Michigan’s battleground zero

On Nov. 4, it could all come down to Oakland County.

The winner of this fall’s presidential election is unlikely to achieve victory without a win in the big swing state of Michigan — if there’s a bellwether county for the mitt, it’s the sprawling and populous swing county of Oakland that runs from Detroit’s city limits in the south to rolling farmland in the north.

So what’s the secret to winning the voters of the OC? In a recent unscientific random sampling of about 10 county residents in four communities — hip downtown Royal Oak, working-class Hazel Park, Detroit-ring community Ferndale and largely African-American Pontiac — a number of concerns came up, but just one was on everyone’s mind: the economy.

“We need some stability here, because it’s not going anywhere the way it is right now,” said Joe Garmo, a Christian Iraqi-born owner of a smoke shop in Hazel Park, a town historically populated by southern whites who headed north for jobs in the auto factories. “We need something strong, especially here in Michigan. Everything is going overseas. Somebody’s got to step in and do something.”

Oakland County is one of a handful of swing counties around the country — large, politically influential counties in large, electoral-vote-rich swing states that Barack Obama and John McCain are both campaigning hard to win. Demographic shifts, a growing Democratic base, and a stagnant economy mean this once solidly red county, which casts more than a half-million votes each presidential election, is now up for grabs.

Twenty years ago, a Democrat hoping to take Oakland County would be viewed by most rational observers as delusional. The economically well-off county was solidly Republican for decades, a place where Democratic dreams came to die. Even today, every countywide elected seat is filled by a Republican. Yet in presidential politics, Oakland County, like the state as a whole, has been trending Democratic.

At the same time, it’s gotten more populous and more diverse. In 1990 the county was 88 percent white, according to the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. By 2008, white population had fallen to 79 percent. Now 12 percent of the residents are African-American, 5.4 percent Asian and 3 percent Latino.

A tour of the county ranges from the funky downtowns of Ferndale and Royal Oak in the south, populated by young, arty types and middle-aged professionals seeking urban flair, north through the tony residential suburb of Bloomfield Hills, where executives and celebrities live in multimillion-dollar mansions, to the dirt roads in the largely white and rural communities of the far north and west, over to Troy, where Indian health and high-tech professionals shop at one of the most upscale malls in the country, and back to Southfield, home to a growing number of African-Americans leaving Detroit’s crumbling schools and infrastructure.

As Oakland County’s demographics have changed, so has its voting history. In 1992, George H.W. Bush beat Bill Clinton by more than 27,000 votes, 242,160 to 214,733. Eight years later, Al Gore narrowly defeated George W. Bush by fewer than 3,000 votes out of 555,520 votes cast in the county. Four years later saw a similar squeaker, with John Kerry beating Bush by fewer than 3,000 votes.

Today, with a little more than two months until Election Day, both presidential candidates clearly believe the county — and the state — are winnable. Both McCain and Obama have visited the area in recent months and are spending heavily on advertising in the state. McCain opened his three-state regional campaign office in Farmington Hills — Oakland County’s largest community — and recently visited Birmingham. The Arizona senator has also wooed former bitter rival Mitt Romney, a Michigan native and former governor of Massachusetts for whom the county was his main seat of support during the Michigan primary. For his part, Obama visited Troy this summer and his wife, Michelle, visited Pontiac and Royal Oak.

So, in such a varied and tough-to-predict county, what kinds of messages about the candidates are having an impact?

Obama’s race and the unfounded rumor that he is, or has been, a Muslim, have a subtle currency, as does McCain’s age.

Marci Mayer, a teacher and resident of upscale and heavily Jewish Huntington Woods, who was eating a sandwich with her husband on bustling Main Street in Royal Oak, said she didn’t know whether to believe the rumor, but said it would bother her if it were true. Her husband, Leon, said he didn’t believe it, but said it “absolutely” would bother him if it were true and said he thought a lot of people “aren’t going to vote for Obama because he’s black, because of rumors that he’s Muslim.”

Ron Dabrowski, a Royal Oak resident who wasn’t familiar with the rumor, was immediately concerned upon hearing it.

“I don’t like that,” he said, sitting in a gathering spot favored by people-watchers and pontificators. “Because terrorists, they’re mostly Muslim. I’m more of a Christian, anyway.”

Garmo, the Hazel Park shop owner who came to the United States from Iraq as a boy, hadn’t heard the rumor but rejected the notion.

“[Obama's] Christian, he’s been to church,” he said. “Muslims are totally different, they will not go to a Christian church. They might talk about it but they won’t go. I’m from Iraq, so I know.”

Brandi Ferranti, who works in a Hazel Park tanning salon in the same strip mall as Garmo’s smoke shop, said she lacked enthusiasm for both McCain and Obama and said she had heard that Obama went to a Muslim school (which isn’t true) but that “he doesn’t follow” the religion anymore. “To me personally it doesn’t matter,” she added. “It’s probably a big deal to the country. … [But] if he’s here and he’s American, then he can be our president. Everyone has different backgrounds.”

While most said Obama’s race didn’t matter to them, many said it would matter to others.

“I think [it will matter],” said Garmo. “This country’s pretty racist. It is. It’s too bad, but it is.”

No matter where they stood — pro-Obama, pro-McCain or undecided — everyone interviewed said the country urgently needed a new direction after the Bush years, and cited the economy as the main reason why. And if Obama’s race and religion are still an issue, his message of change is still resonating with them positively.

A few numbers help explain why. The contractions in the auto industry have affected everyone from executives in Bloomfield Hills to line workers in Hazel Park. In 2007, Oakland County had more than 14,000 home foreclosure and foreclosure filings (homes on which banks have begun, but not completed, the foreclosure process). Deputy Oakland County Executive Bob Daddow said in January that declines in home values are expected to cost Oakland County government $5.7 million in 2008, $6.8 million in 2009 and $13.3 million in 2010 – a gap that will need to be made up either by shrinking services or higher taxes.

It’s that declining prosperity that has OC voters worried and wanting a new direction — voters like Dabrowski, a white resident of once reliably Republican Royal Oak, who said: “I’m kind of tired of all the Republicans and Bush, they ain’t doing stuff right. The economy is screwed up, the unemployment. We need a change.”

“I kind of like Obama,” he said. “I think what he’s talking about — change — is a good thing. McCain seems more or less just like Bush.”

Ferranti also said Michigan’s tanking economy was a top concern and spoke of her aunt, who was laid off from her hospital job after 10 years and found herself seeking janitorial work and jobs at retail shops like Victoria’s Secret.

“You can’t even get a job at McDonald’s right now,” she said. “We need a complete turnaround for our country.”

The voters Michigan Messenger spoke to didn’t have much to say about the war in Iraq, another hot national issue, though they sometimes listed it as among the reasons the country needed a change of direction. And even talk of the war had a way of coming back to the economy.

“I don’t think things have gotten much better in Iraq, though it’s costing us a ton of money,” said Leon Mayer. “The money we’ve spent over there, I’m not sure what we’ve accomplished. We could have solved a lot of problems in this world if we didn’t spend trillions of dollars in Iraq.”

Obama was repeatedly described by the respondents as “charismatic,” “positive,” “young” and “for change,” while McCain was viewed as “serious,” “tough,” “old,” and “like Bush.”

Ann Sinrocker, a dental assistant from Waterford interviewed outside the Summit Place Mall in Pontiac, said the first things that came to mind about Obama were “his smile, and his positive speaking.”

One of the McCain campaign’s talking points about Obama appears to have some traction: Obama’s limited experience raises questions for some voters, and the first-term senator’s lack of experience swayed at least one person in the sample to support McCain.

“In this case I feel that experience overcomes youth,” said Julie Speagle, a white Hazel Park resident stopped at the city’s main intersection. “I know [Obama] brings a lot of youthfulness to the campaign, but McCain’s experience alone … I feel he could give our country the boost it needs right now. … I think he can make things happen more quickly.”

For McCain’s part, his age — he’ll be 72 on Aug. 29 — is making some voters wary. Marci Mayer referred to him as “archaic.”

“I really feel like he’s too old, I do,” said Leona Neal, an African-American General Motors retiree shopping at Kohl’s at the Summit Place Mall in Pontiac on Monday. “I’m 60, and if you wake me up in the middle of the night and something went wrong, I’m a mess.”

“McCain is way out of touch,” said Brian Kelly, owner of a popular comic book shop in liberal-leaning Ferndale, which last fall became the first Michigan city to elect an openly gay mayor. “Both candidates you can’t really trust, but I’d rather take Obama. I think he’s got more going on.”

Garmo, the smoke shop owner, said McCain “is tough, I know that. He wants defense against everything. He wants war, that’s the way I look at it. He wants to be in war, he doesn’t want to be avoiding it.”

Garmo remained undecided and said he was waiting until the debates to decide who to support.

It’s convincing the voters who are still on the fence that remains the key task for Obama and McCain, said William Frey, a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center.

“Both candidates can shape their message in such a way that people think their economic survival is going to be assured,” Frey said. “There are other issues in other parts of the country. But in Michigan, that’s it.”

(Video by Michigan Messenger fellow Minehaha Forman; art by Matt Muhirin.)

“Battleground Zero” is a four-part series from the Center for Independent Media network. For a look at other key counties in swing states, see:

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