Michigan Threatens to Slip From Trump as He Goes Quiet on Airwaves – The New York Times

“The biggest danger for us is to be overconfident,” added Representative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat whose frequent warnings have earned her the “Debbie Downer” nickname.

Until this week, Mr. Trump’s outside allies had not been filling the Michigan advertising breach. But on Wednesday, a group called Restoration PAC, funded by the Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein, will begin a $2.5 million, two-week Michigan ad buy. The group’s polling showed Mr. Trump trailing Mr. Biden 54 percent to 37 percent in June, double the gap the president faced in March. Dan Curry, a Restoration PAC spokesman, said more recent private polls indicated that the contest was “tightening.”

America First Action, the leading pro-Trump super PAC, cut Michigan from its ad buy in early July, swapping in Arizona and North Carolina instead. Including super PACs, Democrats spent $5.3 million in television ads in the state from June 30 through Tuesday, compared with less than $1 million for Republicans.

Bradley Beychok, the president of American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC that has made Michigan a major focus, argued that the ad spending disparity was a sign that “Trump is conceding part of the battleground.” If it holds, he said, “this is a big, seismic event.”

In a call last week with reporters, Mr. Trump’s new campaign manager, Bill Stepien, dismissed current polls that show Mr. Trump losing in Michigan and nationally, noting that the president trailed badly throughout much of the summer of 2016 and into the fall before winning the White House anyway.

“These are states the experts did not see coming four years ago,” Mr. Stepien said of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which all flipped to the G.O.P. despite surveys showing Mrs. Clinton ahead. “We intend to protect this 2016 map,” he added.

Mr. Trump’s campaign still has $11.4 million in television ads reserved in Michigan starting in September, and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, is said to be particularly invested in the state as a former state party chair who had argued Mr. Trump had a chance there in 2016.

But ad reservations are not necessarily strong predictors of future priorities; campaigns are not financially penalized for canceling or adjusting reservations closer to their air dates.

“This is a state-by-state fist fight,” said John Sellek, a Lansing-based Republican political consultant. “The Trump campaign may have decided that they need to shore up their base states like Ohio and Georgia. There will be on-and-off skirmishes in the blue wall states, but for now, it looks like some of the fights we’ll see are in the Republican base states.”

After Mr. Trump carried Michigan in 2016 by only 10,704 votes, Democrats struck back decisively in 2018, flipping three statewide offices from Republican to Democrat, as well as two suburban Detroit congressional seats and five seats each in the State House of Representatives and State Senate. At the top of the ticket, Ms. Whitmer won the governorship by more than 400,000 votes.

“Particularly women in the suburbs broke in a big way for us Democrats,” said Mr. Gilchrist, who was elected with Ms. Whitmer, “and I think the Biden campaign is running an effort to continue to build on that momentum.”

Then there are Mr. Trump’s self-inflicted political wounds in the state, none more public than his insults of Ms. Whitmer as she locked down the state after the virus began spreading in March, calling her “half Whitmer” and “the woman in Michigan.”

Ms. Whitmer was one of a series of Michigan women whom the president has belittled: the attorney general, the secretary of state, the chief executive of General Motors and two members of Congress.

“I don’t know any other state where he’s gone after as many women,” Ms. Dingell said. Mr. Trump also mocked her late husband, former Representative John D. Dingell, at a rally last year, suggesting he had gone to hell and was “looking up.”

Three state polls last week showed Mr. Biden winning female voters by wide margins, from 15 to 29 percentage points, and ahead in the state over all by six to 12 points.

Mr. Biden is seen as a stronger candidate in Michigan than Mrs. Clinton was, especially after he swept all 83 counties in the Democratic primary race against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Four years earlier, Mr. Sanders carried 73 counties against Mrs. Clinton, and some of his strongest areas were rural and white regions that would go on to vote overwhelming for Mr. Trump in the fall.

Mr. Trump carried non-college-educated white voters in Michigan by more than 30 percentage points, according to 2016 general election exit polling. Last week, separate CNN and Fox News polls of the state showed that Mr. Trump’s lead among that group had shrunk to only 10 points.

“Hillary Clinton was toxic to non-college-educated white working-class voters, particularly men,” said Adrian Hemond, a Michigan-based Democratic strategist. “They don’t have the same attitude with Joe Biden.”

In the state’s largely rural Upper Peninsula, Mr. Trump swept all but one of 15 counties. And while the president is expected to carry the region again, many predict it will be by lower margins.

Rod Nelson, a retired chief executive of the Mackinac Straits Health System hospital in St. Ignace, on the eastern end of the Upper Peninsula, is one of those who voted for Mr. Trump but has been turned off by the president’s attitude and leadership.

“I was privately hoping he would get in there and do the things he said he was going to do, but I was bothered by what he said about John McCain,” Mr. Nelson said.

“And that cabinet meeting where they all had to go around and praise him really turned it for me,” he added. “I don’t believe in a dictator or a king. I want a president who knows how to lead.”

He plans to cast a ballot for Mr. Biden in November.

“I just don’t see how he can win Michigan,” Mr. Nelson said of the president. “I think there was a real anti-Hillary sentiment in 2016. It was a perfect storm for him to win.”