The News
KALAMAZOO, Mich. — While some Democratic candidates tear each other apart over the future of their party, Sean McCann is part of a quieter group attempting to stay above the fray.
It’s tempting to try to call these Democrats part of a new center-left, but their campaign strategies this year are defying quick ideological characterization. Candidates like McCann are running against the all-GOP rule of the last two years, particularly the economic upheaval of President Donald Trump’s second term.
“People have seen tariffs and know tariffs are responsible for a lot of the higher costs that they’re facing in everyday life,” McCann told Semafor in an interview at his campaign office. “And this is from a president — we will remind people all the time — who said he was going to lower people’s costs on Day One, and then comes out with this chaotic tariff policy.”
During past midterms, purple-district candidates like him would have sought to differentiate themselves by wading into national Democratic dramas — whether by railing against “defund the police” ahead of the 2022 election or by vowing to oppose Nancy Pelosi as speaker back in 2018.
But McCann is mum, even on his vote in Tuesday’s bitter Michigan Democratic Senate primary. His choice between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens is “private,” he said, and he thinks either could win in November; instead, the state senator is training his focus on incumbent Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich.
“I’m really just focused on the difference between Huizenga’s votes and mine,” McCann said, adding that he’s courting “anyone and everyone who thinks that it’s time for a change here in Southwest Michigan.”
Democrats’ optimism that an economic backlash can help battleground-seat candidates like McCann has hard data behind it. As home sales slow thanks to high interest rates and Trump’s tariffs drive up the cost of consumer goods, the president’s economic approval rating has sunk below 40% in most polls.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Monday found Democrats with the advantage on the economy for the first time in nearly a decade. And in Michigan, the unemployment rate has consistently exceeded the national average.
McCann will take a big step forward on Tuesday, expected to defeat his primary challenger with support from the House Democratic campaign arm, but he’s not alone in running against Trump’s economy as opposed to his party establishment.
Races in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, as well as its Senate matchup, are similarly focused. Michigan’s 10th District in the Detroit suburbs also features a crowded field of Democratic primary candidates vying for the seat being vacated by GOP Rep. John James, and all are running more on the economy than party ideology.
Western Michigan University Professor of Political Science Peter Wielhouwer said in an interview that “one of the things that puts so many Republicans at risk, including Huizenga, at risk in this election — is just people’s perception of the economy as pretty negative.”
Know More
Toppling Huizenga in Michigan’s 4th Congressional District poses a unique challenge for McCann. While the area has trended purple in recent years after favoring Republicans, Huizenga’s family has such deep roots in the region that a park in the district bears its name.
If Democrats are going to be competitive in this Republican-leaning territory, they’ll have to eat into the GOP’s vote share in places like Ottawa County on the shores of Lake Michigan. The county is one of the fastest-growing places in a state that’s notched modest population growth elsewhere after years of decline; it’s one of only a few counties in Michigan where Kamala Harris performed better in 2024 than Joe Biden did in 2020.
It has a lower poverty rate than Michigan as a whole, and a median household income roughly 25% higher than the rest of the state, according to Census data, with its economic growth driven by agriculture and manufacturing in recent years.
That’s what has left the area vulnerable to tariffs, which Huizenga has voted to support, and the Trump administration’s trade war. Local employers like the clock manufacturer Howard Miller, in Zeeland, Mich., have cited tariffs as part of what led them to close.
“This area tends to be highly educated, highly engaged, and they’re paying attention to what’s happening in Washington and how it’s impacting their pocketbook,” said Rep. Hillary Scholten, D-Mich., who represents the 3rd District to the north.
The View From Voters
A day before sitting down with Semafor, McCann stopped at the Ottawa County fair. There he heard Daniel Everts, 83, lament the rising price of gas, the rising cost of living and the price tag of overseas wars he feared would make life much harder for future generations.
Everts seemed to be in an anti-incumbent mood, knocking politicians for “lining their pocketbooks,” and overpromising to voters, though he declined to say to Semafor whom he was voting for or his party affiliation.
McCann quipped that he was the kind of person who would “underpromise and overdeliver.”
Room for Disagreement
Republicans are hopeful that the potential nomination of progressives like El-Sayed will drag down the rest of the Democratic ticket and will allow them to keep seats like Huizenga’s. The incumbent’s campaign has hammered McCann for his voting record as a state legislator and in municipal government.
“It takes a lot of nerve for Tax Man Sean McCann to lecture anyone on the cost of living when his entire career in office has been spent making life more expensive for Southwest Michigan families,” Huizenga said in a statement.
Nicholas’s view
Democrats like McCann have an unstated and good reason for wanting to run against Trump’s economy: Their party is struggling over its direction because its own brand is not in great shape.
With Democratic divisions kicked up by the Michigan Senate primary likely to simmer for some time, the above-the-fray Democrats will have to sell their own independent brands if they want to stand any chance of general-election victory in redder territory.