Vote in Michigan Senate upset broke along racial lines
A little-known Detroit woman who beat out the chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus in a stunning primary upset Tuesday has black Detroiters to thank for her win.
Betty Jean Alexander baffled state Democrats when she won the party primary for Michigan’s 5th Senate District over incumbent Sen. David Knezek by a 54-45 margin. Alexander, they pointed out, was not so much a candidate, as she was merely a name on a ballot. She's said to have raised no money for her campaign, sent out no mailers, and distributed no yard signs. She barely even has a social media presence.
In their state of shock, some Democrats appeared to place blame on Wayne County’s elections office for the outcome — pointing to unrelated problems with the county’s vote tallying website. Others, more aptly, attributed the unlikely outcome to race.
A look at the vote tallies in each of the cities that make up the district shows Alexander, who is black, greatly outperformed Knezek, who is white, in the district's two majority black cities. She won by a 2-1 margin in Detroit, where she received about 10,700 votes to Knezek's 5,500. In Inkster, she got 1,800 votes to his 1,200. Detroit is about 80 percent black; Inkster is more than 70 percent black.
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