Friends Like These

To comfortably keep Michigan Blue, as it has been since 1992, Mongo contends Obama needs a near-record turnout in the city of Detroit, on the order of 60 percent of the registered voters. By comparison, when John Kerry took Michigan by 3 points in 2004, just more than 40 percent of Detroit's registered voters showed up at the polls. Without Kilpatrick around to oil Detroit's political machine, getting out the vote will be difficult, says Mongo. And campaigning with Granholm won't help. "The governor can't come in here and get anybody to vote for Obama," says Mongo. "She's the 800-pound gorilla that made this resignation possible."

To the rest of Michigan, where Kilpatrick had a 2 percent approval rating, that makes Granholm a hero. And that seems to be the political calculus that Obama is banking on to win him votes in the mostly white swing suburbs surrounding Detroit. "Michigan voters know that Mayor Kilpatrick's troubles are his own," Obama spokesman Brent Colburn told NEWSWEEK, "and that Barack Obama is focused on bringing people together to solve the serious challenges we face."

But when it comes to race, Michigan's Democrats have proven fickle. In 2006, even as it re-elected Democrats Granholm and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot proposal outlawing affirmative action. The move was a surprise since polls leading up to Election Day predicted the proposal would fail and affirmative action would carry the day. But Michigan voters showed an unwillingness to give minorities an edge in college admissions or landing government jobs—an ominous sign for Obama. Since then, Kilpatrick has stoked racial tension, accusing his critics of having a "lynch-mob mentality" and invoking the N-word in a defiant state of the city speech. "Race is the elephant in the room," says Steve Mitchell, the mayor's former pollster. "Because the mayor is African American, it has fueled some real racist thoughts in people."

Colburn contends that Obama is building grassroots support throughout Michigan thanks to his background as a community organizer (the job much ridiculed by GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin Wednesday night). Already, Obama has 30 field offices in Michigan—10 more than John Kerry had at this time four years ago. And when Obama opened up his Detroit field-office this summer, Colburn claims the campaign signed up 1,300 volunteers. "We're confident the structure that we're building will get out the vote," he said.

But before this summer, Obama went nearly a year without setting foot in Michigan. He took his name off the ballot and stayed away during Michigan's controversial January primary, conducted in defiance of Democrat Party rules. "There's a grassroots gap between the Obama campaign and Michigan," says Riddle. "Without the Michigan primary, they haven't had a dress rehearsal on getting out the vote."

They'd better hope it goes better than Obama's Labor Day speech in Detroit. It was billed as the restoration of a tradition where the likes of Truman and Kennedy kicked off their fall campaign with a rousing speech at Detroit's huge Labor Day parade. But some in the overflow crowd in Detroit's Hart Plaza left disappointed. In deference to Hurricane Gustav, Obama cut short his remarks and called for unity in the face of nature's fury. "What he did was make thousands of people stand in line for a five-minute speech," truck driver Phil Robinson groused to The Free Press. "It was a missed opportunity." What wasn't missed: Kwame Kilpatrick, who reportedly spent his Labor Day at a private picnic. Now with the Detroit's radioactive mayor out of the way for good, Obama has a chance to finally put his Motown man-hug behind him.

© 2008