Many Detroit citizens were left disappointed after Mayor Mike Duggan announced he would not run for a fourth term as the city’s mayor on Nov. 13. However, much of that disappointment was flipped into excitement shared with many others in Michigan after he announced he is running for Governor of the state on Dec. 4. This decision comes with little surprise after this move had been speculated in the political world for a generous amount of time, considering current governor Gretchen Whitmer is ineligible to run in 2026 (Michigan’s next governor election) due to her being in her second term, which is Michigan’s limit for the position. What was unexpected, though, was the fashion in which he is running: Duggan, a lifelong Democrat, will run for governor as an independent.
In the 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.4 percent in Michigan. In the Senate race, Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic candidate, beat out former Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate, by 0.3 percent and a margin of just over 20,000 votes. Michigan is a historical battleground state and each party has had success in elections in it, but in such small margins in the recent election cycle, the 2026 governor race is an opportunity for either party to win. This is where Duggan gets an edge by running as an independent. Moderate/flip voters will decide this election (as they do with most) and moving his base to one that more citizens can relate to will help him capture those votes that he needs to get over the top. As he said in his announcement video, “I’m not running to be the Democrats’ governor or the Republicans’ governor. I’m running to be your governor.” While those in the state, Detroit specifically, know that he lies on the left politically, this is still a clear attempt at him trying to separate himself from partisan politics that many are frankly sick of.
Identifying as an independent is typically political suicide. In modern history, it is rare that we see independents hold prominent political positions, and never on the presidential level. In Duggan’s case, however, not only does it work, but it will help him for the reasons described above. It will not hurt him to run as an independent because he has already grown his name and support base in the state. He is no newbie in Michigan’s political scene who has to convince voters why going independent is worth abandoning their party; in fact, in 2020 he achieved an approval rating of over 68 percent in Detroit, the highest of any mayor of the city ever. While he has grown his support base as a Democrat, he should not worry about losing Democratic votes. The home of the Democratic party in Michigan is Detroit, which holds by far the highest number and concentration of Democratic voters in the state. And because of his resounding approval in Detroit, Duggan is able to hold those voters while appealing to more on the other side of the aisle as an independent.
