Donald Trump was honored as Man of the Decade in the Michigan county as the former president’s campaign continues

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Donald Trump travels to Michigan as part of his 2024 presidential campaign on June 25, 2023. Oakland County, Michigan, named Trump Man of the Decade ahead of his speech, despite his defeats in 2016 and 2020. More Trump supporters in Michigan echoed his claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

Former President Donald Trump was honored as Man of the Decade in a Michigan county he lost twice as he returned to the state seeking to reclaim territory that helped propel him to the White House but lost it in his grip four years later.

Campaigning for a return to the presidency while facing a federal indictment for alleged mishandling of classified documents, Trump spoke Sunday in suburban Detroit, where he lost between 2016 and 2020 and will need to recover if he becomes the 2024 Republican nominee. He will need to reverse a recent trend in Michigan that has seen Democrats make some of their biggest gains nationally since Trump lost re-election.

Trump spoke at the Oakland County GOP’s Lincoln Day Dinner, where he was honored by the party as its Man of the Decade. Trump repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden throughout his speech on Sunday, saying the Democrat was a “disaster” for Michigan and auto production in the state. Trump also criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, for approving state funds for a foreign company.

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It was the Trump campaign’s first appearance in Michigan, one of three states, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, that flipped in 2016 to put him in the White House and Biden four years later.

Trump’s popularity in Michigan has taken a hit since 2016.

“By Trump’s calculations, he needs to win back Michigan to become president. But he’s been very disruptive here,” said Dave Trott, a former GOP congressman. “Trump is largely the reason Michigan Republican Party is dead.”

Last year, Trump-endorsed candidates in Michigan were among the loudest in repeating his baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

Trump’s pick for attorney general, Matthew DePerno, has spent the final months of his campaign investigating whether he should be criminally charged for trying to gain access to voting machines after the 2020 election. Secretary of State Kristina Karamo, a former community college professor, was chosen by Trump as the Republican nominee for secretary of state after saying she saw election fraud as a poll challenger in Detroit.

In November, statewide candidates he supported lost heavily, including Tudor Dixon, who lost to Whitmer by more than 10 percentage points.

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Michigan Republicans controlled all levels of state government from 2011 to 2019. Now, they are out of power for the first time in 40 years. The change is particularly visible in Oakland County, home to the largest number of Republican voters in the state.

“People who know election politics in Michigan will say it’s pretty important that if the Republicans are going to carry the state, they have to win Oakland County,” Trott said.

While Trump lost the county in 2016 and 2020, Biden received nearly 100,000 more votes than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did there and won the state by about 155,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points.

Trott, who represented Oakland County in the US House from 2015 to 2019, first endorsed Trump in 2016 but later said Trump was “unfit for office.” Trump’s support among Republicans in the Legislature has declined, with 25 lawmakers publicly supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as president. Trump said Sunday that DeSantis has “no personality” and that his campaign is “falling like a rock.”

Among state GOP officials, however, support for Trump has not wavered. In February, Republican precinct delegates elected Karamo to lead the party after he lost by 14% in the midterms. One of the first steps of the new party leadership was a vote to change the state’s traditional process of allocating all presidential delegates based on a primary open to the public.

Under the new plan widely expected to help Trump, Michigan would award just 16 of the state’s 55 delegates based on the results of the Feb. 27 primary. The distribution of the remaining 39 delegates would come four days later in the closed-door caucus meeting, conducted by the same party members who chose Karamo to lead the party.

“The plan gives Trump a significant leg up on the rest of the field. He is a favorite in the state and has made Michigan his political playground for the last seven years,” said Jason Cabel Roe, a former executive director of Michigan GOP.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Karamo said he will remain neutral in the primary. He argued that the party was forced to make the change after Michigan Democrats voted to move the state’s primary from the second week of March to Feb. 27, a violation of Republican National Committee rules that could result in the loss of delegates.

When asked if Trump or his team lobbied for the president’s major change, Karamo declined to answer. He said he doesn’t “discuss conversations with different campaigns.”

“We want to protect the voice of Michigan voters. So whether or not it might help one candidate over another, that’s completely irrelevant,” Karamo said.

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According to Karamo, the Michigan GOP has “worked” on the plan with the RNC and expects the national party to approve the new primary setup.

The RNC said its talks with the state party “focused on policies and processes rather than the substance and language of the specific Karamo plan — the kind of guidance they offer each state party as they begin they formulate their individual paths for delegate selection.”

“We look forward to reviewing the plans of each state and territory,” RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said in a statement.

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