Getty ImagesDoug is a longtime resident of Warren, Michigan, a suburb north of Detroit, where he spends part of his time as a machine mechanic building electric vehicles for Ford.
But he would never buy it.
Doug, a former Democrat and union autoworker, declined to give his name for fear of union boycott. Win back the genre.
With less than a month until Election Day, the former president has stoked concerns in the state that Harris wants to ban gasoline-powered cars and that auto workers could lose their jobs in a push to electrify vehicles. That message resonated with Doug and other Michigan voters interviewed by the BBC.
“It’s definitely costing us jobs and it’s costing a lot of people their jobs,” Doug told the BBC outside a Meijer supermarket in Warren on a sunny October day.
Harris pushed back on Trump’s comments, telling voters at a rally in Flint, Miss., last week that her administration would not ban gasoline-powered vehicles. The vice president supported phasing out gasoline vehicles while running for president in 2019, but has since reversed his support for the policy.
“Michigan, let’s be clear,” she said in Flint, “contrary to the advice of my opponents, I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive.”
Experts say Trump’s criticism of electric vehicles is his interpretation of a broader economic message in Michigan as he tries to appeal to voters in the key swing state in the Midwest.
The former president reinforced that message Thursday, speaking to hundreds of people at an event at the Economic Club of Detroit, saying UAW President Sean Fein wants “all-electric vehicles,” Trump said. Pu said the move was “costing” the auto industry.
“This has just become an important message for Republicans: These plans or hopes for vehicle electrification will destroy the auto industry and take away jobs,” said Jonathan Hansen, a lecturer at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. .
Harris’ challenge to the message has yet to go over well with some Michigan voters, who still believe Trump’s claim that Harris wants an all-electric vehicle nation.
“I don’t trust them,” Warren resident Ruth Zimmer, 82, said of electric vehicles. “I want things to be like they used to be, with a good old car.”
In Michigan on Friday, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, tried to appeal to those skeptical of electric vehicles and took aim at Trump’s comments about the mandate.
“It should just be your choice. We need to make those choices affordable,” he said. “No one is asking you for anything. If you’re like me and want to drive a ’79 International Harvester Scout, that’s so sweet… screw yourself up.
Walz and Trump’s visit to the state comes as recent polls show Harris’ support may be slipping slightly in the key battleground state. A September Quinnipiac University poll showed Trump leading by 3 percentage points in Michigan, after other polls showed Harris holding a narrow lead over the past month.
Trump’s attack on electric vehicles has also been complicated by one of his biggest backers, billionaire Elon Musk, founder of electric car company Tesla. Musk supports Trump and appeared at a rally in Butler, Pa., last week to cheer him on from behind the podium.
Experts say appealing to the state’s auto and union worker base – once a solid Democratic voting bloc – will be key to Harris and Trump closing the gap in Michigan.
Trump won some voters in the state in his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, although President Joe Biden won some votes in 2020. , compared to 42% for Trump, a race in Michigan she lost by about 10,000 votes. According to 2020 exit polls, Biden won unionized households 56% to 40%.
As the cost of living rises, some former Democratic union workers in Michigan are becoming disillusioned with the Democratic Party. Doug, a Warren resident, said he is tired of pressure from union leadership to align with Democrats.
“You have to be a Democrat or you’re completely outcast,” Doug said.
He added that Harris is President Joe Biden “in a nutshell.”
The vice president has worked harder to win Labor votes than Biden, who bills himself as the most pro-union president in history. While Harris and Walz have significant labor support, they have struggled to win over rank-and-file union members.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the largest union in the United States, has declined to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in three decades, finding that a majority of rank-and-file members support Trump.
Matt Grossmann, a professor of political science at Michigan State University, said that in Michigan, where the auto and transportation industry employs 20% of the workforce, Democrats are not getting as much credit for their electric vehicle investments in the state as they would like.
This year, the Biden-Harris administration announced a $170m (£1.3b) investment to convert shuttered and struggling car factories in Michigan and several other midwestern states to produce electric vehicles and parts of its supply chain.
“A lot of people in and around the auto industry don’t necessarily think this is going to be a benefit to Michigan,” Mr. Grossman said.
Hansen said automakers seemed generally willing to shift their fleets toward more electric vehicles, but the transition would be costly and require supplementary investments in factories for specialized materials such as batteries.
A General Motors plant in Lansing, Miss., has received $500 million as part of a nearly $2 billion federal investment to shift production from gasoline to electric vehicles.
Just two days before Trump arrived in Detroit, his Republican running mate J.D. Vance said the investment in Lansing was “junk on the table” compared with the job losses that a shift to electric vehicles would bring.
Kevin Moore, president of the Michigan Teamsters union, called Trump and Vance’s electric vehicle announcement “a blatant lie.”
“They are not going to phase out flammable gas vehicles,” he told the BBC. “They can overlap.”
His organization – along with several Teamsters unions in battleground states – has endorsed Harris for president.
Moore said he believes Michigan workers won’t believe Trump’s claims that electrification will put auto workers out of work.
“They’re smart,” he said of autoworkers. “Donald Trump is a billionaire who grew up with a silver spoon. [Harris] She lives in middle-class America.
