Biden to Speak in Michigan, With State’s Major Democrats Absent

President Biden is set to cap a tumultuous week by attacking his rival in a key battleground state. But the state’s governor and other high-profile Democrats were scheduled to be elsewhere.

President Biden arrived in Detroit for a campaign event.Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

July 12, 2024, 6:35 p.m. ET

Chris Cameron, Nicholas Nehamas and Shane Goldmacher

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President Biden was met by House Democrats, state lawmakers, union leaders and the award-winning actress Octavia Spencer when he arrived in Detroit on Friday. But the state’s highest profile Democrats were not at his side.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and two Democratic senators, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, as well as Representative Elissa Slotkin, the leading Democratic candidate to fill the seat of Ms. Stabenow, who is retiring, have all been supportive of the president.

They were also all otherwise occupied.

His visit to the battleground state comes on the heels of some major Democratic donors telling the largest pro-Biden super PAC, Future Forward, that they were freezing roughly $90 million in pledged donations as long as President Biden is atop the ticket, according to two people briefed on the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.