Jocelyn Benson has had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad start to the 2026 governor’s race. And Mike Duggan will be the biggest winner from her downfall.
Duggan had the right idea but the wrong candidate, and bad timing. Duggan was eight years early.
When Duggan sounded the alarm in 2018 that Democrats needed a stronger candidate than Gretchen Whitmer, he read the tea leaves wrong. His efforts to recruit Sen. Gary Peters to jump into the governor’s race didn’t just fail, they exploded.
Duggan’s secret plot appeared in newsprint, and Duggan was reduced to endorsing Whitmer, and in November she won. As it turns out, Whitmer was strong enough.
Well, Benson is no Whitmer. Whitmer was the wire-to-wire frontrunner in the 2018 race. Benson has stumbled since the moment she threw her hat in the ring. Benson is a FINO: Frontrunner in Name Only.
Last week, Benson reported that she’s raised $3.5 million so far.
That might be an impressive number, if Duggan, running as an independent and renounced by the blue team, had not raised $3.2 million.
Last week, Benson’s Chinese Voter Scandal got fresh life in headlines when, in a four-page letter, the U.S. Department of Justice demanded information about Michigan’s voter rolls and Benson’s plan to clean them.
During the 2024 election, Benson made national headlines when it was discovered that 105% of Michigan’s adult population is registered to vote here.
The media tried to run interference for Benson by misstating the claim. A USA Today “fact check” said it was false that Michigan had 105% of the state population registered to vote.
But nobody ever said that. America’s largest newspaper used “a Facebook post” to take down a strawman argument.
The actual conversation revolved around adults of voting age, not the state population. With that, the Democrat-Media Alliance failed another attempt at a psyop.
Not even the fact checkers could mask the reality: Michigan’s rolls are bloated by design. And the buck stops with Benson, and nobody else.
Benson can stonewall Michigan House subpoenas. The state court system is so Democrat-controlled that she just might get away with it. But her stalling and delay tactics won’t seem so cute in a federal setting. They’d just result in another round of bad headlines—at a minimum.
By this point in the 2018 cycle, all we knew about Gretchen Whitmer is that she was a longtime lawmaker, and that she had been raped in college. Whitmer was just enough of a backbencher to fly under the radar and into the governor’s office.
As far as the people of Michigan knew, with Whitmer they were getting an agreeable governor with a history of working with Republicans. That proved half-true; Whitmer signed 1,000 laws in her first term with Republicans controlling the House and Senate.
But Benson’s name has been associated with scandal and failure for almost a year now. She has no great talent in retail politics, oratory, or management to dig her out. Lansing lawmakers don’t view her as a peer. There will be no Republicans For Benson.
Nobody wants to say the thing, so I will: Benson is way behind where she needs to be right now. And Duggan is way ahead.
If trans-independent Duggan is a rounding error away from Benson in fundraising, he could soon surpass her.
If and when that day comes, everyday Democrats see what’s been obvious to politicos all year—Benson’s skills are crude and her coalition is narrow. A Duggan consensus is likely. If Tigers Game Republicans join it, he could win.
Jocelyn Benson is all wrong. Mike Duggan is the real Democrat frontrunner. Even if he does not identify that way.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
