GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Hillary Clinton is crushing Donald Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin. Yet her running mate Tim Kaine is here anyway, barnstorming the industrial Midwest to shore up support among the white, working-class voters that the Republican nominee desperately needs to win.

Clinton and Kaine are backing off in Colorado and Virginia, pausing ad buys where demographics are tilting the race away from Trump. But Trump is threatening a serious play for voters in this part of the country with visits to Wisconsin Friday and Michigan on Monday — including this city in conservative Western Michigan where the state may be lost and won, top officials in both parties say.


Trump’s claim to expanding the political map rests squarely on his ability to woo blue-collar Democrats. And Kaine — a devoted Catholic father of three who grew up in the Kansas City suburbs — was chosen in part to strengthen the ticket among just these kinds of voters. So far, he’s hammered away at Trump as an outsourcing “you’re fired” candidate with no real policy prescriptions, meticulously explaining Clinton’s plan of building new infrastructure and investing in education.

Attendees at his events in the Rust Belt received him warmly Friday, but some said they were mostly here out of enthusiasm for Clinton rather than Kaine, who remains an unknown in this part of the country.

Clinton’s backers admit to being slightly nervous about how Michigan could play out, and to a lesser extent, Wisconsin. Clinton lost both states to Bernie Sanders in the primary — so Kaine’s Friday visit and a reported swing through Michigan next week by Clinton shows that Democrats aren’t taking any chances as Trump counters their presence with appearances of his own.

“What benefits Trump is he’s a Republican who’s actually talking about trade, who’s talking about the plight of the working person,” said former Michigan Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm. “People don’t know [Kaine] yet in Michigan, but he brings such an amazing background of somebody who has been in the trenches fighting for people that haven’t got a voice anywhere he goes.”

Both states now have Republican governors and burgeoning numbers of elected GOP officials, which has increased GOP confidence. But there’s an open question of whether this is a summer feint by Clinton and Kaine, given the ticket’s solid position in Michigan and Wisconsin polls and deadlock elsewhere.

Trump is nearly tied with Clinton in Ohio, according to RealClearPolitics averages, while she is up 6 points in Michigan and more than 5 points in Wisconsin. If those numbers hold, late October visits to these two states won’t be necessary and neither will seven-figure ad buys.

A Clinton campaign official said that the recent focus of Clinton and Kaine on jobs is aimed at blunting Trump in the Rust Belt, which Democrats view as Trump’s only path to victory. A CNN poll this week showing Clinton besting Trump on the economy, 50-48.

“We’ve always been a battleground state and I expect the candidates to treat Wisconsin as such for the foreseeable future,” said Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. “I’m hoping to see a lot more of Tim Kaine and Hillary Clinton.”

If Kaine and Clinton can help take these two states off the map now, it gives Democrats more resources to spend in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania and even traditionally GOP states like Arizona and North Carolina as the general election draws near. That will not only help Clinton but Democrats in competitive Senate races in all five battlegrounds.

“You have to be strategic, they have a limited amount of time to go where they need to go,” said Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan. “I’ve never seen any evidence of an actual Trump campaign on the ground” in Michigan.

But Republicans say that Michigan is tighter than it’s ever been and that Trump’s nontraditional campaign should not be underestimated in places where manufacturing jobs have disappeared. The local GOP loves the attention Trump is lavishing on Michigan, even if it isn’t clear that there’s much of a strategy other than swooping in, holding boisterous rallies and grabbing free media attention.

“It feels more competitive. The fact that Donald Trump has come here post-convention makes it more competitive,” said state GOP chair Ronna Romney McDaniel. “If you campaign in our state, voters in Michigan will notice.”

In Michigan, Kaine trained his remarks on Trump as someone who’s sought to only enrich himself, dinging his companies for using overseas labor to make products sold in the United States. Kaine warned people at a Democratic field office not to let Michiganders fall into Trump’s embrace while he vows to bring back blue-collar America.

“Trump thinks he can. He thinks that this is part of the blue wall that he can pull over into [his] column,” Kaine said. “He’s got some sense he can make it happen.”

This was a consistent message from Kaine to Democrats: Don’t get complacent. Earlier in Wisconsin at a stop aside a popular riverfront brewery in Milwaukee, Kaine urged Democrats not to take anything for granted even in states where he and Clinton are favored.

“We’ve shown strong in Wisconsin and Virginia and other states. But this has been a season of surprises,” Kaine told the Wisconsin audience.

Trump tried to blunt Clinton and Kaine in his own stop alongside running mate Mike Pence in Green Bay, Wis., on Friday, though the gloss of party unity was marred by Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Ron Johnson and House Speaker Paul Ryan all declining to rally with Trump.

In Wisconsin, the #NeverTrump movement remains strong with conservative radio hosts like Charlie Sykes routinely blasting away at him even in the thick of the general election and top statehouse officials resisting his entreaties. House Speaker Robin Vos welcomed Trump to the state with an op-ed asserting “we are Ryan Republicans here in Wisconsin, not Trump Republicans. “

The GOP nominee’s campaign in Wisconsin seems to be based largely on distaste for Clinton rising above Republican antipathy for Trump.

“The American people are profoundly disappointed with their choices,” said Rep. Reid Ribble of Wisconsin. “People that I talk to back home in Wisconsin, they are completely unenthused about either of these [candidates]."

Pete Meachum, Trump’s state director in Wisconsin, declined to divulge how many staffers the campaign has dispatched to the state but said that Trump “will have all the staff and resources we need to win in Wisconsin.”

Veteran Republicans aren’t quite as bullish.

“To this point he has underperformed in Wisconsin relative to how he’s performed in other Midwestern states,” said former Wisconsin GOP Rep. Scott Klug. “He’s gotten the crap kicked out of him by Wisconsin conservative radio.”

The stakes for Clinton are even higher in Wisconsin than Michigan simply because there’s a competitive Senate race there and no such battle in Michigan. Freshman GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is the underdog in his own re-election race against former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold and Johnson is not outrunning Trump in his own state, unlike other at-risk Republicans.

Democrats say Johnson should not be counted out in a race that Democrats must win to win back the chamber and confirm Clinton’s nominees. And Kaine’s appearance gets them closer.

“Let’s get Hillary and let’s get a senator,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. “In Wisconsin we have a good chance of taking that Senate seat. We sure want Tim there.”

But Kaine was gentle in his remarks, never mentioning Johnson while imploring voters “to hammer down to make sure Russ gets elected to the Senate.” Feingold wasn’t there, however; his spokesman cited a scheduling conflict.

Democrats are hoping that Kaine returns consistently to this region over the next three months, believing he could have a force multiplying effect on their efforts to claw back losses in the state legislatures and congressional delegations.

“We have encouraged them to come in and be very aggressive and not take their foot off the gas,” said Brandon Dillon, chairman of Michigan’s Democratic Party. “The fact that Sen. Kaine is coming to West Michigan … sends a message that they are going to be here and be here often.”

As he closed out his remarks to the field office in Grand Rapids, Kaine promised he would be back.

“I look forward to coming back here a lot. It’s absolutely critical. We’ve got to win Michigan,” he said.

Heather Caygle contributed to this report.

