Oakland County's red-to-blue shift has liberals planning future

OP's note: This is a paywalled article so I posted some of the key graphs


(Detroit Free Press) ....(snip)....

They gathered at a church in Bloomfield Hills, smack amid a ruby red ZIP code, although none lived there. They came from Royal Oak, Pontiac, Ferndale, Southfield, West Bloomfield and points beyond, to showcase Oakland County’s amazing shift from bright red just a generation ago, when the late L. Brooks Patterson headed not only county government but also the county’s Republican party, and when no Republican ran for county office without his blessing. Since then, the county went pink to pale blue to bright blue, glowing for this gathering called the “Oakland County Progressive Summit.”

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Bayer is leading Michigan’s charge toward new gun laws, a crusade that with backing expected in Lansing could see the state lead the nation. Bayer said she’d met last week via Zoom with White House staff and, separately, with the co-director of the nation’s chief think tank on gun violence — the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Prevention of Firearm Injuries. On Saturday, as she stood before the crowd of activists, who wore coats and hats against the indoor chill of a church parlor darkened by the power outage, Bayer seemed more confident than ever about Oakland County’s, and Michigan’s, mandate for change.

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Oakland County’s political color changed because “No. 1, it changed demographically,” said Dave Dulio, an expert on local politics at Oakland University. The county is “more diverse in every way you can think of,” Dulio said.

“The old Brooks Patterson Republicans are dying off,” replaced by newcomers who are young, highly educated, often ethnically diverse, and often liberal or at least independent. Other county residents may have grown up Republican but switched parties when the GOP got too extreme for them, he said. Yet, those who switched, and many newcomers, are likely not as liberal as those at the church summit, Dulio said.

“The way for Democrats to keep winning, in Oakland County and many other places, is by showing they appeal to independents. These are people who are willing to listen to Republican messaging,” he said.

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But incremental was not the target at the Progressive Summit. For too long, liberals in Oakland County have felt like "people who were voiceless," said Oakland County Commissioner Charlie Cavell, a Ferndale Democrat. At last, their time has arrived, he said. ............(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2023/03/06/progressive-summit-has-blue-liberals-meet-in-red-bloomfield-hills/69960701007/