(Source: MIRS.news, Published 01/02/2025) A part of the vision of Curtis Hertel Jr., who's running for Michigan Democratic Party (MDP) chair, is to make sure the staff running a Michigan campaign are from the state as well.

Hertel appeared on this week's episode of the MIRS Monday Podcast, detailing his proposals for the party.

The outgoing MDP chair, Lavora Barnes, was the first Black person elected to the post in February 2019. Barnes announced she would be leaving the role less than two weeks after the November elections. Currently, the three major candidates to become Barnes' replacement are Hertel, MDP Rural Caucus Chair Mark Ludwig and Al Williams, the Detroit-based founder of the African American Leadership Institute.

The MDP's state convention will take place in February in Detroit, where the next chair will be voted on. In order to become a credentialed voter, a resident must be an MDP member for at least 30 days prior to Feb. 22 – or by Jan. 23.

Hertel was an East Lansing-based state senator from 2015 through 2022 and a major strategist behind the Michigan Senate Democratic Fund.

During the 2024 elections, Hertel lost his own race against U.S. Rep-elect Tom BARRETT in Michigan's 7th Congressional district, covering the greater Lansing area and Livingston County. Democrats also lost their majority in the state House, with Republicans beginning the year with a 58-52 seat dominance.

Now, Democrats are looking to reorganize after President-elect Donald Trump won the state by 82,374 votes. In 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took the state by 469,870 votes, and outgoing President Joe BIDEN won by 154,188 votes in 2020.

"What I can tell you is that it's really hard for someone to relate to a national Democrat. It's much easier to relate to somebody in your own community who's making those arguments," Hertel said, adding that the party needs to be "making sure that we're training and recruiting the people that run our campaigns from Michigan…every year, we bring people in from out of state."

He said out-of-state personnel don't have the intimate knowledge of the communities they're trying to get the vote out within.

"We want to hire and train people from these communities to go out and make those arguments," Hertel said.

When asked if he shares the observation that Democrats over-capitalized on abortion in 2024, Hertel – who spoke during his own abortion-focused events last year – said it's true.

"We still have to be the party that stands up for abortion rights and the idea that a woman has a right to her own body, and that's never going to be a position the Democratic Party should walk away from," he said. "But it can't be the entire conversation."

Hertel said two weeks before election day, he told his Congressional campaign team that if abortion "was the only issue that was being driven home in our race and (Vice President Kamala Harris') race and other races…if that didn't work, then the results would bear that out."

"I think it does mean we have to get back to an economic message," he said.

According to a Nov. 9 Financial Times report, support for Trump among voters earning less than $50,000 annually grew by 3 percent since 2020 and by 5 percent for those making $50,000 to $99,999.

The same report found that Democrats lost 1.1 million voters from large central metro counties between 2020 and last year.

Hertel thinks Michigan Democrats "have a good story to tell" to attract voters earning less than $50,000 per year, like looking at the Democratic-led 2023-24 Legislature and its investments in providing free school meals, housing and expanded tax credits for working low-income households. Additionally, retirees' pension deductions and 401K withdrawals will be 75 percent shielded from the income tax in the 2025 tax year and 100 percent exempted during the 2026 tax year.

"Unfortunately, the campaign became a lot about President Trump and what we are opposed to, and I don't think that works. I think we need to be having conversations about what people are experiencing (in) their daily lives," Hertel said. "We have to return back to the soul of what our party is, which is a party of working people."