When Republican presidential nominee John McCain pulled his staff out of Michigan two weeks ago, his campaign said he was redirecting the resources to closer battleground states. That has left an even steeper uphill battle for other Republicans seeking office in the Great Lakes State.

Of the six statewide and local GOP campaigns contacted by The Michigan Daily this week, all expressed displeasure with McCain’s decision. But all promised to fight on.

The state's Republican candidates for U.S. congressional offices said they were relatively immune to McCain’s exit, because of strong ground games of their own.

Danae Brack, manager of State Rep. Jack Hoogendyk's long shot U.S. Senate campaign, said McCain’s pullout hasn’t affected the campaign much.

“Of course we would have loved to see McCain and Palin stay in Michigan,” she said. “But we haven’t been counting on that to pull us across the line.”

Hoogendyk is running in an attempt to unseat five-term incumbent Carl Levin, a Democrat. While Brack admits a strong fight from McCain in Michigan could have boosted Hoogendyk — current polling suggests he trails Levin by more than 25 percentage points — she said their campaign didn’t rely heavily on McCain’s performance here.

Nate Bailey, Rep. Joe Knollenberg’s campaign manager in his close race for a ninth term representing Michigan’s 9th district in the U.S. House, expressed a similar idea.

“We had a plan in place to win before Senator McCain was the nominee, and we have our plan in place right now to win,” he said. “We knew all along that we would have a tough race this year, so we put the framework in place early on to win.”

Bailey said that because Knollenberg’s campaign has its own door-to-door and phone bank operations, McCain’s withdrawal doesn’t hurt as much as it does to campaigns without such efforts.

“What’s changed is that we’ve grown our own operation,” he said. “We’re now running a full-scale campaign.”

But for candidates further down the GOP ticket, McCain’s withdrawal means the loss of a more extravagant get-out-the-vote effort among Republicans and independents than the campaigns could possibly engineer on their own.

Christina Brewton, a GOP state house candidate running to represent the 53rd District, said she fears many voters who might lean Republican will stay home on Election Day.

“Dropping out of Michigan gives Republican and conservative voters no reason to vote for McCain or to vote at all,” Brewton said in an e-mail statement. “He’s already given up on them and has sent a very clear message that their vote is unnecessary.”

Brewton said she is disappointed in McCain the same way she would be disappointed in any candidate who pulls out of a battleground state.

“If you truly believe in the platform you campaign on, then you never stop fighting,” she said.

Eric Lielbriedis, the Republican candidate for state house from Michigan’s 52nd district, said he understood McCain’s decision even though he didn’t welcome the news.

“His chess board is to win the White House,” Lielbriedis said. “And he has got to move the pieces and the assets in the right places.”

Lielbriedis and Brewton both face uphill fights. Their districts are both heavily Democratic.

For John LaFond and Susan Brown — both Republicans who hope to become University regents — McCain’s decision makes their efforts more difficult.

Regents races tend to track the party preferences of voters, since candidates rarely have high name recognition. That'll make it especially hard for GOP regent hopefuls to overcome high Democratic turnout in Michigan this year.

“Business is not as usual, but that means we're just going to have to work harder,” LaFond said.