Republicans reclaimed the state house despite being outspent two to one.

Heading into the 2024 election cycle, Republicans in Michigan knew they had to put an end to the Democrats’ progressive governing trifecta that was wreaking havoc on the state.

In 2022, with a radical abortion amendment on the ballot that helped juice turnout for Democrats, Republicans received a shellacking as their opponents flipped both the state house and the state senate.

In the last two years of Democrat-led governance in the Great Lake State, lawmakers have repealed the state’s right-to-work law and offered controversial state tax incentives to Chinese-owned Gotion Inc. to open a battery-parts plant in the state. For the first time in over a decade, Democrats chose not to increase the per-pupil allotment for school funding, essentially slashing school funding by $280 per student as the budget fails to keep pace with inflation.

They also slashed school funding specifically earmarked for school safety and mental health by $302 million, or 92 percent.

Now, after successfully retaking control of the 110-seat state house, Republicans will be able to serve as a roadblock to the party’s worst governing instincts. But that win didn’t come easily; Republicans had been the underdogs going into Election Day.

With the governorship and the state senate not on the ballot this year, the GOP trained its focus on retaking the state house. But the Michigan Republican Party was in disarray and GOP leaders knew they had a challenge to overcome: they had to play perfect defense and flip two house seats — all while being outspent two to one by Democrats. Spending on behalf of Democrats in the state house topped a historic $50 million this cycle.

“Absent a state party, absent outside efforts in support of the Michigan House Republican Campaign Committee, it was pretty clear that they were going to have a very hard time getting the job done,” Michigan businessman and philanthropist Dick DeVos told NR. “I was hopeful that someone else and some other organizations would step up and provide that kind of additional support necessary — and it turned out it was me.”

DeVos organized an informal advisory panel with seven members from around the state, including former governors John Engler and Rick Snyder, and other leaders from the private sector to help raise money and organize a structure to maximize resources.

The Michigan Freedom Fund also contributed to outside efforts to flip the house. The fund’s executive director Sarah Anderson recalls undertaking a lengthy post-mortem in the wake of 2022 to identify what Republicans would need to do better going forward. Aside from the difficult post-Roe political environment, Anderson found Republicans had also struggled because of “not-great candidates” and a “lack of cohesion of messaging.”

So the 2024 efforts started first and foremost with great candidates, insiders say. In Macomb County’s 58th house district, Utica City councilman Ron Robinson bested three-term incumbent Democratic state Representative Nate Shannon. Over in Marquette’s 109th house district, former weatherman Karl Bohnak unseated incumbent state representative Jenn Hill — winning a district that had not been represented by a Republican in more than 70 years.

Republican Steve Frisbie, who has served as the Calhoun County commissioner for 14 years, ousted three-term incumbent state representative Jim Haadsma in a particularly tight race for the county’s 44th house district.

Republican Rylee Linting, a 22-year-old who previously served as the Michigan Republican Party’s youth vice chair and a representative for Turning Point Action, defeated Democratic state representative Jaime Churches in Wayne County’s 27th house district.

After finding strong candidates, Republicans knew they’d “have to make every dollar that we spent go farther,” said state representative Bill G. Schuette, the chair of the Michigan House Republican Campaign Committee. “And we made sure we did that by not wasting our money on broadcast television like the Democrats did but instead making sure that we were looking at ways to talk as directly to voters as possible and talk about the issues that mattered most to voters.”

House Republicans released their own policy agenda, “Mission for Michigan,” which centered on ten key policy priorities: making Michigan more affordable; preparing kids for the future; demanding accountable and effective government; building safer and stronger communities; unleashing affordable and reliable clean energy; attracting high-paying careers for the future; strengthening and empowering communities; prioritizing mental-health, addiction, and health-care access; growing the economy; and securing Michigan’s future for all generations.

“I think most people were really tired of being told that things were okay when they knew that they weren’t,” Anderson said.

In performing their 2022 post-mortems, DeVos said Republican leaders found candidates had at times homed in on issues that voters didn’t care much about — topics that veered too far into “inside baseball.”

And with Michigan being a swing state, it wouldn’t be enough for Republicans to just speak to their base. They’d have to speak to independents and even Democrats too.

“We helped our candidates focus on not only things that they believe, but also making sure that they were doing everything they could to first talk about the things that the voters cared about and then talk about it in the thoughtful, compelling manner that our ideas are actually better than the other team’s ideas,” DeVos said.

The leaders behind the state house efforts found voters’ main concerns centered on opportunity: whether it was economic opportunity or fairness in women’s sports. Education, after the significant funding cuts, was a key issue as well.

And like in other areas of the country, Michigan Republicans took a different approach to early voting. This time around, Republicans were encouraged to vote early either by mail or in-person. Being able to account for early-voting helped Republicans time their use of resources more wisely, as they were no longer trying to target voters who had already cast their ballots.

“We knew we were going to be outspent,” DeVos said. “We couldn’t match them, and so we had to play a different game and that meant targeting our messaging in different ways, utilizing more efficient, more directed voter communications. So we weren’t wasting time talking to people who weren’t going to vote or people who weren’t going to vote for us at all.”

Republicans shifted resources away from broadcast TV, which cast too wide a net for the house races and would waste money on advertising to many viewers who can’t vote for a given candidate.

Republican state house candidates were also boosted by the strength of the turnout for President Trump, and even by the impressive ground game run by Mike Rogers, who ultimately lost his bid for the U.S. Senate.

“Shoe leather still matters,” Engler said, particularly in state house districts where each district represents just under 1 percent of the state. “These candidates got out and knocked on doors. They talked to people and made their case and I think the advertising was quite targeted.”

Republicans also understood their limitations and didn’t shoot for the moon; they didn’t overstretch their resources looking to win a huge number of seats but instead focused on the most winnable races, he said.

Now, Schuette says, it’s time for Republicans to govern and to make sure they’re functioning as a check and balance on Democrats.

Even now, in a lame duck session, the more progressive state lawmakers are looking to push through a proposal that would allow driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and another measure that would overhaul sex education requirements in the state by requiring that schools include instruction on consent and contraception and also by allowing schools to distribute condoms and reference abortion. And the caucus has already passed a ban on firearms in polling places and bills aiming to expand hate crime laws and access to birth control.

“It’s good that you’re not going to see this race to the left continuing,” he said. “Divided government is certainly going to present challenges and it’s going to be incumbent on all of us to make sure that we’re willing to have conversations and stand up for the reason voters sent us to Lansing.”

Of course, conversations around 2026, when every statewide office will be up for grabs, have already begun.

“There’s going to be a lot of competition going forward. And I think there are some lessons that have been learned that can be very helpful in ‘26,” Engler said, though Republicans — both statewide and nationally — will need to put their heads together to figure out how to overcome the massive financial disadvantage they’ve been experiencing against Democrats.