Leelanau County is a vacation peninsula on Lake Michigan known for vineyards, cherries, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes. But don’t sleep on its significance in the 2024 presidential election. It’s one of three swing counties, in a key swing state, that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and then swung blue for Joe Biden in 2020. With eyes on Michigan as November approaches, it’s worth considering whether this community of less than 25,000 residents will flip red again in 2024.
The area, known by some as the Hamptons of the Midwest, became a case study in the post-pandemic political realignment. Scores of well-paid, white-collar remote workers moved from expensive superstar cities like New York and Los Angeles for “smaller, scenic vacation spots” during the Covid-19 years, according to a New York Times study. The Times focused on destinations in Florida and on the East Coast, but Leelanau County saw a similar influx of remote workers. The liberal beliefs of those newcomers, who often hailed from cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Ann Arbor, may have contributed to the county’s blue shift in 2020.
“Many northern Michigan counties are growing in population even as the rest of the state struggles to retain or attract residents,” wrote Lauren Gibbons in Bridge Michigan, “and Republicans and Democrats alike acknowledge the influence of retirees and other newcomers settling down up north, bringing voting preferences that are often at odds with the rural conservatives that have long dominated regional politics.”
But those rural conservatives could regain ground. Andy Puzder is one of the affluent summer residents who owns an expensive home in Leelanau County. He’s in Suttons Bay, an inlet community just north of Traverse City. But unlike the stereotypical wealthy vacationer bringing liberal, luxury beliefs to the area, Puzder, whom Trump once tried to install as Labor secretary, is openly voting red. He suspects his neighbors might be, too.
“As I drive around here, I’m seeing a lot more Trump signs and I’m not seeing any Biden signs up here,” he told me, just days before Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Kamala Harris as his successor. Back in October 2020, Puzder had observed enough Biden signs to concern him. It’s not a scientific measure, of course, but “anecdotally, if you’re basing it on yard signs, I’d say things have shifted back to Trump.”
Puzder’s observations at the time were reflected in polling data. Hours before Biden ended his candidacy, the Detroit Free Press released a head-turning survey of likely Michigan voters that showed Trump with a seven-point lead over the current president. Bernie Porn, a longtime pollster with the Lansing firm that conducted the survey, remarked at the time that he “couldn’t remember a survey he’d done showing a Republican presidential candidate in such a strong position in the state” since 1988. That gap has narrowed with the Harris “honeymoon effect” but not enough to show her winning Michigan, where Trump still leads according to polling from Emerson College.
Puzder believes that Trump’s selection of Senator J. D. Vance as his running mate could reinforce that momentum. “I think he will be helpful in the Rust Belt,” Puzder said of the Ohio senator, whose rags-to-riches story is documented in the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy. “I think a lot of people in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—particularly Western Pennsylvania—will relate to Vance and I think that will help.”
Then again, if proximity is what drives political popularity, Democrats have their own cards to play. Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has been floated as a potential vice presidential pick for Harris, though she insists that she is staying put. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, another potential member of the Democratic ticket, has Northern Michigan ties via Chasten Buttigieg, who grew up working on his grandfather’s cherry farm in Suttons Bay.
Another question surrounding Vance is the popularity of his economic approach with swing and Republican voters. The Ohio senator has troubled some GOP colleagues by introducing populist flavors into the party’s traditional free-market economic approach. Puzder, by contrast, wrote a book called The Capitalist Comeback, and in many ways he represents the old economic guard. The one-time Labor nominee remains open-minded, however, calling Vance an “excellent choice” and speaking of a future Trump administration that would be business-minded and dynamic.
Back in Leelanau County, where concerns over grocery costs trump interest in competing economic theories, pragmatism could play well with voters. Puzder described two primary issues that could drive his neighbors’ electoral decisions. “One is the economics and two is the level of respect the people have for the candidate, the nominee of the two major political parties,” he said.
A lot can happen in a few months, and Puzder’s calculus could shift depending on a variety of factors, especially the final make-up of the Democratic ticket. Either way, as November approaches and Michigan’s wine country harvests its grapes, the region’s voters could give a new meaning to the maxim “in vino veritas.”
Photo: Hgjudd, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons