Bush Pledges More For Poor

Perhaps the giddiest moment of the primary season came when John McCain upended expectations and won Michigan, a large, diverse and significant state whose Republican governor had promised George W. Bush a victory. That was two months back, though it now seems like a lifetime ago.

For Bush, bygones are bygones.

"I want the people of Michigan to know I care enough to keep coming back to Michigan. I intend to carry the state of Michigan." Thus spoke Gov. Bush, who campaigned in Battle Creek Tuesday.

The governor staked a claim to a traditional Democratic issue - low income housing. Not only is this relatively untrodden turf for Republicans, it's an issue Gore has barely touched. Bush moved to the front of the housing class with a $1.7 billion proposal that would give developers a tax credit for rebuilding and refurbishing decaying old homes.

Bush figures "under this credit, private investors will have a powerful incentive to increase the supply of affordable houses." The plan comes on top of his proposal a week ago to make it easier for low income families to afford down payments on homes.

The Gore campaign belittled Bush's record on housing in Texas, and said the vice president would spend over $6 billion on low income housing measures.

But what mattered for Bush was not just what he said, but where he said it. Michigan is the U.S. in microcosm. Its diversity reflects the country's diversity. Michigan is industrial, with a large city, but is also an important agricultural state, with small towns and medium-sized cities. It's religiously, ethnically and racially mixed. While there are lots of union voters there, they don't vote as a bloc.

In short, Michigan has every kind of voter you want.

Of course, so do plenty of other states. The point is, Michigan is up for grabs. It doesn't fall clearly into either the Democratic or Republican camps. The governor, one U.S. Senator, and six of the state's 16 U.S. representatives are Republicans. The rest are Democrats; and Michiganders voted for Bill Clinton the last two elections. They voted for George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan before that.

Michigan is a "state that tracks national votes pretty closely," said David Rohde, professor of political science at Michigan State University. Not only does it tend to vote for the presidential winner, he says, but the breakdown of its vote tends to follow national trends. And with 18 electoral votes (you need 270 to win), it's a plum.

Any candidate "must ask himself what state is likely to provide the 270th electoral vote," Rohde observes.

That's where pivotal states like Michigan come in. Sure, Bush will probably try to win California, and he could pull it off. But if he wins California, "he will have already won the election," argued Rohde. (For Gore, Florida plays that role.)

But if you can win Michigan, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or a handful of others, you've won the poerful, bellwether states that reflect where the nation as a whole is headed.

So, how to do that?

You have to win the hearts and minds of Michigan's "very large independent population. Those are the people who determine which way the election goes," Rohde said.

Of course, those voters opted for John McCain back in the open primary in February. No one has yet found the crystal ball which reveals where those voters will go in November. Many indie voters don't even know themselves. A recent Michigan poll gave Bush 43 percent support and Gore 42 percent. A critical 15 percent said they were undecided.

Bush figures those undecideds are the sort of folks who like to hear a Republican musing about housing for low-income families. Similarly, Gore thinks they're the voters who are impressed with his hands-on fascination with education - hence his day-long visit to a Michigan public school a few weeks back.

So valuable is the state, that Michiganders may get treated to the kind of retail politicking we haven't seen since - well, since the Michigan primary.