Harris tries to win over working-class voters in Michigan

Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday visited Michigan to reverse her struggles with working-class voters, a demographic that had reliably voted for Democrats but has been gravitating toward former President Donald Trump. 

She spent the afternoon touring a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Saginaw, Michigan before traveling to Macomb to visit a union training facility and meet with workers.

Ms. Harris capped the day at a rally with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in Ann Arbor, the first time the two have campaigned together in weeks. 

During her remarks at the Union of Painters and Allied Trades training facility in Macomb, Ms. Harris told the workers that Mr. Trump did little to support them when he was in the Oval Office.

“He gives a lot of talk about what he cares about when it comes specifically to unions and labor, he was awful,” she said of Trump. “He’s not concerned about or working for working people.” 

Michigan is a swing state and part of the so-called Blue Wall states that went for Mr. Trump in 2016, but President Biden was able to flip them back to Democrats in 2020. The election remains a dead heat in Michigan, with polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight declaring the race there even. 

While most labor unions have endorsed Ms. Harris, she has struggled with rank-and-file members, a group that has traditionally backed Democrats. An internal Teamsters poll found that its Michigan members preferred Mr. Trump (61.7%) over Ms. Harris (35.2%), prompting the national union’s leadership not to make an endorsement in this year’s presidential race. 

Ms. Harris also failed to gain the support of the International Association of Fire Firefighters. 

While in Saginaw, the vice president highlighted the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to boost manufacturing. She visited Hemlock Semiconductors, which received a $325 million grant from the administration. 

During her remarks, she vowed to expand the number of jobs, including government positions, that don’t require a college degree.

“So there are many points that are about how we think about the future of work, the future of the workforce, the future of the American industry in a way that understands that we should be optimistic about what’s possible,” she said. 

The Hemlock grant comes from Mr. Biden’s semiconductor law, known as the CHIPS and Science Act, which the administration says will create 1,000 temporary construction jobs and 180 permanent manufacturing jobs at the company.