While most of Washington is obsessed with either the reality show that is President-elect Donald Trump’s transition or the hand-wringing and blame-gaming over Democrats’ election loss, a potentially critical political storyline is brewing in Michigan.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan shocked the Michigan political world by announcing he would run for governor in 2026 — but not as a Democrat, the party in which he’s been an active and prominent member of for 40 years. Instead, he will seek the office as an independent, avoiding a potentially crowded and divisive Democratic primary.
The list of Democrats who could seek to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer isn’t short on prominent names: state Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and Duggan all appeared to be the three leading candidates for some time, quietly preparing for their runs throughout 2024.
I witnessed this firsthand at last summer’s Mackinac Policy Conference, a yearly gathering of Michigan’s political elite. There was some internal bellyaching from some Democrats, which I picked up on during my time in Michigan, who thought Duggan’s son — the lead strategist for the Biden-then-Harris campaign in Michigan — was using his role in 2024 to help lay the groundwork for his dad’s 2026 campaign. So to say Michigan Democrats were shocked by the mayor’s decision to go independent is a bit of understatement.
In my experience, most independent candidates who previously ran and won as Democrats or Republicans but then switch do so out of some political necessity. That is, they don’t think they can get a fair shake from primary voters, or they fear the supporters and positions they plan to take will work only in a general election but would be a problem in the primary.
Trust me, if these folks thought they could win a primary, they’d stay in the party. The hurdles for winning as an independent are so much higher that it isn’t a path of least resistance. In Michigan, there’s an even bigger hurdle: It’s a state that still allows straight-ticket voting, in which a voter can simply pull one lever or bubble in one circle for a major party to indicate a vote for every partisan running on the ballot. There’s a reason there haven’t been any prominent independent candidacies in the state, let alone any indie successes. In fact, it could be that the straight-ticket voting issue makes Duggan’s path almost impossible.
So what are the upsides for him? The biggest include likely financial support. Some of Duggan’s biggest supporters aren’t traditional Democratic donors, like Rocket Mortgage founder Dan Gilbert, who has given more money to Republicans in the past, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who some believe is a soft Democrat on some cultural issues but seems to go out of his way not to be pigeonholed — and certainly seems to lean right on financial issues.
Having support from the likes of Gilbert and Dimon might be good politics in a general election, but it wouldn’t go over well with many activist Democratic voters. In addition, Duggan has broken his share of eggs in trying to clean up and reform Detroit. He has gotten high marks, but he has had his fair share of run-ins with key Democrats in the city, who may be more inclined to oppose him in a gubernatorial primary (and as a lame-duck mayor) than they were in city politics.
So Duggan most likely saw the primary as both a math problem and an issue-position problem. A knife fight for the Democratic nomination against experienced and respected pols like Benson, Gilchrist or even Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — a wild card who moved to the state after the 2020 election and has now been a resident long enough to meet Michigan’s constitutional requirement to run for state office in 2026 — would be likely to cause all sorts of cultural and identity divides that might damage an eventual nominee. (Incidentally, if Buttigieg does run for governor, it likely means he’s taking himself out of the 2028 presidential mix, since it would take Simone Biles-level verbal gymnastics to simultaneously beat back carpetbagging criticism while also somehow avoiding a pledge to serve an entire four-year term if elected.) The path for Duggan to win as a Democrat could end up alienating voters he thinks he needs for the general election — or so one line of thinking goes.
And yet, in the macro sense, looking the political landscape nationally, I can really see the appeal of running as an independent these days rather than as a partisan, especially for an executive position like governor or mayor.
In such a polarized climate, politicians trying to position themselves as “get it done” types might have more credibility with cynical voters if they leave party ID behind. And if you listen to Duggan’s initial rationale for the party switch, it’s all about a “getting things done” mentality — and a pledge not to let political party dogma get in the way of that mindset. For the less politically engaged, a category that includes many key swing voters, this is a very appealing elevator pitch.
The atmospherics right now seem to favor at least a testing of the independent winds. After all, for the last decade, the fastest-growing party by voter registration in this country has been the group of voters registering as “independent” or “unaffiliated” in their states. Younger voters, in particular, seem to be more inclined to register this way instead of becoming full-fledged members of either of the two major parties.
Looking at the landscape of “independent” candidates who have actually won statewide office in the last few decades, they generally fall into one of three categories:
- The tacit alliance: One of the major parties most closely aligned with the independent candidate’s politics decides not to compete (see Maine Democrats and Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats).
- The political name brand: A former or current elected official from one of the two parties, with their own political organization to tap into in lieu of having a party, decides to break out on their own. (See Lowell Weicker in Connecticut in the late ’90s or even Joe Lieberman in the same state in 2006.)
- The nonpolitical brand: A candidate rides some form of celebrity status that makes them a magnet for attention (see Jesse Ventura in Minnesota).
But even if you put them all together, the list of successful independent statewide candidates is quite short.
If Duggan wins, he would fall more into the second category than any other. He would have to defang the straight-ticket voting issue and the likelihood that both parties would nominate “electable enough” candidates for governor, too. I’ll let others decide who falls into that category, but given that Trump carried the state twice in the last three presidential elections, no Republican, including more MAGA-aligned candidates, should be ruled out as being electable enough in the state. In fact, one could argue Duggan, as an independent with a lifelong Democratic affiliation and a base in Detroit, would take more votes away from Democrats and make it possible a Republican could win with less than 40% of the statewide vote, meaning the definition of “electable” in the GOP primary could change.
Realistically, for Duggan to pull this off, he’d most likely need one of two major party nominees to be viewed as “unelectable” by a larger proportion of the electorate than is the norm. Three-way general election races rarely feature all three candidates in contention to the end. One usually fades, and it’s usually the independent.
Of course, Duggan deserves a bit more benefit of the doubt than most, since he won his first race for mayor on the back of a write-in campaign in the nonpartisan primary back in 2013.
Now, what are the upsides? In a polarized climate, an independent candidate with a deep résumé of public service is going to get a fair hearing from exhausted folks in the wider middle of soft Democrats and soft Republicans — folks who culturally assume they are one or the other but aren’t comfortable with the base activists on either side.
Duggan’s candidacy could also spark harsher ideological fights in both major-party primaries, if those parties sense the opportunity to win by hewing solely to their bases as Duggan plants himself in the middle.
And not getting tainted by a vicious primary fight could be an asset for Duggan come the general election.
Bottom line: Duggan’s move has scrambled both party primaries in 2026, and the calendar still says 2024. And while history suggests Duggan has a very uphill climb, don’t be surprised if he ends up being one of a dozen or so serious independents candidates running in 2026. Whenever folks are this sour on institutions in general and the two partisan political establishments specifically, the terrain is very welcoming for anyone running as an outsider. And while Duggan is no outsider, running as an independent is a way to virtue-signal that you are willing to shake things up.
I’ll be watching other states that could be ripe for independent candidacies to disrupt one or both political party establishments, including:
Nebraska: Potential independents who live deep-blue or deep-red states — but think that if they can marginalize the incumbent party as too left/right — can swoop in to challenge for the middle and then pick up support from the party that never wins. Dan Osborn in Nebraska is the best, most recent example of this strategy, and he got close in 2024, losing his independent Senate bid by fewer than 7 percentage points. Don’t be surprised if he tries this again in 2026 against GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts, who will be running for a full term.
Louisiana: Sen. Bill Cassidy is a Republican and will remain a Republican. If he wins re-election, he will caucus with Republicans. However, would I be shocked if he decided to avoid running in a partisan GOP primary? No.
A new state law got rid of the all-candidate open primary for the Senate in 2026, and already, quite a few more Trump-friendly Republicans are looking at challenging Cassidy, who was one the seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges over his actions on Jan. 6. If the Democrats decided not to field a candidate in this race, one could see the path for Cassidy to win, but that would require some tacit help.
California: Steve Hilton, a Fox News contributor who was an adviser to David Cameron when he was prime minister of the U.K., is looking at a run as a Republican for governor. But realistically, he would most likely be a stronger candidate if he were as an “R-leaning” indie, rather than having the brand of the GOP in a state that doesn’t seem to elect statewide Republicans anymore — especially for the high-profile jobs.
The last Republican statewide victory in California was in 2006, and that’s when the leading Republican in the state was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has his own brand outside the party. With the state’s all-party, top-two primary, I think there’s a lot of incentive for center-left and center-right candidates to run without major-party labels. But to succeed, those independents would need to be enormously wealthy.
North Carolina: There’s not a lot of love lost for Sen. Thom Tillis among the MAGA Republican set. But the difference between Cassidy and Tillis is the competitiveness of their states: Democrats don’t really have a shot at winning federal statewide races in Louisiana these days, but that’s not true in North Carolina.
Tillis is already signaling that he plans to run in a GOP primary, kicking off with a major re-election fundraising event that features the state’s more MAGA-friendly senator, Ted Budd. And Tillis is trying to get off the anti-MAGA list by showing a lot of openness to most of Trump’s nominees.
Other places where I wouldn’t be surprised to see some independent flirtations include a lot of one-party-controlled states that aren’t deep red or deep blue but are ripe for independent disruptions, including Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey.
All of these states have been competitive between the two parties in the past, but for one reason or the other, the “out” parties’ brands have been damaged badly. Running as an independent with cultural sympathies with the “out” party is a potential path to victory. Arguably, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly pulled this off in a way — though she is a former Republican who switched to the Democrats, as the ballot access and resources that come with a major-party nomination are very helpful. But not every state party will be as desperate as Kansas Democrats were in accepting a party-switcher as its party savior.
Ultimately, the national environment has never looked more enticing for independent candidates to disrupt the two-party duopoly. Trust in both major parties isn’t high outside of the hard partisans, and I think voters desperately want more choices. But while the political weather may be enticing, actually winning as an independent is still rare and highly difficult.
Still, the idea of going a third way can become contagious, and if Duggan has success in battleground Michigan, don’t be surprised if this encourages more ambitious disrupters to try to avoid litmus-test primaries all over the country.
2024-12-11 10:00:00
