Candidates make last push with 5 days until Election Day

And thanks for joining us on another busy night of all things people, power, and politics. This, my friends, is The Pulse. I'm Rup Raj. Our crew is getting Studio C next door ready for Good Day Detroit's Halloween extravaganza tomorrow. They do an incredible job decorating that set. So yeah, they're working around the clock to make that happen. So we're coming to you from Studio A, where we do our news tonight instead. Nonetheless, regardless of where we're coming from, there's a lot to talk about and no time to waste, so let's roll. Our midterm countdown rolls on tonight, just five days to go until Election Day. Former State Representative Mari Mnookin, who's now the Executive Director of the Next 50, and Chris Moyer, the Senior Director of Public Affairs with Trust Scott Rossman. They're diving into the big headlines, the big stories, and the big initiatives all the candidates should be talking about now. And we're diving into a pretty heavy topic in our third block. There are calls for change at the state legislature given the lack of laws preventing the grooming of children. Attorney Neil Brand with what needs to be done after a very disturbing allegation that came out in the last few weeks. But we begin tonight once again with the race for Senate. We've told you how some big names are stumping for both of these candidates, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and that's continued over the last few days. El-Sayed campaigning in Jackson with the senator he's trying to join in representing our state, Alyssa Slotkin, while Rogers campaigned yesterday with Texas Senator Ted Cruz at a Republican-Jewish coalition event in Oakland County. Slotkin had a message of unity. While both Rogers and Cruz made accusations of anti-Semitism against El-Sayed. Things we disagree on are one thing. The things we agree on are so much bigger than those differences. And that to me right now is the defining thing among the Democratic Party. Are you on team fight or are you on team flight? Tucker Carlson has formally endorsed Abdul El-Sayed. That shows the dissent you see. Seems hurtful. You start down this road and the reason is existential is I don't want to wake up in five years and find both parties absolutely anti-Israel and unapologetically anti-Semitic. And so if we don't kill it, it will take over both parties and we cannot let that happen. And we need to tell you how big of a deal next Tuesday is for clerks' offices and the Secretary of State's office. Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey is saying all of their voting systems have gone through testing as required by law. They also have 4,000 trained election workers, 400 precincts, and more than enough drop boxes to go around. Bottom line, Winfrey says they're ready. And she addressed those election monitors the DOJ from the feds is sending here. Not only here, but to six other Michigan cities. Take a listen. We anticipate the U.S. Department of Justice monitors to be present on Election Day as they were in the primary. The Department of Justice will provide the number of monitors that they'll be sending out on Friday. So we're prepared, Detroit. We're ready. And we want you to know that we administer secure, accessible... And accurate elections, and we need you to participate. Please note, on election day, there are free bus rides to all of the voting precincts. And if you still need to vote, go to fox2detroit.com slash elections or scan the QR code on the bottom right of your screen if you haven't done the early voting like so many people have. That page has not only all of our coverage leading up to election day, but also information on everything from the big races to the ballot proposals you'll be deciding on. Fox 2 is your home for all things politics. We want to make sure you're informed before you vote. To the war in Iran now, where Iran says three oil tankers hit mines and caught fire on the Strait of Hormuz over the past day. The report didn't give details about the tankers or if anybody was hurt or killed, and the AP couldn't independently verify it. But it does come amid concerns that the U.S. could restart strikes in the Strait after Tuesday's election. All this as people around the world deal with higher fuel prices. And did you hear about this? A cruise ship suspends a three-year worldwide cruise because of the high gas prices. It's actually docked right now at a Cambodian port, and the passengers and crew, well, they're stranded. The company says it's working to find temporary arrangements for all of them. The passengers are obviously pretty frustrated. And taking a look at the latest averages, according to GasBuddy.com, it doesn't look great. Look, in the United States, the average is $4.20 a gallon. That's actually better than what we're dealing with in Michigan, $4.61. And here in Metro Detroit, it's down $0.05 from the last day. $4.75 a gallon. Still, it hurts to fill up every single time. That's just scratching the surface, so let's pick up the pace and run through some of the other big stories we're on top of right now. The Justice Department issues subpoenas to California officials as part of its investigation into alleged non-citizens voting. This covers employees in Los Angeles County, and they're ordered to appear in court the day after the election. It also requests records or documents related to the letter sent by the DOJ, which laid out allegations of non-citizens on those voter rolls. All U.S. attorneys in California are talking about the subpoenas. A special master has been appointed to evaluate the administration's claims. Meantime, a federal judge orders the Trump administration to identify all states it's pressured officials to go along with efforts to prevent non-citizens from voting. Democrats are challenging those efforts as an illegal power grab. Party leaders asked the judge to block the Trump administration from trying to undermine state election procedures, as well as an order banning the administration from removing legally registered voters from those rolls and stopping states from counting ballots there. The judge says he plans to rule on Monday. Statistics show cases of non-citizens voting, it does happen, but it is exceedingly rare. Saying in court where CNN, MSNOW, and Politico ramped up their lawsuits against the Trump administration, they say the administration is disobeying a judge's order by refusing to let them cover President Trump in the Oval Office or on Air Force One. The president banned the outlets from the White House in September, saying he objected to the reporting. A judge ordered them allowed back in the White House, saying that ban violated their First Amendment rights. The three outlets are now pushing the judge to make his prior orders permanent. We are continuing our countdown to the midterms after the break. Former Democratic State Representative Mari Mnookian and public affairs expert Chris Moyer talking about the race to the finish. Five days to go. You're watching The Pulse on Fox 2. Content of the set. Back now on The Pulse, looking at all things people, power, and politics. Here to dive into the midterms, former Democratic State Representative Mari Mnookian, who's now the executive director of The Next 50, and Chris Moyer, the senior director of public affairs with Truscott Rossman. It's good to see you both. Thanks for joining us here tonight. Thank you. Great to be here. Let's talk about this. We have five days to go, and I don't watch a lot of network TV, but... Even if you try to ignore it, you look up at the big TVs in the newsroom and everyone's talking about Michigan. Mari, where is this race headed and what is... Would you say the most critical thing for both parties to be talking about and thinking about right now? Yeah, I think Democrats are going to have a great night on Tuesday, not just in Michigan, but across the country. We're seeing Jocelyn Benson's campaign close incredibly strong. Of course, same thing with Abdul El-Sayed having former President Obama here last weekend, really energizing voters in the city of Detroit. And today, I saw that early voting in the city was the highest it's ever been reported. So this is very exciting. When you talk about early voting, obviously people have made up their decisions, they're going out. But the numbers that we're seeing are incredible. You talk about this, but when you look at 2024, Chris, and you say, whoa, I mean, we had larger numbers this time around this past weekend than we did in 2024 when Kamala Harris was on the ballot. What is this saying? What is the message to everyone who's running in all of these really important races right now? If you look at Wayne County, you look at Washtenaw County, you look at Oakland County. Wayne County, in particular, is running ahead and the city of Detroit is running ahead of where they were two years ago. That shows a lot of enthusiasm is on the Democratic side. At the same time, an unenthusiastic vote counts just as much as an enthusiastic one. Republicans do tend to show up a little bit more on election day to vote. So this is a good sign for the Benson campaign. This is a good sign for the al-Sayed campaign. But it is not over. We have five days to go. And I think that that's really critically important. Obviously, when you have that kind of energy around early voting, it's exciting for those who of course want to assume that office. But you're right, Republicans are usually the ones who show up day of. And when I went to that Trump rally the other day and had a chance to interview the president, I was there for probably an hour before our interview. The groundswell of support in small town America is Something that you cannot just put away. I mean, this is something that's really happening, and it's happening in big numbers. The Democrats have to realize that the fight is real. Yeah, absolutely, but what I would like to point out is that the al-Sayed campaign in particular has gone everywhere across the entire state of Michigan. It's how he won that primary by such a small margin. He made sure to run up numbers in places like Kent County and in the Upper Peninsula. Those are places that have traditionally been Republican strongholds, but we're seeing the al-Sayed campaign having done a lot of work to have inroads there very early on, building trust with voters very early, and now I think they're hoping to see that pay off in a big way on Tuesday. You know, you rewind and you go to your. A few years back, and I remember covering Alyssa Slotkin and Mike Rogers in that race. And I went back and looked at some video of interviews I did with both candidates. The issues we were talking about, similar but extremely different. The geopolitical weight was not there. Now you have this incredible geopolitical weight in which you have Arab Americans and Jewish Americans and Christians and Hindus and all these groups coming together and Muslims saying, wait a minute, who am I gonna vote for based on? Sorry, but it's true on some of the identity politics. How much of a factor does that play, Chris? There's no doubt that identity politics is playing a factor in at least the narrative and the conversation that is happening over the airwaves and certainly on all of the commercials that we get to watch. One of the things that was really interesting when you look at some of the crosstabs of two of the most recent polls, the Glenn Gareff poll earlier this week, the Mitchell poll that came out just yesterday. Abdul Al-Sayed for all of the talk about Democrats for Mike Rogers, Abdul Al-Sayed has done a better job consolidating support according to those polls and those crosstabs, 94% of Democrats say they are firmly behind Abdul Al-Sayed compared to the 90% For Mike Rogers of those Republicans. To me, that goes back to the thesis that we've talked about many times on this program. That midterm elections, this is about can you get your base out? And right now, the Democrats are certainly getting their base out. President Trump coming last week, that was a signal to his supporters, let's get out there and try to catch up. Laurie, I want to talk to you a little bit about polls because Kind of like doing this audit on some of the interviews I did, I also was looking at some polling. In the last 10 years, polling seems to indicate perhaps a direction in a moment, but the moments are changing so quickly. And because of social media, because of how quickly people change their minds, do you believe that polls still hold an important place in our conversation? They hold an important place in our conversation, but as executive director now of the next 50, I have the privilege of working with candidates up and down the ballot. Private polling and internal polling is very important when it comes to making some big financial decisions about where to spend resources, money, candidate time. And the way that we need to make sure that our polling is accurate is something that's gonna impact campaigns on both sides of the aisle. So I do agree with you, it is definitely a snapshot in time, and it's something that our campaigns are taking into consideration, whether it's campaigns in Michigan that we're supporting or Ohio or anywhere else. But we do recognize that a lot of folks who are responding to these polls are getting I'm getting them via text message. Sometimes they're open survey monkey links that are just open-ended that you can vote in multiple times. So understanding the veracity of these polls and whether they are to be trusted so you can understand the methodology of it is just as important as understanding the results. I wanna talk a little bit about a mood and tone and tenor of these candidates when they talk about what people care about, cuz I think that's an interesting thing. You'll hear candidates saying people don't care about that, they care about this. And pick your candidate, Republican or Democrat. The mistake that was made, arguably, by Democrats in 2024 was there is nothing to see. There's no border issue. No, there's no economy issue. People feel great about the economy. Do you fear, perhaps, or should Republicans fear, I should ask the question more accurately, that they're making the same mistake as Kamala Harris by saying people will get over gas prices? The president told me the other day, you know what, if you're a good American, you'll be fine with the higher gas prices. Does that work? Maybe in World War II that worked when we were fighting Nazis, but right now, this was a choice to go to war earlier this spring. And voters here in Michigan and across the country are responding to that, and when they see gas prices at this level right now, they know that this did not have to happen this way. I think the Mike Rogers campaign has done as an exemplary job as they can to paint him As the everyday Michigander, A guy who is your neighbor, but at the same time, he's too associated right now with Donald Trump and Donald Trump's policies. And that has left a big opening for Abdul El-Sayed to come in and talk about those pocketbook issues, the issues that people feel every time they have to fill up their gas tank. But Mari, Mike Rogers has also made it clear in the last four weeks that he breaks from President Trump when it comes to the trade war in Canada. He also breaks from President Trump when it comes to the Iran war. Um, People do change their opinions. They change their views. Abdul has changed his views on a few things as well. Should people believe these candidates when they tell us they've changed their minds? I'll tell you this. I don't believe Mike Rogers for a second. The way that he stood side by side with President Trump when President Trump was spewing hateful bile about Abdul El-Sayed and his background and gripping and grinning with him and smiling ear to ear after he said all of those things about Abdul and his background, which was just despicable. I'll have to say this. It is pretty clear to me that the Rogers campaign understands exactly what was just discussed here. Chris made an excellent point about this, that voters can see through this idea that they should stand by their vote in 2024 if they voted for Trump and vote again for Republicans and trust that they can handle the economy. For the first time in a very long time, Democrats are the most trusted party, even though their brand is in the tank. We are the most trusted party when it comes to the economy. And prices, and bringing down costs. The power of condemnation is something that perhaps is a tool in a tool chest that these candidates across the country are not quite adept at using. To be able to say, for Abdullah Al Sayed, when he said hurt people hurt, right? When he said that after the terrible thing that happened right down the road from here where we had kids in that. Daycare was was not okay. He then apologized later for it, saying that he shouldn't have said that. President Trump calling Abdul a jihadist. And then when Mike Rogers is asked about it, not condemning it overtly. These are are these moments that people and voters keep track of Chris? They do keep track of them and character really does matter. I think that we are ultimately going to see a return to to some of those. Character first issues, there will be a reaction to some of the things that President Trump has let us down over the past. 12 years in his three different campaigns. I agree with Mari that Mike Rogers probably shouldn't have gripped and grinned so enthusiastically with President Trump when talking about Abdul El-Sayed. That's not the right thing to do. Abdul El-Sayed is a smart American, grew up not too far from where Mari and I grew up. And he's a good guy, just like Mike Rogers is. Are you Rochester folks? We're both Birmingham. Birmingham? We're mates. I'm a Troy guy. All right. Okay, we got it. Just on the road. Just on the road. We played football against each other. We like each other. That's right. That's right. It's good to see both of you here today. Mari, thank you. Chris, thank you for your time as well. Thank you. We're switching gears after the break. There are calls right now to actually change something in our state law. Advocates are saying there's simply not enough on the books to really help stop pedophiles from grooming children. Attorney Neil Brand with what needs to be done. You're watching The Pulse on Fox 2. It is people, power, and politics. Welcome back to Detroit's only nightly political talk show, The Pulse. Here with the legal changes he says need to happen to protect children in Michigan, Attorney Neil Brand. We're talking about a case out in Grosse Ile where they had a coach that had some serious allegations against him after he apparently texted a young person excessively friendly, kind, compliments, notes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of blow back on that. People said, wait a minute here, you can't do that with a 13, 14-year-old kid. And then it brought into the question something that this show is all about, which is policy. In the state of Michigan, we are not one of the 20 states that has laws against grooming. First of all, what is, by definition of the law, grooming? Grooming, well, we don't have that law in Michigan, but by other states like Texas, grooming is finding a child, saying things to the child to get you to trust them more and more, like telling the child, you're so beautiful, asking questions about the child, having secrets with them, and having inside jokes, doing things to sort of alienate them from their parents, The groomer, sometimes the coach, sometimes the teacher, they become the person that the child looks up to for praise, sometimes even discipline. So you isolate the child from their parents. Okay, so in this case that we had right here at closer to home downriver, you had a case in which basically the prosecutor said there's really nothing legally we can do to press charges against this person for this, well, some parents and many parents, most parents would say was inappropriate text messaging with the kid. And that really kind of struck me. As odd and scary, because as someone who has nieces and nephews, and I think about kids who are just innocent, how can this be okay? Why are we not one of 20 states? Why aren't we one of the states that actually says, look, we gotta do something to legislate against this? It's very hard to do this. First of all, to make a law, anytime you're curtailing speech, the law has to be very narrow. And it has to be able- To be understood by people committing the crime or else it's gonna get thrown out for maybe a First Amendment violation or a 14th Amendment violation like in Minnesota. I think the law was under C1A and it got thrown out because it was considered to be vague and not easily understood or not the most restrictive possible for the First Amendment. So we have to make the law perfect. You have to understand that any law that's made involving speech, the ACLU is gonna look at and then you got people on both sides of the aisle. Arguing over what the law has to say. It's not easy to pass a law like this. But if there's a kid out there and they're physically touched on the arm or on the shoulder or always given affection by someone who's in a coaching position or a teaching position, they could then easily say, this person physically hit me on the shoulder, rubbed my head, my back, whatever. And that would amount to something. But in this case, it's because it's text messages. Is that why there's a difference? Yeah, that's a great point. Those laws go back hundreds of years. Before even this country was formed, they go back to the common law of Europe. But we formed these laws before people started considering how iPhones and tablets were going to work. We just didn't have the legislation because nobody had thought about it. We didn't contemplate that people are gonna have these devices that for 24 hours a day, they could reach anybody from anywhere and in these cases, sometimes outside the supervision It's a vision of their parents. So we take a look at that other side of the equation that you're talking about, where perhaps people who are there to protect the rights of folks who are saying, look, they were just exercising their free speech. Even though we don't have an anti-grooming law here, a grooming law in Michigan, there is a line that an adult should know not to cross when they're texting a young person that could get them in trouble here, even without the law, right? Right, start with this. You're not friends with the young person you're coaching. Your job is to develop them and make them better at the sport or discipline in which you're an expert in coaching. You're not there to find out what they do in school, what they do in their home, telling them they look good in certain clothing. And this coach... I believe, told the child, I wish I was younger, as if to have a relationship with them. So the research I did and the people I called for this show tonight, you find out the outrage in the community, and the outrage is great for two reasons. One, it's justified, and two, it doesn't matter what side of the political aisle you're on. Everybody's outraged, and this time of year with everybody taking a side on the election, this is an area that we all agree, this coach was at best or worst creepy. What he did was completely inappropriate and you have organizations like SafeSport that removed him from coaching, which is great. We took care of the problem the best we can take care of the problem, removed him from being able to groom children. But the person is still in an administrative role within an organization in which kids are present. That being said, if you have a serious issue with this as most people would, contact your local lawmakers, talk to your Michigan legislators and say, can we do something? Because there are 20 other states that do something to make sure that this doesn't happen. And look, it's something that obviously we all have to be on top of, and we certainly will on this show. Neil Brand, attorney, great to see you. Thanks for joining us here tonight. It's great to see you, Ruth. Thank you very much. That is the Pulse for tonight. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Ruth Braj. It was good to be with you.