It’s the final push for presidential candidates before Election Day on November 8th, and Michigan has not lost their attention.
Senator Tim Kaine will be in Michigan on Sunday. The Democratic Vice Presidential nominee will make two stops in the metro Detroit area, one in Warren and one in Taylor.
Kaine is expected to give a speech in front of over 500 union members and their families at the Warren event.
Mike Jackson is with the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights. He says the unions have supported Republicans in the past, including Governor Rick Snyder, but there has been a change in popular opinion.
“We’ve seen a big shift when we poll our members and focus group them,” he said. “We’ve seen a big shift away from the Republicans back to the Democrats here in the last several years.”
Jackson says a part of the reason for the shift is union members are not happy with how a completely Republican legislature has treated the unions. “They pretty much abandoned us,” he said. “They were willing to work with us on issues that were important to our members when there was more of a balance there – they – for lack of a better way of putting it, when they needed us more.”
But GOP chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel says Kaine is not the best spokesperson on union relations. “I think a lot of union members know that Hillary Clinton is really good at talking the talk, but she has not walked the walk,” Romney McDaniel said. “And they believe that Donald Trump means what he’s saying and he’s going to go to Washington and be a fighter for them.”
While Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leads Republican candidate Donald Trump in Michigan, her lead has shrunk according to recent polls.
Trump surrogate and former presidential hopeful Ben Carson will also be in Michigan this weekend. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has a rally at Cobo Hall in Detroit Friday night.