Morning Digest: Former Detroit mayor pulls the plug on independent bid for governor

Mike Duggan ends campaign to lead Michigan in the face of "Democratic headwinds."

Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. (Credit: Mike Duggan Facebook)

Leading Off

MI-Gov

Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan abruptly ended his campaign to become Michigan’s first independent governor on Thursday, a departure that reshapes one of the nation’s biggest elections.

Democrats have long feared that Duggan, who identified as a Democrat for most of his 12 years leading the state’s largest city, could disproportionately hurt his old party in a general election.

While some polls showed Duggan, who campaigned as a business-friendly centrist, syphoning more support from Republicans, Democrats worried he could still win too many votes in heavily Democratic Detroit for them to hold the open governorship.

Duggan’s exit, though, gives Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic frontrunner, reason to be optimistic she’ll have the advantage in a race where her only viable opponent is a Republican. Indeed, Duggan himself acknowledged Thursday just how strong the political climate has become for Democrats.

“[B]y April, the mood of the country had shifted suddenly and dramatically,” he told his supporters about why he believed he no longer had a path to victory. “Democrats (and many Independents) were unified in anger as Trump’s war in Iran dragged on and gas prices rose above $5 a gallon. On May 5, the Democratic State Senate candidate in Saginaw won 60% of the vote in a seat Republicans thought would be very competitive.

“Against the Democratic headwinds, we worked twice as hard,” Duggan continued. “But for the public in general, our internal polling showed the intense anger over gas prices and Iran was boosting Democrats in every office nationally.”

Democrats may also benefit from something Duggan did not mention. While Benson enjoys a huge polling lead against Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson, ahead of their Aug. 4 primary, Republicans are engaged in an expensive and nasty nomination battle.

And the two leading GOP candidates, Rep. John James and businessman Perry Johnson, learned Wednesday that they’ll likely have to keep duking it out for another 11 weeks.

While supporters of both James and Johnson filed challenges with election officials last month alleging that their rivals submitted a variety of fraudulent or problematic signatures, the Michigan Bureau of Elections said they’d each turned in the requisite 15,000 valid signatures. The ultimate decision will be up to the Board of State Canvassers, which will meet next Thursday to consider the Bureau’s recommendations.

The Bureau, however, recommended that pastor Ralph Rebandt, who was waging a long-shot campaign for the Republican nomination, and a little-known Democrat named Kim Thomas should be disqualified from the ballot because they didn’t have enough signatures.

Johnson, whose first campaign for governor ended four years ago when he fell victim to a signature-gathering scandal, responded by encouraging Rebandt to bring “this fight to the Board of Canvassers on May 28,” and Rebandt said he would do just that.

There is no such drama surrounding the status of the final two GOP candidates. No one submitted any challenges to former state Attorney General Mike Cox or state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt’s signatures, and the Bureau found that they both had enough to appear on the ballot.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford previews his race for governor

Senate

AL-Sen

An affiliate of the hardline Club For Growth is now airing ads against Navy SEAL veteran Jared Hudson, who earned a spot in the Republican primary runoff for Senate earlier this week.

“The fake news media calls Jared Hudson a dark horse,” says the narrator for Alabama Freedom Fund. “The truth? Hudson’s a stalking horse for Democrat bigwig donors.” The spot goes on to say that the same donors who have contributed to Democratic campaigns are helping Hudson, though it does not say who they are.

Alabama Freedom Fund spent the first round of the primary praising Rep. Barry Moore and attacking Attorney General Steve Marshall while ignoring Hudson. The effort worked: Moore, who is Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, secured first place on Tuesday with 39%, while Hudson edged out Marshall 26-25 for second spot in the June 16 runoff.

MI-Sen

Former state GOP co-chair Bernadette Smith’s long-shot Senate campaign all but ended Wednesday when the Michigan Bureau of Elections determined she only submitted 6,932 of the requisite 15,000 signatures needed to make the primary ballot. The Board of State Canvassers will decide next Thursday whether to accept its recommendation that she be disqualified, and there’s little reason to think it will go against the Bureau’s advice.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers is set to be the only Republican on the August primary ballot ahead of what will be a closely watched general election. Democrats, by contrast, have a competitive three-way contest between former Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, and Rep. Haley Stevens.

MN-Sen

Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s allies at the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association have announced a $2 million ad campaign against Rep. Angie Craig, which makes this the first time either side has aired a negative TV commercial ahead of the August Democratic primary for Senate.

The DLGA connects ICE’s terror campaign in Minnesota to Craig’s support for the Laken Riley Act last year. The ad features local school board member Mary Granlund describing how she witnessed armed agents detain 5-year-old Liam Ramos, something Granlund says Craig helped enable with her vote “to give ICE the power to abduct and indefinitely detain parents and kids like Liam.”

Craig, who apologized for her vote for the Laken Riley Act in March, has trailed Flanagan in every publicly available poll. Flanagan enjoyed a 44-33 advantage in the most recent survey, a DLGA internal from Public Policy Polling conducted at the end of April.

Governors

SD-Gov

South Dakota is on track to hold its first-ever primary runoff, but its new governor may not be in it.

A new poll from Emerson College for KELO-TV gives wealthy businessman Toby Doeden the lead with 26% of the vote in the June 2 Republican primary for governor, several points below the 35% necessary to win outright. Rep. Dusty Johnson holds a 23-19 edge over Gov. Larry Rhoden for the second-place spot, with state House Speaker Jon Hansen just behind with 16%.

The school’s last poll in March showed Johnson, who represents the entire state in the U.S. House, firmly in first with 28%. That earlier survey found Doeden edging out Rhoden 18-17, while Hansen trailed with 14%.

Rhoden was elevated from lieutenant governor to the top job early last year when Kristi Noem resigned to begin her disastrous stint as Donald Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, and he’s faced a challenging campaign to keep his new post.

Rhoden has been the target of $1.3 million in advertising from a group funded by Johnson’s allies that portrays the incumbent as a supporter of higher taxes. School Freedom Fund, an outfit financed by conservative megadonor Jeff Yass, has used similar messaging against Rhoden.

Doeden, for his part, is using his fortune to finance ads promoting himself and attacking Rhoden and Johnson. Doeden last year said of these two opponents: “Their faces and names are different, but Larry Rhoden and Dusty Johnson are one and the same: career politicians that answer to big donors, special-interest groups, and the rich and powerful.”

A July 28 runoff between Doeden and Johnson could be especially nasty.

“I’m light; I’m good,” Doeden told KELO last June. “Dusty’s dark; Dusty’s evil. Those are going to be the two choices.”

Any runoff scenario, though, would make history. While the state’s runoff law has been in effect since 1986, the University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier writes it’s never been needed in any of the “32 gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House primary elections” that have taken place since then.

The eventual Republican nominee will be the favorite against former state Rep. Dan Ahlers, who has the Democratic field to himself, for a post that Republicans have controlled nonstop since the 1978 election.

House

CO-08

State Rep. Manny Rutinel this week launched his first negative ad against former state Rep. Shannon Bird, which came the week after Bird and her allies at EMILYs List began going after Rutinel on the air ahead of the June 30 Democratic primary. Rutinel and Bird are competing for the right to take on Republican Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado’s swingy 8th District.

Rutinel begins his spot by pushing back on Bird’s claim that he voted for Medicaid cuts. The legislator, who tells the audience that he’d grown up relying on the program, continues, “Trump cut Medicaid. I fought back and voted to save Medicaid for families like mine.”

Rutinel then goes on the offensive and says that Bird “was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans to let police cooperate with ICE and let ICE raid our schools and hospitals.” Rutinel does not mention Marine veteran Evan Munsing, the third Democrat challenging Evans.

The Colorado Sun wrote in March that Bird was the one Democrat last year to oppose a bill in committee that placed new restrictions on how state and local authorities could share data with ICE. Bird was absent when the legislation passed the House, and it has since become law.

Bird said she voted against the bill because she feared state employees who unintentionally gave data to ICE would be punished rather than the agencies they work for. Bird, who said a “family medical situation” prevented her from attending the floor vote, also said she would have supported its passage had she been present.

FL-24

Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson returned to the House on Wednesday after a month-long absence, longtime congressional reporter Jamie Dupree flags on social media.

Dupree, who publishes the newsletter Regular Order, first reported last week that Wilson had not cast a vote since April 17. The 83-year-old congresswoman soon said she hadn’t been in the nation’s capital because surgery on her left eye prevented her from flying, but that she would soon return.

Axios also reported last week that Wilson has told supporters she plans to seek a ninth term representing Florida’s 24th District, a safely Democratic and predominantly Black constituency in South Florida. The filing deadline for House candidates is June 12.

NJ-07

Republican Rep. Tom Kean on Thursday spoke to the media for the first time since he disappeared from public view in early March, though he still didn’t divulge any new details about his health in his interview with the New Jersey Globe.

“My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” Kean told the site in a phone interview. “I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll return to voting and to the campaign trail.”

TX-35

State Rep. James Talarico on Thursday urged Democratic voters to support Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Johnny Garcia in next week’s primary runoff for Texas’ 35th District, where Republicans are continuing to meddle to support antisemite Maureen Galindo. Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, last week condemned Galindo and pledged not to campaign with her if she won the nomination.

Garcia, who is backed by numerous other state and national Democrats, is also benefiting from outside spending. Politico reports that outside groups have spent $1.3 million to support him to push back on the almost $1 million that Lead Left, an obscure group with Republican ties, has deployed on advertising promoting Galindo.

VA-07

Republican state Sen. Tara Durant has suspended her campaign to face Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman, she tells the Virginia Scope’s Brandon Jarvis. Virginia’s candidate filing deadline is on Tuesday.

Durant, though, will almost certainly face a tough battle next year to remain in the legislature. The Republican won her state Senate seat 48-46 in 2023, and Democrats are sure to target it as they seek to protect and expand their narrow majority in the upper chamber.

Secretaries of State

IN-SoS

Max Engling, a staffer for Sen. Jim Banks, announced Wednesday he would challenge Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales, a fellow Republican whose tenure has been defined by numerous bad headlines.

Both Banks and Attorney General Todd Rokita subsequently said that they were withdrawing their support for Morales and endorsing Engling ahead of the June 19-20 party convention, where delegates will choose the nominee. (The state’s primaries for Congress, the legislature, and local offices took place earlier this month.)

“I have asked Diego to suspend his campaign,” Rokita said in a statement. “With so many self-inflicted wounds and issues, I now do not believe he can win in November.”

But while Morales has spent the last four years facing unwelcome attention about spending taxpayer money on overseas trips, expensive vehicles, and awarding of contracts, he won’t be going anywhere voluntarily.

Morales’ team said he would continue his reelection campaign, and state officials told the Indiana Capital Chronicle he filed to run ahead of Thursday’s deadline. Two Republicans who were already opposing Morales, Knox County Clerk David Shelton and GOP activist Jamie Reitenour, will also go before the delegates next month.

The GOP nominee will likely go up against Marine veteran Beau Bayh, a Democrat who is the son of former Sen. Evan Bayh. The younger Bayh’s only opponent in the June 6 convention is Army veteran Blythe Potter.

Former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, who led Indiana’s capital city as a Republican more than a decade ago, is also campaigning as an independent.

Ballot Measures

ME Ballot

A ballot measure targeting transgender students is close to disqualification following a draft order from the Maine Secretary of State’s office saying it lacked enough valid signatures to appear on the November ballot. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, will make a final decision on Tuesday.

Election officials initially announced in March that the initiative had collected enough signatures to move forward. This plan, which would bar students from accessing restrooms and locker rooms or playing on a sports team designated for the gender they were not assigned at birth, was ​​funded by Richard Uihlein, one of the most prolific conservative megadonors in the country.

Opponents, though, waged a legal challenge to disqualify the initiative.

The Secretary of State’s office ultimately invalidated over 12,000 signatures it determined were unusable because of mistakes by signature gatherers, such as leaving the forms unattended. The draft order released Thursday found that the campaign was about 500 shy of the 67,682 necessary.

Poll Pile

• LA-Sen (R): JMC Analytics for John Fleming:

  • Julia Letlow: 45, John Fleming: 44.

• KY-Gov (D): Public Policy Polling for the DLGA (pro-Jacqueline Coleman):

  • Jacqueline Coleman: 40, Rocky Adkins: 14, undecided: 45.

  • Coleman announced her campaign last month, while Adkins has not yet said if he will run in next year’s election.

• SC-Gov (R): Cygnal for Rom Reddy:

  • Alan Wilson: 19, Rom Reddy: 16, Nancy Mace: 14, Ralph Norman: 13, Pamela Evette: 12, undecided: 24.

  • Unreleased early May poll: Evette: 19, Wilson: 15, Mace: 14, Norman: 12, Reddy: 9.

• NE-01: Tavern Research:

  • Mike Flood (R-inc): 41, Chris Backemeyer (D): 33, Austin Ahlman (I): 9.

• NJ-07 (D): StimSight for Insider NJ:

  • Rebecca Bennett: 36, Brian Varela: 20, Michael Roth: 19, Tina Shah: 19.