The Grand Old Party has found its August battle cry.
Mackinac!
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s 2020 comments bemoaning “Mackinac” have riled up Republicans in defense of the crown jewel of Michigan tourism, at a time when it’s more expensive than ever to vacation on the island.
“I hate Mackinac so much,” El-Sayed can be heard saying in a 2020 documentary as he’s hoofing it up to the Grand Hotel for the 2018 Mackinac Policy Conference, when he was running for governor.
His Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake Township, is whipping up the base about the comments that resurfaced after El-Sayed’s Aug. 4 Democratic primary victory over U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens.
“This guy has come out against Mackinac Island, the iconic tourist attraction that is very popular in the state of Michigan — he hates that,” Rogers told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday. “… This guy is so wrong and so radical for our state. Once people know this, I think we’re going to be in good shape going into November, and that’s why the Democrats … are in a little bit of a tizzy.”
Republicans are using the soundbite to paint El-Sayed as someone who doesn’t love Michigan’s beauty, its gems, its shining island in the Straits.
But El-Sayed never said he hates Mackinac Island in the video clip. He said Mackinac, which in Michigan political circles can refer to the Mackinac Policy Conference, the Detroit Regional Chamber’s four-day confab at the stately Grand Hotel of Michigan’s political, business and media elites that is revered by some and generally reviled by many others.
Count El-Sayed in the camp that reviles the Mackinac conference, which costs $4,000 to attend (not including lodging, meals or transportation to the Straits of Mackinac).
“I’ve got nothing against the island. I have everything against the conference,” El-Sayed told The Detroit News.
But there’s an allusion to being on the island in this eight-year-old video clip when El-Sayed refers to the governor’s summer residence on Mackinac Island.
“It’s funny cause, like, if we win, this is gonna be, like, the summer home,” El-Sayed said. “I’m just gonna be like every time I’ve ever come here, I’ve hated it. Why am I here?”
El-Sayed contended the “here” he referred to is just the conference.
“For a lot of reasons, I have some pretty negative opinions about that conference,” El-Sayed said. “It’s a place where the rich and powerful in Michigan come together, and too often are cutting deals that cost the rest of the state money and access.”
The Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual Mackinac conference also has provided El-Sayed with a platform to get statewide media attention and debate his political opponents.
“We take pride in the conference’s role as a bipartisan platform for statewide candidates and encourage all running for office to continue the theme of this year’s event, which is to find common ground to move Michigan forward,” said Megan Spanitz, the chamber’s chief operating officer and chief strategy officer, in a statement.
El-Sayed called Mackinac Island a “lovely place” and recalled one trip to the conference when he took time to bicycle M-185, the car-less state highway that encircles the 4.35-square-mile island. Prior to 2018, El-Sayed said he had attended the conference for work, when he was a public health official for the City of Detroit. He says he’s never vacationed there, but his family went once without him while he was campaigning for office.
Despite El-Sayed’s efforts to tamp down the controversy, Republicans think they’ve found a winning issue. The subtext of their comments is that El-Sayed is somehow un-American for not really caring for an island known for his horse-drawn carriages and not-so-budget-friendly lodging.
Kid Rock also went on Fox News and bashed El-Sayed for the comments, touting the “beautiful landscape and homes overlooking Lake Michigan and the Mackinac Bridge.”
“One of my favorite things on earth is to end up at the Grand Hotel … lined with American flags and you’re sitting there having a whiskey drink before you go to dinner,” Kid Rock said. “It’s God’s country.”
The Grand Hotel’s big porch is God’s country? A questionable claim, but a ferry ride from the southern shores of the Upper Peninsula, Michigan’s undisputed God’s country.
Having a whiskey on the porch before dinner at the Grand? That’s a $26 Manhattan followed by a pricey meal ticket that can easily exceed $100 per person. Not exactly something the average Michiganian can afford.
“For a lot of people, it’s just foundationally unaffordable,” El-Sayed said, noting the recent battle with Mackinac Island’s monopoly ferry boat operator over ever-rising fares, parking charges and baggage fees.
But a week after the primary, this is where Republicans are turning their energy: Defending the sanctimony of Mackinac Island.
Everyone seems to be joining this crusade.
At a Kid Rock concert Saturday night in Hastings, the Republican nominee for governor, U.S. Rep. John James, came on stage to make a few remarks with a recorded version of the rocker’s “Bawitdaba” playing before he rang a giant Liberty Bell replica and belted “Kiiiiiiiiiiiid,” mimicking the intro of the hit single that put Kid Rock at the top of the charts in 1999.
The congressman’s message to voters?
“Let’s fight for our state of Michigan, let’s fight for our Great Lakes and let’s fight for Mackinac Island,” James said.
James sounds like he’s trying to run against El-Sayed instead of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, his real Democratic opponent this fall.
James’ campaign is now hawking “I Mackinac Island” campaign T-shirts and mesh trucker hats on its website, despite the fact that he skipped this year’s Mackinac Policy Conference, avoiding a debate with Benson and his Republican primary rival, Perry Johnson.
Putting aside the campaign merch opportunity, the fight for Mackinac is lined with traps for Republicans in an election where affordability and current inflation in the cost of everyday goods and services are issues they have to defend with President Donald Trump in the White House.
Republicans are out promoting this Mackinac narrative against El-Sayed at a time when gasoline costs 28% more to drive up to the ferry docks in Mackinaw City than it did this time a year ago, when there wasn’t a war with Iran that Trump started and promised would be over in six weeks.
Those big, beautiful homes on the bluffs of Mackinac Island that Kid Rock was gushing about on Fox News? They are absolutely stunning. They also cost multiple millions of dollars to purchase. The cost of staying a couple of nights at the Grand Hotel is the equivalent of most people’s monthly rent or mortgage.
One veteran political strategist who once worked exclusively for Republicans equated the GOP’s battle cry for Mackinac to the stuff one has to watch out for while walking and biking the island’s streets.
“Mike Rogers 100% supports Trump’s economically illiterate tariffs, the idiotic war he had zero plan for and is losing, failed record on jobs, and massive cuts to health care access, all of which are driving up costs and anxiety for Michigan families. Yet people are clutching their pearls about an old offhand (comment) about a tiny island. It’s horses—,” said Jeff Timmer, senior adviser to the Lincoln Project and a one-time executive director of the Michigan Republican Party.
El-Sayed, a political athlete who seems to relish a spat involving horse puckey-caked pavement, is unfazed by the controversy, calling it “a distraction from the issues that actually matter.”
“People are sick and tired of these culture wars,” El-Sayed said. “I’m a lot more interested in fighting for your affordability, fighting so that you can afford your groceries and afford your home, and fighting a system of government that sells you off to Blue Cross Blue Shield and Big Pharma and Big Tech and DTE, all of whom, by the way, are heavily represented at the Mackinac Policy Conference.”
clivengood@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Livengood: Attacking El-Sayed on Mackinac is a pocketbook trap for GOP
Reporting by Chad Livengood, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Chad Livengood, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
