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A former Democrat and the Trump factor scramble Michigan's race for governor
Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is showing strong in polls, but the state’s Democratic chair is hounding him for his reluctance to criticize the president.
Then-Mayor Mike Duggan in Detroit in 2024.Paul Sancya / AP file
DETROIT — Michigan could do something this fall that it hasn’t done in more than 65 years: elect a Democrat to succeed a Democratic governor.
Term-limited Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has high approval ratings, polling shows. A majority of voters believe the state is on the right track after seven years of her leadership.
But former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, a longtime Democrat who is running for governor as an independent, stands in the way of his former party’s plans.
More than two-thirds of the $3.5 million spent on advertising in the governor’s race since last January has come from Duggan’s campaign or from an outside group promoting his candidacy, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Polls show him to be a competitive candidate who could peel away votes from Democrats and Republicans. Most notably, Duggan’s reluctance to criticize President Donald Trump — and his charge that Democrats spend too much time complaining about Trump — have emerged as persistent tension points in one of the most closely watched races of 2026.
Democrats are navigating similar dynamics in midterm elections across the country this year, balancing their base-rallying, Trump-bashing impulses against a message that focuses more on voters’ needs. But the quandary is especially pronounced in swing state Michigan given the presence of Duggan, a proven Detroit vote-getter who is attempting to exploit the strains as he takes on his former party.
“I think we have to have a message about affordability,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel said. “I say all the time that kitchen table issues are the most important thing that we talk about in these campaigns. But certainly, it’s impossible to talk about those things without at least saying the president is making these things harder.”
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, often draws a line from economic issues to what she frames as Trump’s threat to democracy. On the Republican side, Rep. John James is the early front-runner in a field that most recently grew to include wealthy businessman and former long shot White House hopeful Perry Johnson. Both have positioned themselves as Trump allies.
Rep. John James, R-Mich., at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in 2024.Paul Sancya / AP file
Duggan — who was a top surrogate for the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigns in 2024 — says he criticizes Trump when he thinks it’s warranted, particularly when it comes to the Canadian tariffs that he believes have hurt Detroit’s auto industry. He also believes Democrats are too singularly focused on Trump.
“My biggest help has been Curtis Hertel,” Duggan said in an interview with NBC News, suggesting that the Democrats, by fixating on the absence of Trump from his message, are inadvertently boosting his name recognition and above-the-fray brand. “They’re all talking about my campaign, and the Democrats attack me, saying I’m not attacking Trump. And I come back and say the reason the Democratic Party is failing is because that’s the only message they have.”
Hertel rejected that charge, accusing Duggan of ignoring Trump “because it’s politically convenient” and because “he’s trying to get some Republican votes.” Hertel and other Democrats also have emphasized the pro-Trump donors who have given to Duggan’s campaign, including former Michigan GOP Chair Ron Weiser.
“He’s willing to remake himself in whatever image he thinks helps him in this election,” Hertel said of Duggan.
“I’m proud,” Hertel added, when told that Duggan had called him out by name, “that when I am not working at the Michigan Democratic Party every single day that I am somewhere living in his head.”
Duggan spokesperson Andrea Bitely shot back: “The Democratic Party continues to be delusional, talking only about traditional Republican donors and pretending the 50% of our funding coming from traditional Democratic sources doesn’t exist.”
National Democrats have also targeted Duggan. Democratic Governors Association spokesperson Kevin Donohoe accused Duggan of downplaying Trump-backed Medicaid cuts and noted how he dodged a question about the president’s comments last year accusing Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and other Democrats of sedition, “punishable by death.”
“Michiganders deserve a governor who will put them first — but Mike Duggan, John James and the entire Republican field just keep kowtowing to Donald Trump,” Donohoe said.
The sniping between Duggan and the Democrats is entertainment for GOP operatives, especially after Benson’s top rival for the nomination, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, dropped out to run for secretary of state instead.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on Capitol Hill in 2024.Alex Wong / Getty Images file
“What they’re going through,” one Republican strategist in Michigan said, “is a Democratic primary.”
Duggan could be a problem for both parties.
A January poll of likely general election voters commissioned by the Detroit News and NBC affiliate WDIV of Detroit showed a general election tossup: James at 34%, Benson at 32% and Duggan at 26%. Duggan took roughly an equal amount of support from the Democrat and the Republican, according to the results. Without him as a choice, the narrow spread at the top of the poll flipped:47% of respondents chose Benson, 45% James.
The poll, which had a margin of error of 4 percentage points, also foundDuggan with the highest name recognition and highest favorable rating of all candidates for governor.
“Voters view Mike Duggan favorably regardless of their party affiliation or how they feel about Donald Trump,” pollsters from the Glengariff Group wrote in an accompanying memo. “It is a favorability phenomenon we have not seen in 43 years of polling in Michigan.”
The data suggests that Duggan has room to grow beyond the Detroit area, where his story of bringing the city out of bankruptcy is already well-known. His increased name recognition has been “driven exclusively among out-state voters,” the pollsters noted. Duggan also performed well at the recent Northern Michigan Policy Conference, where “the crowd was impressed by his command” of regional issues, said a Republican consultant who attended the event.
Whitmer going one way, Trump another
Michigan has emerged as a top Midwest battleground over the last decade, with Trump winning here by slim margins in 2016 and 2024 and losing by fewer than 155,000 votes in 2020. Trump and his allies pushed debunked conspiracy theories to falsely claim he won the state that year.
Whitmer and Benson easily won second terms as governor and secretary of state in 2022, in part by characterizing their Trump-endorsed Republican rivals as threats to democracy. Their campaigns helped Michigan Democrats win control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of state government for the first time in 40 years. But with Trump atop the ballot in 2024, the state House flipped back to Republicans, ending Democrats’ so-called trifecta.
Trump remains laser-focused on the state, having visited twice since returning to office last year. He has developed a working relationship with Whitmer, a governor he once routinely demeaned but who now partners with him on initiatives such as saving an Air National Guard base.
The Detroit News/WDIV poll had lessons for both parties in 2026. Michigan voters are more fond of Whitmer than they are of Trump, with 53% viewing the governor favorably, compared to 38% viewing the president favorably. The same poll showed nearly 60% of voters approving of Whitmer’s job performance and 45% approving of Trump’s.
Kitchen table issues rated as the highest concerns in the survey, with a combined 32% of respondents citing jobs and the economy, inflation and cost of living, and health care affordability and accessibility as the most important issues that would influence their vote in November.
“Fighting Trump and the Republicans” was further down the priority list, at 6%. Meanwhile, a 48% plurality of voters said that Trump’s policies over the last year had made the economy weaker.
Benson: Healthy democracy equals healthy economy
Benson continues to offer her defender-of-democracy pitch from 2022, alongside traditional economic themes and more prosaic selling points, such as her work to modernize the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. At a church-sponsored Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast last month, she blasted Trump for suggesting — “simply joking,” in the words of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt — that midterm elections weren’t necessary this year.
“I am here today to say unequivocally, right now, in 2026, we are in the middle of a battle over the future of our democracy, our rights, our freedoms, and what we do now together is going to determine that future for generations to come,” Benson told the audience.
Afterward, in an interview with NBC News, she stressed that the ideas of speaking out about Trump and grounding her campaign around affordability are not mutually exclusive.
“He won Michigan by going around our state and making promises to folks that he would make their life easier,” Benson said. “Instead, the opposite has happened, and the struggles have only gotten worse since over the last year of his administration. … And so everything’s connected. You can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy democracy.”
While Benson did not criticize Duggan by name, she offered a thinly veiled contrast.
“I’m the only one running for governor,” Benson said, “who has the experience in standing up to this administration while also trying to work with anyone to get things done.”
Duggan said that while he’s happy to voice displeasure with Trump on issues such as the tariffs, he “will not join the nightly outrage of the night with these guys at [MS NOW] and Fox attacking each other.”
Trump’s name, he added, rarely comes up at his town halls. Duggan also said that Whitmer’s treatment by other Democrats after she collaborated with Trump on projects that were helpful to Michigan has only reinforced his decision to run as an independent.
“She got beat to hell,” he said.
Adrian Hemond, a Democratic consultant in Michigan who is not working with any of the candidates for governor, sees merit in both Benson’s and Duggan’s messaging.
“This is one of those ‘Stop, you’re both right’ kind of situations,” Hemond said. “Mayor Duggan is hoping to peel off votes from both Democrats and from Republicans … and basing your campaign around attacking the most popular Republican in the country is probably not a great way to peel off votes from Republicans.”
“Just attacking the guy to attack the guy is not a great strategy for Duggan,” he added. “But it’s a great strategy for Jocelyn Benson. Democrats are very motivated by their opposition to the president. And so, for her, consolidating her base, getting them enthusiastic about voting and about volunteering and about opening up their wallets makes perfect sense.”
