i thank you for that. i will do everything in my power to be the principled leader you deserve, whatever the results of the election tonight. so thank you for your time, for your energy. get some sleep. try to process through. don't just scroll and scroll and scroll like we're going to know tomorrow on a whole bunch of things. but for now i cannot tell you how much i appreciate you. it has been the greatest honor of my life to be the nominee for u.s. senate in the state of michigan. the state i love. and i cannot tell you how positively i feel no matter what happens about the future of our country. because i've seen people step up, i've seen people operate, i've seen them take a hold and just do something with that energy. so thank you. thank you. to be continued and i appreciate every one of you. thanks so much. thanks everybody. [applause]

♪\ [cheers] >> love it. love it. i more entertaining if the bar is open. i hope the bar is open. don't pay attention to the polls you see on tv. there are no trends that we can find in those numbers. this is going to be a very long night. thank you. first of all, let me thank christie.

i couldn't have done this without christie and actually my family who i see them there. they are all, they are out there. we were all celebrating that 80th birthday. they don't, probably didn't realize how important that event was to getting us in the race up in escanaba. i know aunt barb there. she is. hey, aunt barb, she was going to become the unofficial mascot of the campaign for a while. we appreciated that. you know, when you think about all of the time that we've spent at this and all of the people that said michigan could not be one. i mean, i can't tell you how many times we heard that i couldn't tell you how many times people said it just isn't competitive enough to be interested in helping out in a state like michigan. but what we said is, you know, what, why we think that's wrong is because we've talked to so many people and my wife have talked to so many people around this state and they express the hurt and the pain that we are all going through from the last four years of economic hardship, of the fundamental change of our automobile industry.

2400 layoffs at stellantis, 1000 at general motors and a recent 700 layoffs at ford. and we thought, boy, you know, there is a better way to do this because i believe in every fiber of my being with every michigan citizen, that ingenuity, that grit, that spirit that makes us who we are, we knew that if we engage that we could be competitive in this state. and because of you, all of you, we became the most competitive u.s. senate seat in the country within the last few weeks. [cheers] and so, my wife, we've been joking along the campaign trail. i say my wife and i decided about, i don't know, maybe two months ago that we would split our time. oh, come on. that's funny. lighten up. [laughter] she didn't think it was funny either, by the way. she said don't tell that joke.

, so she was going to the west side, i was going to the east side and then we would cross again and we just started doubling our numbers and doubling our conversations and getting people excited about this race. and something really phenomenal happened about, i don't know, i'm gonna -- maybe eight weeks ago now. and it really started with one big endorsement, by the way. we were able to get the endorsement of michigan's farmers. the farm bureau endorsement. [cheers] they hadn't endorsed a republican in this seat since 2006. and they decided that this was the time, because we sat down and talked to farmers and we worked through their issues and decided that the regulatory burden that was coming out of washington, d.c. was a bit too much. and this was the first time in our history, we had to import more food than we exported. and as i like to say about farmers, trust me in politics, they know where bs belongs. it's on the field, right? and when they did that, people sat up and took notice.

45,000 family farmers, a million agri workers across the state took up and took notice and we could fundamentally start seeing the switch like, hey, maybe something's going on here. maybe people are more engaged than they have been in the past. maybe people are saying this is not a state to get up on. this is a state to work for. yeah, you bet. and then we created the best and i'm not just saying this, the best ground game in the country. just think of that. last week alone up to the , election, 88,000 doors. we've touched over 3.5 million voters through voter contact. we haven't done that in years in a statewide race and we did that, not with all the money in the world. we've been outspent, i don't know, 6 to 1. i think what we did it through people power because people believed in something bigger

than themselves. they believed if they hit one more door or dropped one more hangar or had one more conversation, we could be in this race. we could be here to make a difference for our state and our country and, man, did we do it. so the last few polls have been tied. like i said, don't pay attention to the precincts in and the precincts out. that thing's going to bounce around all night long. the most important number is at the end of the night and i do believe this is going to be a nailbiter. as my folks are telling me, we are likely not even to know the results tonight of this race. now, that's not great news, but here's what's the good news is . that means you have made this race competitive. [cheers] so for all of those people that we've had the good fortune to talk to, the police officers who believed that they have been mistreated over the years, for the farmers who are under siege

right now in their ability to put food on our table, for the auto workers who are terrified about their future, for the teamsters who have talked to me yesterday who said our number of car hauls is going down and we can see it, which means layoffs are coming for them too. for the teachers who are saying man, we need some help. [cheers] there they are. for the men and women of the united states military who are saying, man, please just give us a service worthy of our service. think of that. all of those people -- and we have talked to all of them who are ready to do something different for this state. that's why this race was important to us. why it was important to my wife christy, why it was important to so many of you who got in the rain in the cold some days. those saturday mornings when everyone else was doing something fun, you were going to a door and knocking on a door or

putting up a sign. that's what this campaign was always about. christie said it best. it wasn't about me, it wasn't about us. it was really about all of us and what we want for our future, what we can do for the future of our kids. and do we want a hand in america that represents prosperity and freedom and all the things that we know and love, or is it a country where the government tells you what kind of stove you can have and water heater and what kind of car you can drive? that's where we're at and that's going to be the difference in this campaign. and so tonight, i mean, all the work is over. all of the doors had been knocked, the literature hung, the phone calls made way. my wife was watching tv the other night. she said, i don't know who that guy is, but i sure wouldn't marry him. she was talking about me, by the way, and those ads. certainly wasn't pleasant going

through it. but what we know is that guy that we met the other night who told us that, you know, i came here 10 years ago as a legal immigrant and i told the guy i would be his best and hardest worker if he would take a chance on me. and he got that job. he was a bellman and a valet. and he said, you know, what's crazy is i couldn't get this job in my country -- home country without paying somebody for it. and then they would charge me to have this job every month. he said, this is an amazing country. i gave it to god. i'm doing this by my own hard work. and he said, i just saved up after 10 years enough money, my wife and i are going to put a down payment on our own house. think of that. that's the difference between america and everywhere else. but it's also the difference between conservatives and republicans and what the left is presenting for a future of

america. this is our chance to stand up for those people who won't be engaged in politics. this is our chance to stand up for those people who are throwing their hands up and saying, man, life is just too hard. so for all of those, help me do this tonight. let's do this. let's keep our spirits high. it's going to be up, it's going to be down. hopefully, if this really goes well, we'll be here at midnight going, hey, we won. this will be great. but for all of those people who can't get involved or couldn't have the time for the mother who is spending the last two or three days at the food pantry this month because of the high inflation that came out of washington, d.c. for her, for the military, for the police, this is our chance to stand tall and say, come november, come november, we're going to have your back. thank you very, very much for all of you for what you've done.