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Post-Election Memo: How Climate & Clean Energy Helped Win Michigan

November 6, 2024

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To: Interested Parties

From: Lori Lodes, Climate Power Executive Director

Date: November 6,  2024

Re: How Climate & Clean Energy Helped Win Michigan

The future of America’s investment in clean energy and EV technology was put front and center in the Senate race in Michigan this election, and voters delivered a clear verdict by sending Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin to Washington.

Michigan is leading the nation in clean energy innovation, with electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing turbocharging the auto industry across the state. Yet, nowhere has the right-wing crusade against clean energy been more ubiquitous in the 2024 campaign cycle than Michigan. Republicans and their Big Oil backers spent tens of millions to turn the tight race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat into a referendum on EVs. Mike Rogers and allies spent $24 million attacking Senator-elect Slotkin and Democrats over EVs in TV ads in Michigan alone. At the end of the day, the attacks failed. Despite outspending Democrats on EVs 15 to 1, Michigan voters rejected Mike Rogers’s attacks on clean energy, and chose Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin to build the state’s clean energy future. 

Mike Rogers bet his campaign on the premise that he could fool Michigan voters into buying his cynical, Big Oil-backed vision. Rogers’ core message was rooted not in a positive vision for the people of Michigan, but in lie after lie promulgated by Big Oil. Their disingenuous attacks relied on false “EV mandate” ads and attack lines, blatant distortions about battery plants, and lies about the Inflation Reduction Act. 

According to analysis of TV, radio and trackable digital advertising, this assault on EVs came at the staggering cost of $24 million from Republican campaigns and dark money groups on their behalf, compared to just over $1.5 million spent by Democratic campaigns and groups touting investments in EV jobs and manufacturing.

In the face of this relentless, billionaire-funded advertising frenzy, Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin countered with the facts. Slotkin defended clean energy manufacturing as a winner for Michigan while skewering Rogers for wanting to forfeit the future of automobile innovation to China. Senator-eElect Slotkin knows that clean energy jobs are growing at double the rate of overall jobs, their unionization rates are higher than those of the broader energy industry, and that Michiganders are seeing the benefits of this ongoing revitalization in their communities. 

Since Senator-elect Slotkin voted for the successful passage of the largest climate and clean energy investment in history in 2022, Michigan has become the epicenter for new clean energy manufacturing. More than $26 billion in clean energy investments have been announced over the past two years, creating over 21,000 new jobs for Michiganders, more than 80% of which will be in the EV and battery sector.

The candidates’ starkly different attitudes towards General Motors’ Lansing Grand River Assembly plant left no doubt as to who would stand up for Michiganders when it mattered. Rogers said that he would support canceling a $500 million grant to revive the plant by building EVs, promising to put 700 jobs on the chopping block. Senator-eElect Slotkin, who represents the UAW workers at the Grand River Assembly in Congress, vowed to protect the grant and support giving the plant new life.

In addition to Slotkin’s win, MI-08 shows the overwhelming popularity for the state’s climate action and clean energy jobs and investments. Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet defeated Republican Paul Junge in MI-08, a district currently represented by retiring Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee. Projects in Michigan’s 8th District have received some of the most robust investments from the clean energy plan in the entire state. McDonald Rivet, who played an instrumental role in helping Michigan pass landmark legislation to combat climate change and put the state on a path to 100% renewable energy by 2040, demonstrated in her bid for Congress that she will continue to be a climate and clean energy jobs champion.

What Michiganders have been reading:

What Michigan leaders have been saying: