This is my district. So happy Hillary Scholten won, truly an amazing human being with a servant's disposition.
But the ads that Dems paid for in the primaries weren't promoting Gibbs, they were cleverly designed to appeal to Republicans, but make him less electable to other voters. They tied him directly to Trump and he couldn't wash that stink off him in the general election. But Republicans love Trump, so it helped him win the primary. Gibbs didn't mention Trump in a single ad he ran, but before he was even campaigning against Hillary, the entire area knew he was Trump's hand picked stooge.
It was a brilliant strategy. And this district was redrawn and went from R+9 in a jerrymandered to heck district to a D+3 one. So this wasn't all that risky of a strategy in this instance. Scholten won by 13 points, it wasn't close. And Peter Meijer was Gibbs's opponent in the primary, he was the incumbent who had voted to impeach Trump. Meijer is a moderate and from a very well respected family here, even in a D+3 district, he was going to be hard to beat. This was an obvious choice for Dems, run against a popular incumbent or run against a Trump tied to extremist.
Whitmer was winning reelection no matter who she faced. But Dixon was also a great opponent. Her extremism and quotes verifying her extremism made incredibly effective ads. Kevin Rinke would have done much better vs Whitmer than Dixon did, still would have lost though.
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