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Gary Peters

Senator Gary Peters isn't the only one appearing to be enjoying the benefit of President Trump's declining popularity in Michigan. The Democratic surge of 2018 in Oakland County appears to exhibit no signs of abating, with Republicans having a difficult time coming up with quality candidates – or any candidates in some races – to take on some of the newly-elected state lawmakers. GOP kingmakers privately acknowledge that it is going to be difficult for any Republican to win in Oakland next year, and sacrificial lambs are running to pasture. Take, for example, the 41st District, encompassing Troy and Clawson, which Democrat Padma Kuppa won last year. Kuppa, who came to the United States at the age of four and grew up out East before returning to India as a teenager, is a mechanical engineer who returned to the U.S. for graduate school and a successful career. Republicans have told Oakland Confidential that so far, they cannot get anyone – at all – to run against the first Indian immigrant and Hindu in the state legislature, who is a board member of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity. With only a few House seats still held by the GOP in Oakland – including that of term-limited Kathy Crawford in Novi – will Oakland help flip the House?