Dearborn — Parachute artists from the out-of-town press corps have landed.
It’s that time in the political cycle when they all drop into Michigan to inspect us like so many zoo animals.
They’ve been calling me. Their question—without variation—is this: How will Dearborn vote? Their presumption is that if Muslims stay home, then Kamala Harris is doomed.
While every person and every vote matters, Dearborn as a voting bloc matters little in the Mother of All Swing States.
I explain it to our friends in the media like this: Michigan has 8.4 million registered voters but only 7.9 million adults. I know. I know. There are lawsuits.
Having said that, let’s assume every adult is registered to vote here in Michigan, even if they are not eligible to vote by law.
The assumption is that Dearborn’s Muslims are going to stay home in protest of the Biden-Harris administration’s impotent response to Middle Eastern events, and that may be enough to swing things Trump’s way.
While it is true that Dearborn is home to the largest concentration of Muslims per capita in the U.S., Muslims constitute about 1% of adults in Michigan. And Dearborn is home to just 77,000 people of voting age, whether they be Muslim, Christian, Arab, White, or African American. That’s less than 1% of Michigan voters.
Meanwhile, college students in Michigan combined constitute 5% of all possible voters. A Harvard poll shows young people’s top concerns are inflation, healthcare, and housing.
After filming the mosque, I encourage my out-of-town colleagues to look southerly across Ford Road and the Southfield Freeway. Dearborn is also home to the world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company.
Workers in the automotive industry constitute nearly 15% of possible voters in Michigan. About 1.1 million people in Michigan earn their bread from cars, trucks, and other “mobility platforms.” The rest of us depend on their paychecks to float our hamburger stands, shoe stores, and government sinecures.
Cars. Jobs. Grocery bills. That’s where the election will be decided in Michigan.
Now consider that Ford is losing $50,000 per electric vehicle. Executives at the Blue Oval announced last year that they were bouncing 8,000 salaried employees to fund failing EV operations. Those were mostly expensive workers from Michigan. At the same time, Ford planned to expand its tech hub in India by 3,000 cheaper workers.
I encourage reporters to take a drive around Ford’s world headquarter campus in Dearborn. From a distance, the parking lot appears full. Presumably, workers have brushed their gums, put on some appropriate clothing, and returned to work. But that’s not what’s happening at all.
Last I visited, there were thousands of automobiles in the Ford HQ parking lots, with the price tags still glued to the windows. The vehicles did not belong to employees. They were a glut of unsold inventory. As I watched, more unsold units were being off-loaded from car carriers.
Then I took a walk around the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, the world headquarters of General Motors. The place was a cement sarcophagus. There were few people beyond the security guards keeping an eye on the homeless warming themselves in the atrium that faces the Detroit River. Across the strait, one could see the tidy homes and humming factories of Windsor. The American Dream in Canada.
GM refuses to reveal how many people still work at the RenCen. But the company has announced it will be abandoning the Ren Cen next year for Dan Gilbert’s new Hudson’s Tower, whenever he manages to get it finished. GM plans to lease 100,000 square feet for its new “world headquarters.”
But that’s only enough space for a few hundred people. Dearborn my ass.
Then there’s Stellantis—the parent company of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram—headquartered in Amsterdam. Stellantis has been laying off American workers since the conclusion of the bruising UAW strike.
The Ram truck, built in Warren, has been discontinued. Stellantis claims it laid off 1,000 people there. The UAW puts the number north of 2,000. Whichever it is, Stellantis is expanding its facility near Saltillo, Mexico, to build—wait for it—the Ram truck!
Meanwhile, on the east side of Detroit, thousands of line workers have been put on extended “temporary” layoff. There, behind the Jefferson North Assembly Plant, are thousands upon thousands more unsold vehicles.
To make dark days darker, European executives are looking to shrink the Stellantis footprint at Chrysler’s headquarters in Auburn Hills, the third largest office complex on Earth. Little human presence was detected there on a recent afternoon, giving the campus an aura of a gigantic tombstone of glass and steel.
Not to worry, Gov. Whitmer has promised to involve herself in negotiations with the European sharks! Ouch.
Not so subtly, we are losing our automotive birthright here in Michigan. That is the crux of the election in the Great Lakes State. But when I explain this to our out-of-town visitors, their eyes seem to glaze over.
They’re more concerned with lunch. “Where can we find some good shawarma?” they ask.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools.
