Oakland County Democratic Senator Mallory McMorrow is in the on OTR queue this week, fresh off her appearance on the national Democratic Convention stage regarding Project 2025.

Our lead story is how did the vice presidential debate play in Michigan?

Around the table, Colin Jackson, Lauren Gibbons and Joey Cappelletti.

Sit in with us this week at the inside out.

Off the record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible, in part by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at Martinwaymire.com And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Welcom to studio C. We are taping on Thursday morning and we had that little vice presidential debate, which was kind of interesting.

Let's take a look at the issue that affected Michigan when the two vice presidential candidates showed up for their debate last night, they were expectations in the audience.

Will all the pundits sai a hockey fight would break out between the two?

Well it turned out just the contrary, as the two often agreed with each other that something had to be done on this issue or that and they shared some common ground while disagreeing on the ways to get there.

Although the reporters themselves didn't mention it by name.

The Oxford, Michigan School murder of four students did come up in the context of sentencing the shooter's parents for having a part in the tragic shooting.

Good idea or not?

I think in some case the answer is going to be yes.

In some cases the answer is going to be no.

And the details really matter here, Of course, for example, if a kid steals a gun, that's going to be different than if a parent hands over a gun knowing that their kid is potentially dangerous.

Democratic candidate Walsh did not address the Oxford parent issue, but called for a ban on some weapons without violating, He said, the rights of Second Amendment gun owners.

And the idea to hav some of these weapons out there, it just doesn't make any sense.

Republican candidate Vance did not embrace any gun bans but wanted to beef up the school doors and windows and provide more in school resource officers.

And Mr. Walz worried about Mr. Vance's comments about linkin gun violence and mental health.

I don't think it's the whole reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem, but I do think it's a big piece of it.

This idea of stigmatizing mental health just because you have a mental health issue doesn't mean you're violent.

And I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat.

Sometimes it just is the guns.

Well, the Democratic candidate sometimes thinks it's about guns.

His opponent apparently does not.

All right, Lauren, what was the what was unique about this debate?

I think just how civil it was and the fact that they were occasionally agreeing with each other, we had.

Almost not a TV debate.

Right.

Right.

It was it was certainly a situation where both candidates were definitely there to discuss policy issues and not necessarily getting, as you mentioned, the hockey fist fights.

So I thought that was pretty unique.

Certainly both of them had had roles to play.

J.D.

Vance was there to soften the message a little bit and and come prepared.

Walz was there to, you know, forward his campaign and and, you know, in a relatively new campaign, make some of those policy positions clear.

Ultimately, will it necessarily change voters minds?

Probably not.

But, you know, it was interesting to hear like a very a very focused policy discussion.

Yeah, I would agree.

It's a little bit of, you know, the politics I've heard about but have not seen in the past decade.

in your life.

Yeah, exactly.

So it was interesting for that.

You know, I think as Lauren said, it's you know, we kind of live in a time of clips and soundbites and there wasn't really you know, it's part of the thing that brought down Biden is that debate, you know, some of the soundbites from that.

So I don't really know how much is going to move the needle.

And I think also even yesterday, you know, you saw J.D.

Vance return to the campaign trail and the rhetoric kind of changed a little bit.

So what happened on the stage?

I'm not sur if it's going to reflect really what's going to happen the rest of the campaign.

But it was was interesting.

It was like Mr. Vance was going to churc and he was on his best behavior.

Yeah, exactly.

I think that is what Joey says, You know this was a very peaceful debate.

This was something where they kind of kept going over the moderators you know, are kept talking over.

The moderator had a lot to say on each topic.

You had substance here, whereas previously, you know, the big complaint about this campaign is that it's been a vibes based campaign where people don't really care about the actual issues, the substantive issues, kind of like how you feel about the candidates in versus what we saw Tuesday night was both candidates reall just talking about the issues.

And again, to Joey's point, I don't think that you can win a debate, but I think you can definitely lose one.

We saw that with Biden and we saw that with Trump and we saw now both men just kind of stood there an stood their ground this quickly.

Just I think with both you know, Vance went into that his main thing was kind o coming across as more likable.

And I think that's why, you know, he really went with kind of that more, you know, you know, agreeing a little bit.

And I think Walz went into that, you know, trying to outline a little bit more policy.

And that was kind of him, you know, addressing some of those things.

So I think they each went in with specific things that they addressed pretty well.

I think both sides thought their their candidate won.

This is the kind of debate when you get two people who ar part of the legislative process, because that' what the legislative process is.

It is about cooperation.

I actually thought that unwittingly Mr. Vance helped excuse me, Mr. Walz helped Mr. Vance creat that image of being a nicer guy.

Did you notice the head nodding that went on between the two of them when they were talking?

I mean, the whole thing I put my wife, I am I watching a debate here?

What's actually going.

Do yo do you think he helped him out?

Well, I definitely.

Saw some moments where you fel compassion between both people.

I remember just a little bit after that discussion that we just saw regarding guns and schoo shootings and everything else.

Walz talked about his son witnessing a shooting at a community center, and Vance said I offer my prayers for your son.

You know, I think that's a moment where you see that you don't see often in American politics anymore.

We see two very opposed people showing compassion for one another and taking a step bac from whatever the statement is.

In addition to the legislative stump speeches, it also felt very Midwest.

Nice, right?

You know, I was watching that as someone who's lived in Michigan for a very long time and I was like, well, you know, this is what you get when you get two Midwest people on the stage are very civil.

You know, some might say little boring policy discussion.

And so I thought tha was interesting.

I thought Mr. Walz did not look goo on the Tiananmen Square issue.

Look it, if you're going to admit a mistake, you do it at the beginning of the sentence, not at the end, and you don't bury it with stuff on top of you.

So you know what?

I was wrong.

Okay?

If you wanted to use the word misspoke, say that at the beginning, rather at the end, because it just didn't feel good.

Yeah.

And I think that's why, you know, people like Walz is he's endearing, you know, he's relatable.

And I think, you know, he often says, you know, I sometimes stumble over my words, things like that.

I think if you had just come out and said that, I don't really know.

You know, he obviously prepped in Michigan, in Harbor Springs with with people to judge.

I don't know how I guess why that wasn' maybe a better prepped answer.

You had to imagine they were going to ask that.

So it seems a little odd, you know, that they didn't have a more, you know, read to just go answer that question.

Well, well that his was his magic moment.

The one for Mr. Vance was not answering the question on the election.

Right.

And that came up again yesterday.

During his campaign appearance in Auburn Hills.

A reporter had asked him about that and he agai kind of repeated what he heard during the debate, which is that's the past.

He's trying to look forward to 2024.

What's happening now, rather than fully acknowledging that Trum did lose the election in 2020.

Something interesting Vance did say, he thought this is going to be the most secure election.

And one of the reasons he chalked it up to was, in his words, the RNC and Republicans are working more to ensure election security now than they did in 2020.

And within that, he was promoting the Swamp the Vote initiative, which is something that is the conservative cause that you see at all these different rallies, tha all these different conventions, and basically educating people on the right about absentee voting, about early voting in some of these different voting methods of showing up to the polls on Election Day that really were disparaged at the top of the ticket back in 2020.

And that' what really interesting point, because Republicans need people to vote absentee.

They need peopl to use the early voting options.

It's easier for operatives if people vote earlier.

If everybody is voting on Election Day.

There's a lot of factors that come into play that you know, that they can't control and it could affect turnout.

So certainly they have a impetus to make people interested in absentee and early voting.

It seems like, you know, I think some of some of the stations, you know, had undecided voters who talked about, you know, whether this this debate turned them.

And I think Vance's answer on that election question really seemed to turn off a lot of voters.

I think one one journalist actually said, you know, it's like pitching eight scoreless innings and giving up a grand slam in the ninth inning.

Was that Vance response?

Because I was saying was soundbites just him not, you know, sayin that the election was won by Joe Biden was was kind of a, you know, problem.

Mr. Walsh saying the firewall.

I thought that had some impact.

You've been doing a deep dive into this thing this week to share.

What do you find?

Yeah, I mean, I think Democrats, you know, no Republican has won state statewide in the last eight years since Donald Trump won by a very small margin.

So I think Democrats have this real, you know, advantage going into the election.

You know, Harris has this advantage.

Democrat have never had this much power.

But there are concerns right now about, you know, Harris obviously is working on an abbreviated campaign.

You know, she's only had a few months to really define herself to voters.

And I think people like, you know, Elissa Slotkin, Representative Debbie Dingell are kind of sounding I don't want to sound the alarm.

You know, they have concerns.

And I think all of them will say this isn't 2016.

Look, the Harris campaign is listening to us, but we have concerns about her potentially losing the state.

But there still is a fear that 2016 still linger in the mind of real Democrats.

It's it's described to you as PTSD, paranoia, anxiety.

But I mean, Democrats it is a little bit of, though, you know, some I think would say this is a healthy paranoia, like we should have these fears about 2016, about polling.

We don't want to be too comfortable.

You're saying, you know, VP Harris is going to be back here tomorrow.

So it's not the same as when Clinton was, you know, running in 2016.

But there's that PTSD of what happened.

Well, one of the things that they asked about Hillary Clinton back in that race, if you recall, would you like to sit down and have a beer with her?

People generally said no.

I think they would say ye to Mrs. Harris, wouldn't they?

Well, that's the thing, though.

She needs to show up and actually just be herself.

You know, she's needs to talk to press, needs to take questions.

She needs to show people who she is as a person.

And that's something that w heard from Congresswoman Debbie Dingell Saturday morning during when Governor Walz came to Ann Arbor for the big House.

You know, she was talking to reporters a little bit at the airport ahead of that, and she said she didn't feel like either candidate, either Trump or Harris, was winning Michigan yet She says she believes Harris can win Michigan, but they need to get to know her.

And I think that's what's still been missing from this campaign.

That personal aspect of it, aside from the means, aside from the policy speeches, just who are you as a person?

Debbie Dingell and Governor Jim Blanchard were the canary in the coal mine in 2016.

They kept saying to the Clinton people, You got to get her in here.

And they said, Oh, we're going to have Michigan wrapped up by October 1st.

Wrong.

Okay.

We'll see how that works out.

The Detroit Chamber of Commerce had an interesting pull out through our Mr. Czuba.

There are families fighting over politics in Michigan.

Does that surpris anybody here around this table?

Huh?

I'm not shocked Have any of you run into that?

Not in your family, but in any shape or form?

I mean, I think the one of the things is, again, covering Dearborn, specifically working on a side project, what you hear there is, you know, people that are unhappy with a Biden-Harris administratio on the topic of Israel and Gaza and what to do about that an who to vote for from there with.

Some people are saying I'm going to vote for Trump to punish Haris.

Some people are saying, one, to vote for Jill Stei or Cornel West or a third party.

However, and I've kind of hear about those kind of intraparty or intra family conflicts as well.

Yeah, And I'm focused a lot of my election reporting on the areas where it could go either way, especially in those local state House districts or, you know, certainly at the top of the ticket as well.

And I think in those areas where, you know, you have reasonable arguments on both sides for which way it could go, those are the areas where people, you know, it could be neighbors, it could be friends, it could be family where you interact with them in your community.

But you could have very, very different ideas about what politics are.

That's just the reality o living in a battleground state.

I think also, you know, after the fall of Roe, reproductive rights is a really polarizing issue.

You know I think there's I've encountered multiple women who are saying, you know, have voted for Trump in the past, but I'm going to vote for Harris because of the reproductive rights issue.

And I think that's really can divide some households.

I'm pretty sure that in previous presidential elections, pollsters never ask the question, is your family fighting over this battle?

Here's th senator coming in to talk to us?

Senator, please Welcome to Off the Record.

Nice to have you on board.

You've waited a while to do this, right?

Oh, yeah.

All right.

So you carrie that big book out on the stage.

And having read all 900 pages, tell me two good ideas that were in that book.

There are no good ideas that.

Come on.

Nine hundred pages.

that should be left on the shelf and never seen from again.

Isn' that a rather obtuse response?

There must have been something good in there.

These were intelligent people writing a document.

It is a document that is largely about completely breaking the government and making it a political apparatus.

And I think that that's something that I've seen even on the state level, something that has been a challenge for me as somebody who ran for office to make government better, is grappling with the idea that I worked with some people who ran for office because they hate government and they want to break it, and that's a lot of what Project 2025 is, which isn't a surprise.

This has been the push of the Heritage Foundation for a long time, and I think it should be left to the ash heap of history.

Lauren.

And is that is Project 2025 or other issues that have come up so far enough to really motivate voters.

Certainly in previous elections in Michigan, you know, we had reproductiv rights as a motivating factor, for example, is Project 2025 that for Democrats?

I can tell you, you know, long before I was at the DNC, I had people in and aroun Oakland County, regular people asking me about it.

You know, there was a billboar up by the airport and credit to what was then the Biden campaign for putting this up that just said Project 2025, Google it.

And the more people found out about it and this is potentially a mistake of the Heritage Foundation to brand this thing that people don't like it.

You know, when we talk about reproductive freedom as a good example, what's in Project 2025 would go so far as to monitor women's pregnancies in every state across the country.

They deny that.

They say it's not true.

It's in there.

If you read it, it's in there and compel states to report on women's miscarriages.

So I think when you talk about the salience of this issue in Michigan, Prop three collected more signatures than any other ballot initiative in state history and women look at something like this and say, you know, you said this was a state's issue.

We said, okay, we took thi issue on and we made it a right.

How dare you try to take it away from us and get into our private business.

Regardless of whether or not the authors of project 2025 document may see i as institutionalized Trumpism.

The Trump campaign itself, though, has worked very hard to try to distance itself from this.

I've been seeing the flier sen out saying he didn't write it.

He probably didn't read it.

I have a hard time believing he sat down to write a 900 page document.

What does that make, though, for Democrats trying to pin this on Trump with him actively saying, this isn't my thing?

I think this is too extreme as well.

So, you know, if you go bac and you look at his appearances as Donald Trump has stood and fundraised alongside the Heritage Foundation, he has spoken glowingly about their work with when it relates to the Supreme Court and a lot of the work that they're doing.

And he only tried to distance himself from it once people started realizing what it was.

The thing about the president is you're not just electing one person.

You're electing an executive who's going to hire hundreds, thousands of people in their administration.

And there are more than 140 Trump officials from his first administration who authored this document.

So when he gets into office, if he were to get into office for a second term, the idea that none of these people would have any involvement in the Trump administration to be carrying out these ideas is just absolutely ludicrous.

When Vice President Harris entered the race and launched her campaign, a lot of what she said was, you know, we're not going back.

It was coming thi campaign of joy and happiness.

But since then, we've seen a lot of focus on Trump and what Trump did.

Would you like to see Democrats maybe messaging more about what they would do if, you know, if they had another four years in the White House?

Somethin that was really shocking to me.

I just hired a new staffer in my office.

I was telling you about this before we started the show.

And he told me during the interview process, yeah, we had a mock election in my class when Donald Trump was first elected.

That was in seventh grade, and that really crystallizes for me particularly for young voters.

There's an entire generation of Michiganders who are voting this cycle many of them for the first time, who don't know what Donald Trump was like as president.

They didn't live through i really not in a meaningful way to see the impact that that we saw.

So I think the challenge is both.

And as you pointed out, Joey, in a truncated timeline, you have to run on a positive message.

You have to run on Joy.

I think that there is a lot to like in the idea that we want to get out of the ugliness of politics and get out, get back to something that is civil and we deserve to have a little bit of fun.

But I still think you have to draw the contrast for people that either four years later, forget what a Trump presidency was actually like or for a lot of voters who don't even remember.

So you'v got such a hot shot candidate.

How come she doesn't have a five point lead?

You know, there is.

Take a deep breath.

It is.

It's been something that I think about a lot.

When I first ran for office back in 2018, you know, I had never thought about running for office and knocking doors across Oakland County.

And some of the areas that helped me defeat a Republican incumbent.

I had a lot of people say I'm voting for Donald Trump because he says it like it is and I'm voting for you.

That made me deeply uncomfortable.

But there is this reality that people are very dug in, in this divisive moment.

There are people who fundamentally believe that somebody like Donald Trump is a messiah, that everybody is out to get him, that the media is out to get him, that the courts are out to get him.

And I think that's a really, really hard thing to break through.

You mentioned the polling on o families being divided on this.

I've talked to people who haven't spoken to a famil member in years because of this.

I don't know that that's going to be solved in one election cycle.

I think Vic President Harris is phenomenal, but I think it's going to be a long time before we're able to break through the ugliness of Trump and Trumpism and what led to January 6th.

That isn't going to be fixed in a six month campaign.

Well, but here's the point.

Okay?

Look at her audience.

She's not trying to go Trump voters.

She's trying to get other voters.

How come she hasn't garnered their attention?

I think she is what I've seen.

And she ahead.

She she is ahead in Michigan.

And I think that what we feel very confident about as I'm getting out there is Michiganders are burned out.

We have lived through a global pandemic.

We lived through, frankly, the trial run of the insurrection on April 30th of 2020 in our state capitol, when we saw armed gunmen effectively carrying out a practice run for what we saw on January six.

And I think that there is a level of burnou that is hard to break through.

So that is, I think the opportunity lay ahead of us.

I think she's doing everything right.

The campaign that she has been able to put together in such a short time to get the amount of energy that we have seen, you know, there was polling with President Biden, I think that came out the day that he announced that he would no longer see the nomination from Bernie porn that showed that that Biden was losing Metro Detroit.

If that were to happen, that would be catastrophic for the state.

So from where we were to where she is right now, it's a huge momentum shift.

But it is this is going to be tight, I think.

You know, Debbie Dingell, as always, Debbie Downer as she likes to call herself, this is going to be a tight race.

I don't think you're going to see a massive shift here, bu it is going to be in the margins because Michigan is, despite all the national press saying that we're a hard blue state we're not we're a swing state.

We've always been a swing state.

And it's going to be about who works harder.

Oh, to that point in 2020, Biden's victory was largely credited to the suburban voter in your district and other areas around the state who were lean Republican in the past and decided to go Democrati and sort of an anti-Trump wave.

And with that momentum shift that you just discussed among Democrats, is the suburban vote there enough to carry Harris?

Absolutely.

I was just at this past weekend an event that was Moms for Kamala, and it was a sign making party that a mom who had never been involved in politics before had organized where she had gotten blank signs made and paint and markers.

And it was just inviting al these moms and their kids out.

I brought my daughter.

It was one of the most fun events I've ever seen.

But that is something to m that I didn't even see in 2020 was there were a lot of campaign events.

There were people like us, like me who do this work all the time leading these events.

There wasn't a groundswell of truly organic events that were popping up that I would get invited to.

I attended a Mommas for Kamala brunch that probably had 300 women show up on a Sunday morning led by actually an ex neighbor of mine.

She lived across the street from me and she's an OB-GYN and decided I want to do something.

She planned what was suppose to be a breakfast in her house.

It got so popular on Facebook that she had to find a venue in Ferndale to host 300 people.

The excitement and energy is there.

I think suburban women, particularly, they know what Donald Trump is like and they don't want to go back.

So it's a matter of reassuring these voters your vote does matter and Michigan is going to be the key to the rest of the country, which can be both intimidating.

But if we message it right, also really empowering.

I'm curious, when you talk about coalition building, though, what is the winning coalition for the Harris campaign to win Michigan, though?

Because we've seen Walz mention during the debate.

You know, you have Bernie Sanders endorsement, but you also have like the Dick Cheney endorsement and the Taylor Swift endorsement.

And that locks up or at least that kind of represents a wide range of people.

But realistically, like, how deep is that Republica support for Harris in Michigan?

How deep is that young person' support for Harris in Michigan?

And what's there for kind of these communities of color or these other areas where they feel like they haven't been represented by the.

Harris, by the Biden-Harris administration?

So what I thin is really interesting is there's sort of an unplanned messiness to the coalition.

You know I got really frustrated hearing national pundits say, oh, Harris needs to rebuild the Biden coalitio or rebuild the Obama coalition, which if you start from that place, that right off the bat acknowledges there are other people who weren't a part of this coalition, and we're not even going to try to get them in here.

So something that started happening as soon as Vice President Harris became the candidate, not even the nominee was These online zoom calls started forming.

And again, they were not led by the campaign.

It started with women with black women, then black men.

For Harris, I was invited to speak on the White Women for Kamala Call, which when I got that ask, I was like Oh, are we allowed to do this?

Is this what we're saying out loud?

But it was 160,000 white women from all over the country on Zoom.

They'd never had a call that large.

It broke it multiple times and it felt a little bit sloppy and a little bit messy because it wasn't campaign messaging.

It was, you know, me and Pink who was on the call from the middle of the jet fro one of her shows in Switzerland.

She was in the air, Glenn and Doyle, Shannon Watts, who's the founder of Moms Demand Action.

And we saw this happen with white dudes for Kamala.

It gave people permission to be themselves and create their own version of this campaign in a way that I think is really compelling.

And what we see in th endorsements is that playing out on the ground as well.

You need a big coalition.

But in a place like Michigan, you know, you're pointing to, is there enough Republican support?

I think we have two separate in Michigan.

I have a lot of voters of of mine who I don't think consider themselves Democrats.

They are lifelong Republicans, but they recognize that their politics may not have changed, but the party certainly has.

So there's that kind of group of voters, likel many of the people who voted for somebody like Nikki Haley in the primary, who I think that i who the campaign should target, which is people who are not Trump Republicans, but just want it to work and want the country to function.

Senator will you stay for an Overtime?

Sure.

Okay.

Before we hang up on this, I do have to ask you, this is an off the record.

Look at my eyes and tell me that you're not going to run for governor.

Not at this moment.

Will you run?

I think that people are really tired of politician always looking for what's next.

And I'll give you just some context for this.

At this point in 2016, I was running my own consultancy.

I was taking night classes at Lawrenc Tech to go back into car design.

I had no ide I was going to run for office.

I sold two years in my term.

I don't know what I'm doing next.

Have you thought about it?

Of course.

And how deeply?

I haven't.

Well, wait.

Why did you bother to think about it?

I think about a lot of things.

So you haven't ruled it out, but you haven't ruled it in?

Correct.

All right.

Let's take a quick break.

Look at these close credits and then come back for overtime with the good senator at WKAR.org.

And we'll be right back.

Production of Off the Record is made possible, in part, by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at Martinwaymire.com For more off the record, visit WKAR.org Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of off the record.