Hillary Clinton hopes to sway blue-collar voters in Warren speech
When Democrat Hillary Clinton brings her presidential campaign to Michigan this week, she’ll deliver a jobs and economy speech at a Warren company that has expanded its auto supply business into the defense and aerospace industries.
Futuramic Tool and Engineering has benefited from federal military contracts as well as investing heavily in an apprenticeship program with Macomb Community College. It was the scene of another Democratic political event in 2011 when three Democratic congressmen — Sander Levin, of Royal Oak, Gary Peters of Bloomfield Township and Hansen Clarke of Detroit — visited the plant to witness how the company was building parts for the F-35 fighter plane.
The company will serve as the backdrop for Clinton’s 1:15 p.m. speech Thursday, following on the heels of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s message on the economy to the Detroit Economic Club on Monday. The event is not open to the public.
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Clinton’s jobs plan relies heavily on investing in the nation’s infrastructure and in hard-hit manufacturing communities, like Detroit and Warren.
"Our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our ports, our airports, our water systems, our sewer systems, they are in desperate need of being either repaired and maintained or built," Clinton said during a rally in Florida earlier this week. "Those are millions of jobs, good, middle class jobs. And I am sick and tired of people who watch roads get potholed; who watch water systems poison children; who don’t stand up and say, we’re going to put America to work building the infrastructure we need for the 21st Century."
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The Warren visit presents an odd juxtaposition for the two presidential candidates — Trump in the heavily Democratic city of Detroit and Clinton in the Republican-leaning Macomb County. During the March 8 presidential primary race, Trump won Macomb County with 60,487 votes or 48.4% of the county's total, followed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 22% of the vote and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with 16%. Clinton barely won Macomb County with 48.8% of the vote, but ended up falling to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the overall statewide tally.
It's an area where Trump needs to do well if he has any chance to win Michigan, which has voted for the Democratic candidate for president in every election cycle since 1992. And it's a spot where Trump could make inroads with those who have given Trump his biggest support, white working-class voters with no college education.
"Hillary Clinton is worried about Reagan Democrats and blue-collar voters," said Republican political consultant Stu Sandler. "It’s a really important part of the state. There are good blue-collar swing voters there. It’s an important area for both candidates."
Indeed, when Trump was campaigning in Michigan prior to the state's March 8 primary, he spoke at Macomb Community College in Warren. So did Sanders.
But in polling released last week by the Lansing-based EPIC/MRA, Clinton is leading Trump both statewide and in Macomb County. In a head-to-head matchup, Clinton leads Trump by 51% to 30% in Macomb. When Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are added in, Clinton still gets 49% of the vote, compared to 25% for Trump, 8% for Stein and 6% for Johnson. Since the sample size for Macomb County residents was so small in the EPIC/MRA poll, the margin of error was 13%.
"Unless things dramatically change, I expect Clinton to hold on to that lead," said Bernie Porn, president of EPIC/MRA. "I don’t know what Trump can do to change things that are already starting to bake in a little bit."
Clinton also is expected to attend a big-ticket, private fund-raiser in Birmingham on Wednesday evening. Clinton's last visit to Michigan was in May when she spoke at the NAACP's Fight for Freedom dinner.
Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.
