Long before Trump, Michigan, a popular late stop for presidential hopefuls

LANSING — When former President Donald Trump announced that the final event of his campaign for the White House would again take place in Michigan, Monday night in Grand Rapidshe was following a tradition that predates his own 2016 campaign.

Michigan has been an 11th-hour campaign stop for presidential candidates for decades, though no candidate other than Trump has chose Michigan to put an exclamation point on a three-straight campaign.

In 1988, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis even held a predawn event on Election Day at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport shortly before the polls opened at 7am.

Trump’s rally Monday night at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids is a sign of Michigan’s enduring importance on the presidential map, even as the number of votes the state can award in the Electoral College has steadily declined from 21 in 1980 to 15 today.

In 1976, both then-President Gerald Ford, the Republican nominee, and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter held their final campaign events in Michigan.

Ford ended his campaign in Grand Rapids. Carter, feeling confident enough to take on Ford in his home state, made his final push in Flint at the former IMA (Industrial Mutual Association) Auditorium.

“What you do in the next 24 hours will make a difference in Michigan,” Carter said in his speech in Michigan on Monday, Nov. 1, 1976, the Detroit Free Press reported. “It will make a difference in the nation.”

Ford still won Michigan, but Carter won the election by 297 electoral votes.

In 1980, Carter made a Monday night stop at Detroit Metropolitan Airport for an election-eve speech to supporters in Michigan, only to see Republican challenger Ronald Reagan win in a landslide, with Michigan included in his total of 489 of electoral votes.

In 1988, the year Dukakis chose to campaign in Michigan on Election Day, Republican candidate George HW Bush held a campaign event in Southfield a day early on Monday.

And in 1992, Democratic challenger Bill Clinton stopped at Detroit Metropolitan Airport as part of a nine-state blitz the day before the election. During that visit, the Free Press quoted Clinton’s wife Hillary — who in 2016 reportedly faced criticism for taking Michigan for granted during her own presidential run — as saying the couple spent so long in the Mitten State that “people asked if we were going to vote there.”

In 2000, Democratic Vice President Al Gore, on his way to a historic and narrow defeat to Republican George W. Bush, made an 11th-hour pitch for votes at a UAW union hall in Flint one day before the election, before visiting. a church in the north end of town.

The Free Press reported that at the union hall, Gore said, prophetically, that Tuesday “could be a long night.”

In 2004, Democrat John Kerry was in Detroit the Monday before Tuesday’s election, holding an event at Joe Louis Arena with Motown icon Stevie Wonder.

Kerry, on course to be defeated by Bush, did not leave Michigan until 7pm that night, although he still had three stops to make in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [email protected].