the way everything i designed now, is that what Beth said earlier?

You gotta run to get Trump's endorsement because of the type of personality that President Trump is and he wanted to inject himself in the race and come just because his finger, be able to get that.

I think you're right.

If Mike had taken that approach and could have somehow gotten out of the primary.

Did not win a primary.

It would have served him better in the general.

But I don't know if he could have ever gotten out of the primary the way things are now.

To play devil's advocate, I would argue no.

And that's because I think we'r in an electoral paradigm where winning elections is no longer about persuasion the way that once was, and it's more about turnout.

And the problem is tha when you have a political figure in the president of the United States, who is the primary generator of turnout for your base, you've hitched your wagon to this electoral coalition that is dependent upon one man to make elections winnable.

Then that means you yourself as a candidate further down the ballot from him, because he's, you know, at the top of this ballot, whether we like it or not in the midterms, then you have no choice but to go along with his electoral strategy.

Well, you do you you can say I'm going to be myself.

And which takes guts.

It does.

But, you know, as we've seen, at least for Republicans, I mean, it kind of didn't make a difference in the Senate race.

But, you know, as Buck pointed out earlier, you do have to embrace Trump because there is still a large sect of the Republican Party.

Then Cox may have gotten th endorsement from the president, and we might have been looking at a different situation.

It strikes me.

That I have had enough.

Everybody take a deep breath.

It's going to be an interesting new year.

There's no question about it.

And we appreciate you sticking with us.

Next week, more of off the record right here.

Lots of stuff is going to b happening.

Please join us.

Okay.