THE VIEW FROM TRAVERSE CITY From the top floor of the Park Place hotel, the stakes of the 2024 election were in plain sight. Among seven major battleground states, Michigan has one of the best chances of being the “tipping point” in the presidential race—a fancy way of saying its 15 electoral votes could decide the whole shebang—and the mood on the ground is almost pure stress for Democrats. Yet as hues of blue and green washed over the room on one of the first warm, clear days in late May, a deeper anxiety was lurking. As she looked across one of the most expansive views available of a chain of lakes emptying into Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), the Democratic favorite in this year’s U.S. Senate race, was thinking about whether the view would be here for generations to come. Clad in green, Slotkin told a friendly crowd of environmentalists that Michganders’ attachment to their “environmental heritage” was “one of the most bipartisan and well-felt issues in the state,” and they were all at the center of it. “Water, both our waters and our water,” Slotkin said, making a drinking gesture to distinguish between the state’s 11,000 lakes and its drinking water, “I think live inside every single Michigander, and certainly in me.” Yet the former CIA analyst, a rising star trying to fill the shoes of retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), knows all too well how being a Michigan Democrat requires a level of tact and political acumen not for the faint of heart.
As existential a threat as climate change is to Slotkin, those in the room, and plenty of her constituents, being serious about winning statewide in Michigan doesn’t always comport with mainstream Democratic priorities. Slotkin’s own precinct is a prime example: She’s never been able to win it since she won her first race in 2018. Asked by The Daily Beast if she would support any federal restrictions on fossil fuel production—with the U.S. currently producing more oil and gas than any nation in history, under a Democratic president, Joe Biden—Slotkin steered clear. “Coming from a security background, we like redundancy, flexibility,” Slotkin said. “So I like an ‘all of the above’ approach to energy.” Right there, in front of a few dozen cans of Coca-Cola and other refreshments, lay the central conflict for Slotkin. Beyond her bid to become the youngest woman in the Senate, the struggle of threading the needle between Michigan’s swing voters and the party base is the same one facing the Biden campaign and Democrats in all battleground states. Slotkin said she is a strong supporter of “weaning us off of an exclusive focus on fossil fuels” and wants more wind, solar, hydrogen and nuclear power in her state—but “for the power needs we’re gonna have going forward, we’re going to need ‘all of the above.’” Speaking frankly about the challenges facing those who want the nation to do something about climate change and lead the world in green energy, Slotkin acknowledged that Americans always want more, not less. “Certainly, I think carrots work better than sticks,” she said.
Elissa Slotkin will deliver the Dem response to Trump's joint address to Congress next week.
Of note from an interview I had with her on the trail in Michigan:
