Female Democrats swept many seats nationwide last week, but Sen. Debbie Stabenow said she thinks that happened in her state and in others because of the number of highly qualified candidates, not simply because they were women.
"We had the largest voter turnout for a non-presidential year in 50 years," the Michigan Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "What I think is historic and is taking us the next step is that we had a woman win for governor, a woman win for attorney general, a woman win for secretary of state. I won reelection. And that wasn't the headline. The headline was these great people won, but it wasn't this novelty."
President Donald Trump won in Michigan by a little over 10,000 votes, Stabenow said, but she won reelection by 268,000.
"It was very interesting in the city of Detroit," said Stabenow. "He won 6 percent of the voters in Detroit. My opponent won a little less than 5 percent, even though he's African-American. But he embraced Trump ... and he was widely rejected for standing so close to Donald Trump. So we're still a very divided state, like every other state, no question about it. But there was a wide rejection of the divisiveness, the racism."
She added that she thinks her state turned back to blue for a few reasons, including much higher turnout.
"They gave very strong messages they're sick of the divisiveness and the fear mongering and so on and they want us to get things done," the senator said. "They also very much reject the way this president is constantly dividing people. So they want to get things done."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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