US President Joe Biden on Tuesday emphasised that Vice President Kamala Harris would “cut her own path” if she wins the 2024 election, signalling a shift in focus with three weeks to go until election day.

Speaking at the Sheet Metal Workers International Association in Philadelphia, Biden highlighted Harris’s potential to bring fresh perspectives to the country’s challenges, contrasting her approach with that of former President Donald Trump, whose views Biden labelled as “old, failed, and thoroughly dishonest”.

Biden’s remarks suggest Harris will have more freedom to establish her own political identity in the final weeks of the campaign.

Harris, who has faced increasing pressure to clarify how her policies would differ from Biden’s, has maintained loyalty to the president while focusing on her vision for change.

Harris has repeatedly said, “I’m not Joe Biden,” but has not been forthcoming with any specific policy distinctions.

Reflecting on his own presidency, Biden noted, “Every president has to cut their own path. That’s what I did, and that’s what Kamala will do.”

He praised Harris’s leadership and expressed confidence in her ability to guide the country forward, assuring the audience that passing the torch to Harris was a decision he made with full confidence in her ability to lead the next generation.

Biden also took the opportunity to attack Trump, criticising his refusal to accept the 2020 election results and his support of the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.

Biden has made few public campaign appearances since stepping back from the 2024 race, which he dropped out of after a poor debate performance saw his party lobbying him hard to give up his candidacy.

Marcie Paul is nervous.

A Democratic activist, Ms Paul has been knocking on hundreds of strangers’ doors, making phone calls and sending out flyers, all in an effort to woo people here to vote for Kamala Harris.

When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate in July, Ms Paul was hopeful, as she saw the vice-president go “off like a rocket” in Michigan.

The state is one of three “blue wall” states – along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that went Democrat in 2020, and if won again, would help clinch a presidential victory for Harris.

But with less than a month to go before election day, Harris’s honeymoon period in Michigan could be ending, leaving her pathway to victory less certain. A Quinnipiac poll last week indicated Donald Trump is leading in the swing state by three points.

“To keep that pace for the whole race – even though it’s seriously abbreviated – would be really unrealistic for anyone,” said Ms Paul, a resident of West Bloomfield, Michigan and co-founder of the liberal advocacy group Fems for Dems. “But I thought that we’d be a little more comfortable.”

Ms Paul is among several Democratic organisers and lawmakers in Michigan who say the presidential race here is tighter than expected, even as the Harris campaign appears to be heeding lessons from 2016. Critics say then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost the state because she took it for granted.

A reliably blue Midwestern state for decades before 2016, Michigan has since become a battleground state with 15 key Electoral College votes.

At this point in the election cycle four years ago, when it was Biden versus Trump, the Democratic candidate had a comfortable lead, and went on to win the state by 150,000 votes. Now it’s a dead heat.

There is “no obvious solution” for Harris to break ahead, said Michigan State University politics professor Matt Grossmann.

The Democrats have poured millions into advertising in the state. Harris’s entrance into the race led to more than 100,000 new volunteers in Michigan, while she has visited Michigan more than any other state besides Pennsylvania, according to her campaign.

Trump has also made at least a dozen stops in Michigan this year, but some campaign operatives have sounded the alarm that his campaign has let old-fashioned ground game tactics, like door-knocking and billboards, slide in several swing states, including Michigan.

But Harris is ramping up her campaign visits this week after at least three Michigan Democratic lawmakers warned of slipping support.

But the tightness of the race in Michigan should not come as a surprise to anyone, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes told the BBC.

“No one operating here on the ground in Michigan should have, or would have, expected this to be any easier than it has been,” she said. “We always knew it was going to be hard.”

Up north, immigration and economy take centre stage

Although the state is far from the southern border, Democratic organisers keep hearing that immigration is a top concern for Michigan voters.

“I don’t understand why,” said Ms Paul, the Fems for Dems leader. “It’s just really not relevant for us.”

But the issue has resonated with many of the voters the BBC spoke to, including Mary Beierschmitt of Novi, Michigan.

“It’s a big issue,” she said, adding that she thought Harris had not handled the situation well as vice-president, when Harris was tasked with finding solutions to tackle the source of migration.

Illegal border crossing reached a record high last year. After the Biden administration enacted asylum restrictions, they fell to their lowest in four years.

Trump has made attacks on Harris’s immigration record a central part of his campaign. His focus has not just been at the southern border, but in midwestern states as well, including Michigan’s neighbour Ohio, where the former president has falsely claimed Haitian immigrants are settling illegally in the town of Springfield and eating residents’ pets.

Voters tend to blame the party in power for their frustrations with national issues like the economy and immigration, even if the Biden administration isn’t solely responsible for the border crisis and the rising cost of living, said Jonathon Hanson, a lecturer at University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.

“The downside for Harris and Biden is, although they’ve done a lot of things to help the economy recover from a major downturn, it’s a more difficult story to tell politically,” he said.

Trump also may have the upper hand among some swing voters in Michigan because he is more well known than Harris after four years in office and years in the public eye, said Mr Hanson.

Tim and Janet of Novi, Michigan, say they know Trump’s personality well – and they don’t like it. But the independent voters already cast their ballots for Trump because they believe he is better at articulating his policies than Harris.

“I can’t vote for somebody just because it’s a feel-good time,” said Tim, a 75-year-old who declined to share his last name for privacy reasons. “They need to be doing things and have policy initiatives that are going to be beneficial.”

But in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Harris’s new economic policies are swaying independent voter Darrell Sumpter.

The vice-president has laid out a number of economic proposals during her campaign, including a plan to offer first-time home buyers an average of $25,000, and an expansion of the child tax credit.

“I’ve never been able to even afford a house. I’ve been waiting for years,” said Mr Sumpter, 52, who voted for Trump in 2020 and is leaning toward Harris this year.

“I don’t want the country to regress right back to the same state it was with Trump,” he added.

Darrell Sumpter is excited by the possibilities of Harris’s economic proposals
© BBC

Making the race local

In 2016, former secretary of state Clinton ran a predominately national campaign in the state rather than a local one, said Mr Grossmann.

“The ads were the same here as elsewhere,” he said. “They were about Trump’s personality and saying negative things, and there was a perception that that really didn’t work.”

She lost the state by only 10,000 votes.

Now, both Harris and Trump are focusing their messages in Michigan on the state’s largest industry, car manufacturers, as they try to appeal to working-class and union voters.

In recent weeks, Trump and his running mate JD Vance have criticised the Biden administration’s support of the electric vehicle industry, saying it will cost Michigan auto workers their jobs.

Harris and vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz have hit back, arguing Trump cost the state manufacturing jobs when he was president.

But on other local issues, vagueness may actually be beneficial for Trump, political experts say.

Michigan, home to the largest Arab-American population in the US, is the birthplace of the Uncommitted movement, a protest campaign to pressure Biden and Harris to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

The movement has declined to endorse Harris, sparking worries that the reliably Democratic voting bloc will not turn out for the party this time.

Meanwhile, Trump has won over some Arab-Americans by saying less, Mr Grossmann said. The former president has been vocal about his support for Israel, but has also promised to end the war, without providing specifics on how he would do so.

“Among this community, to some extent, being vague or unclear has been an advantage,” Mr Grossmann said.

In Hamtramck, a suburb of Detroit where about 60% of the population is Muslim, the city’s first Arab mayor, a Democrat, has endorsed Trump.

“President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles,” Mayor Amer Ghalib told media.

“We asked multiple times that [Biden and Harris] should change course, but nothing happened.”

Sprinting through the finish line

Sharon Baseman and other activists have stopped looking at the polls out of fears they are not accurate
© BBC

Despite concerns about slipping support, several political experts and Democratic strategists say Harris’s campaign is doing nearly all it can to stay on top of the Michigan race.

Still, Alysa Diebolt, the chair of the Democratic Party in Macomb County, which Trump won in 2020, said more could always be done to turn out apathetic voters.

“I think Harris absolutely has work to do,” Ms Diebolt said. “You need to sprint through the finish line in Michigan.”

Sharon Baseman, the vice chair of Fems for Dems, said she hopes these concerns motivate people not to become complacent.

“We’re all scared,” she said.

Mr Hanson noted that polls in Michigan and across the country likely will be off by several points on Election Day. But, he said, it’s hard to know in which direction.

“This is a razor-thin margin,” he said, “so it could really go either way.”

Harris started ‘like a rocket’ in Michigan. Now she’s slipping
© BBC

• What young Democrats want from Harris
• Six swing states that could decide election
• What could be the ‘October Surprise’?

Harris started ‘like a rocket’ in Michigan. Now she’s slipping
© BBC

Harris started ‘like a rocket’ in Michigan. Now she’s slipping
© BBC

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Nigeria’s Evolving Federalism and the Search for Sustainable Local Government Administration

Chukwuma Charles Soludo, CFR
Governor, Anambra State

The Anambra State House of Assembly passed two progressive legislations pursuant to its powers under the Constitution (Anambra State Economic Planning and Development Law, 2024; and Anambra State Local Government Administration Law, 2024), and I have signed them into law. This has generated commentaries and debates especially in relation to their consistency or inconsistency with the recent Supreme Court judgement and the mantra of “local government autonomy.” My media team, other members of my government as well as well meaning Nigerians have vigorously defended these progressive laws and that should suffice. At this moment in Nigeria, being a state governor is not a fanciful job, especially given the gamut of allegations and innuendoes levelled against governors vis-a-vis local government funds. In the circumstance, any comment by me would be construed as self defence. However, I have a citizen duty to clarify and contribute to the discourse—especially as one who has been extensively involved in the debate and search for a more perfect union.

At the outset, let me make an important disclosure. I am a federalist and a proponent of competitive federalism for a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, vast country as Nigeria. From my limited knowledge, I do not know any federation (except perhaps some variants in Brazil) where a uniform local government system is provided for in a federal constitution or where the local government is treated as a de-facto federating unit. I understand that the issue of appropriate local government system was vigorously debated by the framers of the 1999 Constitution and a compromise was to insert Sections 7 Constitution which, among others, empowers each State through its House of Assembly to make laws which provide “for the establishment, structure, composition, finance, and functions…” of the local governments. Pioneered by Lagos State about 2004 several states have various laws pursuant to these Constitutional powers. The composition or structure of local governments in Lagos or Ebonyi state is certainly different from Anambra.

Also, the debate as to whether local governments should be part of the federal constitution or left to each federating unit (state) to determine its own appropriate local government system is still an unsettled matter. The APC committee on restructuring Nigeria proposed scrapping the local government from the Constitution of Nigeria. As the former chairman of planning and strategy committee of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, I know that the published position of Ndigbo in 2018 was that local governments be scrapped from the Constitution and let each state/region determine the type of local administration that suits it. Similar positions have been argued by Afenifere, PANDEF, Middle Belt Forum, etc. This is an issue for another day.

In the context of our evolving federalism, I see the recent Supreme Court judgment regarding the direct transfer of funds belonging to the local governments as an important contribution to our search for effective and transparent administration of resources at the local level. I see the judgment as an opportunity for public good. Given the Constitutional mandate for joint planning between the State and local government, I see the judgment as an opportunity for greater transparency and predictability regarding the sources and uses of funds, as well as greater coordination and collaboration between the State and local government. If there was any state where the State-Local Government Joint Accounts Committee did not manage the LG funds transparently, the Supreme court judgment is an opportunity and mandate to do it differently by further empowering the LG administration.

But there is more work to be done. We all need to think through how the funds transferred to the LGs should be appropriated, spent, or accounted for. Monies meant for the federal or state governments are not spent by the president or governors. The National Assembly and State Assemblies make appropriation laws on how and by whom the monies should be spent and provide oversight functions. What happens to the monies directly sent to the LGs? Who spends the monies, on what and how will they be accounted for?

This is where Section 7 of the Constitution comes handy, and the Anambra State House of Assembly has risen to the occasion. Happily, the Supreme Court did not nullify Section 7 of the Constitution. The new laws by Anambra House of Assembly are therefore consequential to give operational life to the Supreme Court judgment and not to undermine it. If the State House of Assembly abdicates this constitutional duty, the Local Government will then have no law on the use and management of its finance which the Constitution has given the State House of Assembly (and only the House of Assembly) the mandate to legislate on. Indeed, in many states the House of Assemblies retain the power to suspend or remove chairpersons of local governments.

By the way, isn’t the legislative authority exercised by the State Assemblies under Section 7 of the Constitution similar to the powers granted by the Constitution to the National Assembly over the Federal Capital Territory and its Area Councils? I understand that the Senate President had recently at one of the Plenary Sessions rhetorically asked if it was indeed possible to grant the kind of “autonomy” some people talk about without major amendments to the Constitution. Many Nigerians ask the same question. I also understand that the Senate recently resolved to begin the process of Constitutional amendment in this regard. This is a welcome development. But until that is done, our laws pursuant to the Constitution and designed to give operational effect to the Supreme Court judgment remain subsisting and valid.

A critical instrument for muddling through our evolving federation and delivering higher efficiency and effectiveness in development is through structured collaboration among the tiers of government. No tier of government enjoys absolute autonomy. For example, the FGN has exclusive right over solid minerals, but the States have exclusive right over the land. Only a collaborative framework will maximize benefits from natural resources. Currently, there is a collaborative funding for the security agencies. The States and LGs contribute tens of billions monthly and deducted directly from FAAC every month towards the funding of the armed forces which are exclusively under the FGN. At the state levels, each state is spending a fortune of its own revenues on logistics and operational costs for the federal security agencies. The FGN, States and LGs are jointly paying for the FGN initiative on metering, etc. The states understand the above “emergency measures” as part of the collaborative arrangements to make Nigeria work better. A federal agency, the Debt Management Office (DMO) must clear any state government seeking to borrow from domestic financial system, while the National Assembly must approve States’ external borrowing. The federal UBEC insists on counterpart funding by states before it can release federal funds for basic education and also supervises the utilization of the contributions by states. There is a dozen or more areas of oversight of federal agencies over State finances. The above illustrations are simply to make the point that no tier of government can function in absolute autarky without collaboration with others. Given the functions assigned to the LGs by the Constitution, it is impossible to see how they can perform them without active collaboration with State governments. Because the Constitution did not envisage “absolute autonomy” for the Local Governments, it gave the State House of Assembly powers to make laws for them and equally did not create a Local Government Judiciary distinct from the State Judiciary.

The two legislations passed by the progressive Anambra House of Assembly seek to achieve three objectives: consistency with the Constitution and judgment of the Supreme Court; enhanced transparency and productive collaboration; and promotion of sustainable finance, democracy, and development at the local government. The laws seek to codify the collaborative arrangements to promote transparency and accountability. We seek to avoid ad-hoc or arbitrary arrangements—- building to last! The good news is that the eminent jurists at the Supreme Court did not outlaw collaboration and cooperation among the LGs in funding joint or common services, nor did they nullify Section 7 of the Constitution. What the new laws simply require is that ALL the chairmen/mayors of the local governments, meeting under the aegis of the State Economic Planning Board (similar to the National Economic Council) decide what percentage of their revenues to contribute to a Joint Local Government Account to pay for common/pooled services such as: (a) payment of salaries, allowances, gratuities and pensions of workers and retirees under the Local Government Service Commission; (b) provision and maintenance of primary, adult and vocational education including all salaries, allowances, gratuities and pensions payable in that regard; (c) provision and maintenance of primary health services including all salaries, allowances, gratuities and pensions payable in that regard; (d) payment of allowances to traditional rulers and Presidents-General of the communities; (e) Subventions to the Local Government Service Commission; and even for community security.

What many people do not know is that the Constitution puts primary education and primary health care under the local governments. Many also do not know that primary school teachers are pooled under the UBEC—Universal Basic Education Commission. Workers in all the LGs are also pooled staff under the Local government service commission. Ditto for primary health workers. Absolute autonomy would mean that each LG would have its own primary education policy, employ its own teachers, and pay them whatever it can afford and whenever it can do so, etc. Now that Anambra has free education for primary and secondary education in all public schools, some LGs may decide that they cannot afford it. It might even get to a point where some LGs might ask “non-indigenes” who are workers in the LGs or teachers in primary schools to “go home” to their LGs of origin due to budgetary or other constraints.

Indeed, absolute autonomy of LGs would mean that institutions that pool resources and workers would be scrapped including the Local Government Service Commission, Local Government Pension Board, the Anambra State Universal Basic Education Board (ASUBEB), the Primary Health Care Agency, etc. Does it mean that the federal UBEC or Federal Ministry of Health would have to deal with each of the 774 LGs in respect of primary education or primary health care instead of coordinated through the State UBEC or state primary health care agency? This would be a recipe for humongous chaos, not only for the administration of local government and pensions, but more so in the primary education and primary health sectors. My administration inherited 4 years arrears of gratuity which we have been clearing systematically. How do you share the outstanding balance among the LGs or pay pensions to over 15,000 LG retirees who served the LGs as a pool without pooling of funds? Some years ago, some LGs rejected teachers posted to their LGs because it would jack up their wage bill.

Yes, our nascent federation is evolving but some of us as practitioners are determined to make it work for the people while we have the opportunity. I believe in building enduring institutions, especially ones founded upon due process, transparency, and rule of law. People remind me that many of the institutional reforms we established at the CBN still endure. Since assumption of office as Governor 30 months ago, we have devoted a lot of efforts in reforming and strengthening institutions, including the local government administration. Today, Anambra State under my watch is ranked number 1 among the 36 states on fiscal transparency by BudgIT, and among the top five states on financial sustainability. We inherited a local government system with four-year arrears (2018-2022) of gratuity to retired primary school teachers and other staff of local government. We have restructured their finances back to sustainability. Everyone who retired from the local government and State civil service since my tenure is paid gratuity/pension, and we are on course to clear the outstanding arrears soon. Three years’ arrears on counterpart funding for Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has been cleared, resulting in billions of Naira recently invested in our primary schools. Some 326 primary health centres are being constructed or modernized in all the 326 wards in the state as well as employing hundreds of medical personnel to man the primary health centres. Most of the local government secretariats have been remodelled and equipped, and the LG system is once again alive. This is not to mention that 3,615 out of the 8,115 new teachers recruited under my administration are for primary schools and they are being paid. We do not want to go back!

So, the laws are designed to protect our gains so far and strengthen the system for the future consistent with the Constitution and laws. I always remind myself that I am a bird of passage, and eventually, I will leave office. But we must build to last— for the next generations. More specifically, the new laws are designed to protect our workers at the local level and protect our primary education and primary health care from chaos and collapse. Many teachers and pensioners wrote me to passionately plead that they do not want the agony of the 1990s–2003 when some primary school teachers in some LGs were paid and others owed salaries. I just read a report that the organized labour (particularly the Nigerian Union of Local Government Employees, NULGE; Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT; and Nigerian Union of Pensioners) were urging the FGN not to transfer workers/teachers salaries to the local government in the name of “local government autonomy”. No law protects the workers against nonpayment of salaries or pensions by governments. In Anambra we want to ensure that we do not wake up and hear that some LGs paid salaries of primary school teachers and others did not or that some pensioners are paid and others not, or that some contribute towards UBEC counterpart-funding while others do not. The laws seek to create a framework to ensure that the basic functions mandated by the Constitution for the local governments are discharged as a matter of first-line charge or the irreducible minimum. With these laws, workers, and retirees from the local government system in Anambra (primary school teachers, primary health workers, workers in the local government system under the local government service commission) can sleep with their two eyes closed. The LGs and State government can also collaborate in the security of the communities, just as the States and FGN collaborate in funding even the federal security agencies.

It is equally important to understand that the Constitution mandated this collaboration between the States and Local Governments when in its section 7 (3), it provides that “it shall be duty of a local government council within the State to participate in economic planning and development of the area referred to in sub section 2 of this section and to this end, an economic planning board shall be established by a Law enacted by the House of Assembly of the State”. This provision gave rise to the establishment of the Anambra State Economic Planning Board of which all the local government chairpersons are members and who, among other things, decide on the percentage to be contributed to the Local Government Joint Account. It is important to appreciate that this money is not handed over to the State but remains with the Local Governments under a joint pool for the discharge of certain services by the local governments which services are uniform/common among the local governments as stated earlier.

In sum, the laws ensure that the State can function in a cohesively planned, transparent and sustainable manner to maximize the security and welfare of the citizens. They constitute a very smart solution to a possible systemic threat.

Governors are often accused of seeking to “control” LG funds with insinuations that LG funds are mismanaged. Of course, in a society where public office is seen as “dinning table” and public trust is low, people judge others by their own standards: by what they would do if they were in the position. I often ask: control for what? While I cannot hold brief for every governor, I know that most states are struggling to ensure a solvent local government system. I wish I can be spared the headache, if not for the predictable collateral damage to the system if we abdicate from structured oversight and collective accountability. The challenge ahead can be daunting given the quantum rise in wage bills because of the new minimum wage, as well as consequential rise in future pension/gratuity payments. Without active collaboration and coordination between state and local governments, many LGs will end up in a huge financial mess, requiring bailouts by state governments or will FGN directly intervene in every case of insolvency among the 774 LGs?

In conclusion, the progressive legislations by the State Assembly are designed to unleash the creative powers of the LGs, encourage peer learning, optimal development outcomes in planning and execution among the LGs, as well as novel accountability and transparency. The laws are ingenious by creating multiple layers of collaborative oversight whereby the LGs agree on monies to set aside and managed collectively by them for common services or first-line charges, while the rest is appropriated by the Congress of Councillors in each LG. In an innovative sense, the legislative powers – including powers of appropriation and oversight now largely reside with the local government legislature—Congress of Councillors, which is empowered to make bye-laws, which are in the nature of regulations, for the Local Governments (as it is the House of Assembly that is empowered by the Constitution to enact laws to guide the Local Governments).

Since neither the Constitution nor the Supreme Court judgment prescribes the manner of appropriation, expenditure, and audit/accountability for local government funds, the House of Assembly and the Congress of Councillors fill in the blanks under the new laws pursuant to Section 7 of the Constitution. The evolution of our federalism is a work-in-progress, and the new Anambra laws constitute creative and progressive additions to institution-building. May the Federal Republic of Nigeria continue to win!