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DETROIT — Partnership between elected officials and the reporters who cover them was a running theme when two leading Wolverine State Democrats spoke Monday at the National Press Foundation’s “Election Security” fellowship.
In a state where two recent polls (one from Fox News, the other from the Detroit News) show a dead heat between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the clear message from both speakers was that the media could make a difference at a pivotal time for democracy and (of course) Democrats.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Southern Poverty Law Center alum, spoke of a “narrative battle” between the left and the right during the “era of misinformation” encompassing “the last seven years,” one the press should wade into with “greater context” on behalf of “election administrators” who are not “narrative experts.”
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“It’s much more difficult for us to figure out how to fight that narrative battle, which essentially was about calling things out for what they were . . . but also really to protect the minds of voters just as we are trying to protect the operations and processes from being misled by this misinformation.”
Benson said administrators “need help in making sure we are calling out not just challenges to the processes themselves, but what it means for the narrative that others are trying to promote around the safety and security of our elections.”
“We also need your help in prebunking what we anticipate to seek to be an onslaught of misinformation. We’re seeing this play out and focus in particular on noncitizen voting as a scare tactic,” she added, expecting “challengers” to show up with alleged names of voters who aren’t residents.
“Those challenges will likely fail,” she predicted.
Attorney General Dana Nessel, who argued Michigan is the “ultimate swing state” and a “microcosm of America,” contended media and electeds have a similar mission — and both are “targeted” by the right.
“We are all targets potentially of an autocratic regime that could really fundamentally change things in America, which is what we’ve seen elsewhere,” Nessel said.
“Did you guys see the list that was published of some ally of the Trump organization? It had a whole list of individuals, some of them were elected officials, but it also had a list of the media that were to be targeted in the event that Trump is re-elected,” Nessel said, referring to a document with roughly 350 names from someone who self-promotes as the former president’s “secretary of retribution” that includes Benson and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
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“There were a number of news organizations on that list,” she added, calling it “scary times.”
Arguing that armed gunmen storming the Michigan Capitol was a dress rehearsal for Jan. 6, Nessel said public officials in her state routinely have their lives threatened.
“And just this fall, my department secured a conviction against a man who issued death threats against Gov. Whitmer, Secretary Benson, we do this a lot. Unfortunately, we prosecuted countless threats against judges, legislators, sheriffs, prosecutors, nonpartisan board members, members of the health department,” the AG said.
“Many of those we don’t even publicize because of the wishes of those particular elected officials. We don’t want more attention on it but suffice it to say that these investigations are happening almost constantly, and there are a lot more cases than you might think.”
For those who remember the 2020 election and slanted coverage down the stretch, it might be tempting to say Democrats are stoking fear and hoping the sequel is as popular with the press as the original film.
But at least in battleground Michigan, these Democrats effectively run the state — and want to program the narrative that facilitates it along the way.