Michigan key to keeping Sanders in race against Biden

DETROIT • For Mr Bernie Sanders to remain competitive with former vice-president Joe Biden in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, he will have to repeat what he did four years ago: Win the Michigan primary.

This time, however, that will probably be harder.

Ahead of tomorrow's vote, Mr Biden is showing strength with the same kinds of voters that Mr Sanders, a United States senator from Vermont, relied on in his surprise defeat of front runner Hillary Clinton in the state back in 2016.

Mr Sanders goes into Michigan badly in need of a win after Mr Biden seized control of the race on Super Tuesday last week - winning a bevy of southern states as well as Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas - and causing rivals Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren to drop out.

Michigan is the most competitive of the six states that hold nominating contests tomorrow. It offers 125 delegates - the largest number of the minimum 1,991 a candidate needs to secure the nomination outright.

And it is a critical moment for Mr Sanders to try to recapture momentum before the contest shifts to Florida and Illinois the following week.

In addition to Michigan, Washington state, Mississippi, Missouri and Idaho will also be holding primary elections tomorrow. North Dakota will hold caucuses.

A loss for Mr Sanders in Michigan could give Mr Biden an insurmountable lead as the state-by-state nominating process moves into friendly territory for the man who was the No. 2 in former president Barack Obama's administration.

The state also greatly matters for the Nov 3 election. It flipped Republican in 2016, voting for President Donald Trump over Mrs Clinton by just over 10,000 votes.

"Michigan is your got-to-win state," said Mr Adam Hollier, an African-American state senator from Detroit who is backing Mr Biden.

Mr Biden parlayed his popularity with black voters into huge gains on Super Tuesday, winning 70 per cent of African-American votes in Alabama and Virginia, and 60 per cent in North Carolina and Texas, according to exit polls from Edison Research.

African-American voters will be crucial in Michigan, where they comprise almost 14 per cent of the population. Some areas of Detroit are 80 per cent African-American.

"When you look at what he did all across the South, those same demographics are going to be at play in Detroit," Mr Hollier said.

Mr Sanders cancelled plans to campaign in Mississippi this weekend, focusing instead on Michigan.

The senator might have better luck with union voters in manufacturing-heavy Michigan. He won the state's white working-class voters in 2016, and they remain a reliable part of his base.

Mr Richard Cassel, 28, lost his job as a car engineer in Detroit last month. That same week, he walked into a Sanders campaign office and volunteered to work the phones.

"For me, Biden is just more of the same. The middle class are working professionals, and everyone else is slowly drowning," Mr Cassel said.

But Mr Biden has longstanding ties to labour unions and routinely talks about how the middle class and union members built the nation.

The powerful United Auto Workers Union has yet to endorse any candidate but its spokesman Brian Rothenberg said it supports the idea of universal healthcare. Mr Sanders has put a government-run healthcare system, Medicare for All, at the heart of his campaign.

"The high cost of healthcare is one of the impacts when you're bargaining, so universal healthcare would actually give you a better ability to bargain at the table," Mr Rothenberg said.

Not all of Mr Sanders' positions play well with the state's unions, though. In particular, he has called for the closure of a 66-year-old crude oil pipeline that runs below portions of the Great Lakes, as part of his sweeping plan to swiftly end the US fossil fuel economy to fight climate change.

"It's going to cost Sanders a lot of support in our union," said Mr Terry Gilligan, business manager of Detroit Pipefitters Local 636.

And two Michigan chapters of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union endorsed Mr Biden last Friday.

Mr Sanders is running ads in Michigan criticising Mr Biden over his past support for global trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr Biden, in turn, argues that he was a key player in the 2009 auto industry bailout that rescued jobs in the state.

REUTERS