In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Republican National Committee opted not to order an autopsy into what exactly led to the party's decline in suburban communities that were, until recently, considered deep red.

But if RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel wanted to understand what happened, she could do worse than to look back at the place she was raised: Oakland County, Michigan.

"Oakland County was kind of the quintessential suburban Republican stronghold over the postwar period," says Jeff Timmer, a longtime GOP strategist who was executive director of the state party from 2005-2009. It was (and is) a huge source of campaign donations for the party and its candidates. It had massive influence in Lansing, and an influential bipartisan delegation in Washington. It was a must-visit locale for every aspiring Republican presidential candidate.

"When I ran the Michigan Republican Party, we always pointed to Oakland: 'These guys have got their [****] together,'" says Timmer.

To put it bluntly, the [****] is no longer together.

Ten years ago, Republicans held two of the four GOP-drawn U.S. House seats in Oakland (the other two were safe Democratic); now, all four are in Democratic hands. Democratic women now represent the Romney family's hometown in the state House, state Senate and U.S. House (Rep. Haley Stevens). Ten years ago, Brooks Patterson, the silver-tongued sun-God around whom all local politics orbited, was county executive, and Republicans held four of the six countywide elected posts; Democrats now hold five of them, including the executive. After GOP-controlled redistricting in 2012, Republicans had a 14-7 majority on the Oakland County Board of Commissioners; now, Democrats have an 11-10 edge and will control the county-level redistricting process for the first time in a half-century.

The change is happening in lush, sylvan communities like Birmingham and Bloomfield--a place at least three generations of Romneys, McDaniel included, have called home. Here, generations of families with auto-baron surnames set roots. Here, they enrolled their kids at affluent public schools or even-more-affluent private schools with idyllic names like Country Day and Cranbrook. Here, they donated to and elected Republicans. At least, that is, until recently.

"That's how I describe it to literally anyone from out of state," laughs Mari Manoogian, a Democratic state Representative whose district encompasses much of the community. "They're like, 'Wait, you're the state representative for Mitt Romney's hometown?' And I'm like, 'Yeah!'"

This was "'Romney Republican' territory, but the Republican Party has gone so far away from that," says Mallory McMorrow, the Democrat who represents the area in the state Senate. "Even looking at the types of things Mitt Romney is proposing on the federal level right now, I think if he were still at home, he'd be a Democrat. The party has shifted so much."