[CTC] Harris ramps up blue-collar appeals with stop at Michigan union hall

[Arthur Stamoulis]

POLITICO
Harris ramps up blue-collar appeals with stop at Michigan union hall
The vice president will visit the workers’ union hall to highlight Donald Trump’s threat to her and President Joe Biden’s industrial investments — and the Rust Belt jobs they've created.
 
BY: 
GAVIN BADE
 | 10/18/2024 05:00 AM EDT
 
The campaign stop is part of Kamala Harris' intensifying focus on manufacturing issues, which she seldom mentioned in her early days atop the Democratic ticket.

Vice President Kamala Harris will escalate her attacks on Republican nominee Donald Trump’s economic plans today, campaigning at a union hall in Michigan whose members’ jobs are threatened by Trump’s agenda.

Harris on Friday evening will visit UAW Local 652 in Lansing, according to plans obtained exclusively by POLITICO, which represents workers at the General Motors Grand River Assembly plant. That factory is slated to receive a $500 million grant under Democrats’ 2022 climate and tax law, the Inflation Reduction Act <https://legislation.politicopro.com/bill/US_117_HR_5376>, to convert it from assembling gas-powered cars to electric vehicles. Those 650 jobs could be wiped out if Trump follows through on his campaign pledge to rescind unspent funds from the law, Harris will warn the workers.

“Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, and the campaign are aggressively highlighting Trump’s record of failing workers as president,” said a campaign staff member, granted anonymity to detail confidential plans, “and we are making it clear to Michigan workers that a second Trump term would be even worse.”

The campaign stop is part of the Harris camp’s intensifying focus on manufacturing issues, which she seldom mentioned in her early days atop the Democratic ticket. Last week, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz also hit Trump over manufacturing in Michigan, and the campaign previously dispatched populist Sen. Bernie Sanders <https://directory.politicopro.com/member/51605> (I-Vt.) and UAW President Shawn Fain to the state to slam the GOP ticket over its plans to “kill” the $500 million investment in the Grand River plant.

The campaign wants to make clear that Trump’s proposal to claw back IRA funds is a risk not only to Michigan factories, but those in other states — like a Harley Davidson plant in York, Pennsylvania, which is slated to receive $89 million through the law; and a $670 million loan to an EV battery part manufacturer in Register, Georgia.

“It's a lot bigger than just the Lansing Grand River investment,” UAW’s Fain, whose union has endorsed Harris, told reporters on a call last week. “It's factories all over the United States and it’s supply chain factories all over the United States that are being put in place now.”

The industrial policy focus comes after weeks of pressure from labor leaders and progressives in the party, who have warned that Harris risks losing the industrial “Blue Wall” states of the upper Midwest <https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/09/harris-isnt-talking-manufacturing-sparking-swing-state-concern-00179924> if she does not highlight the trillion-plus dollars committed to manufacturing and infrastructure under the Biden-Harris administration. Recent polling <https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3913> shows Harris and Trump virtually tied in the critical swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, with Harris losing non-college-educated voters by a larger margin than Biden, or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“They’re getting the memo,” Maurice Mitchell, head of the Working Families Party, a progressive party that typically backs Democrats, told POLITICO last week. <https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/10/harris-walz-start-hitting-trump-on-manufacturing-in-bid-for-working-class-voters-00183449> “I’m confident that they are seeing the same data that we’re seeing: that the path to victory in this race is through the working class.”

Friday’s union hall campaign stop aims to put Republicans on the defensive over manufacturing issues that are key to Trump’s appeal to blue-collar voters.

In September, Trump pledged to rescind all “unspent” funds <https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/09/trump-inflation-reduction-act-00177493> from the IRA — the vast majority of which have not been doled out to factories yet. 

And Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance <https://directory.politicopro.com/member/405104> (R-Ohio) this month refused to commit to keeping Michigan industrial investments <https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2024/10/02/jd-vance-gm-lansing-grand-river-assembly-cadillac-electric-vehicles-donald-trump-biden-harris/75489880007/> funded by the measure, like the $500 million for the Lansing EV plant. Vance later tried to walk back those comments <https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/10/trump-wont-cancel-funding-for-michigan-ev-plant-vance-says-adding-confusion-to-industrial-policy-plans-00182953>, saying that he and Trump have never “said that we want to take any money that’s going to Michigan auto workers,” before pivoting to argue that $500 million grant is “table scraps” compared to the cost the auto industry will bear to convert to electric vehicles.

Democrats quickly pounced on those comments, with Walz saying outside Detroit last week that the “table scraps” remarks show the GOP candidates “couldn’t give a damn about Michigan workers.”

Harris and Michigan Democrats also hope to use the manufacturing focus to flip the script on electric vehicle policy.

For months, Trump and other GOP candidates in Michigan have claimed that Harris and Democrats will pursue an “EV mandate” <https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/10/electric-vehicle-backlash-has-michigan-dems-on-defensive-00182459> that would phase out gas-powered cars completely, pointing to EPA tailpipe regulations and a 2019 bill <https://www.merkley.senate.gov/senator-merkley-congressman-levin-introduce-major-legislation-to-transition-america-to-100-zero-emission-vehicles-2019/?_nlid=eHvkYZKchd&_nhids=BlKrtbOV> that Harris co-sponsored that would have mandated a full shift to zero-emission vehicles.

Democrats call the charges of an EV mandate a “hoax,” but the issue has caught on with many Michigan voters, who disapproved of Biden-Harris administration EV efforts by 55-40 percent in a statewide poll this summer.  <https://ssl2002.webhosting.comcast.net/epic-mra/press/Stwd_Survey_July2024_Media_Freq.pdf>

Harris and Michigan Democrats have responded by backtracking on the regulations, saying repeatedly that they “don’t care” what kind of car people drive, but that they want to ensure that electric vehicles are made in the U.S., rather than China.

Republicans, meanwhile, have sought to keep the focus on the EV regulations, even as they refuse to say what they would do with unspent IRA funds, running a new ad on electric vehicles this week in Michigan <https://x.com/AlexThomp/status/1847016155707572693> and hitting the Democrats in comments to reporters.

Harris’ EV policies would “eliminate over 100,000 jobs across this country, and Michigan will be hit harder than any other state,” Vance spokesperson William Martin said in a statement to POLITICO after the “table scraps” comment. “If Kamala Harris has her way, her destructive policies are going to cause an awful lot more than $500 million in damages to autoworkers.”

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826




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