Why Did Mike Duggan Really Quit?
And what will happen now?
Editor’s Note: This column is a longer and fuller consideration of Mike Duggan’s surprise decision to drop out of the governor’s race last week. A version of this piece also appeared in the Toledo Blade newspaper. JL)
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DETROIT – Michigan politics frequently offer surprises, but there are only two times in the last half-century when I have been truly shocked. One was in 1990, when John Engler beat Governor James Blanchard despite polls showing that just couldn’t happen.
The second time was a week ago, when Mike Duggan, the politically savvy former Detroit mayor suddenly ended his independent campaign for governor this year.
Winning any statewide, non-judicial office as an independent in Michigan is a challenge so formidable that no other professional politician has tried it in modern times. But nobody rolled their eyes or laughed when Mike Duggan announced he was going to do this, for one big reason:
Thirteen years ago, he moved into the Detroit from a nearly all-white suburb, announced he was running for mayor, and then was kicked off the ballot on a technicality. He then announced he would wage a write-in campaign for mayor.
They laughed then. A pudgy, balding white guy from suburban Livonia was going to get African-Americans in Detroit to write in his name? But to everybody’s shock, more than half of the voters did.
That was the primary. Duggan easily won the general election, then the next two elections, before stepping down in 2025 to run for governor. Early on, things looked promising. Even though the mayor had been a lifelong Democrat, the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce immediately endorsed him.
Business leaders, impressed with what Mike Duggan had done, both when he was running the Detroit Medical Center and then as mayor, immediately started donating to his campaign, which had taken in nearly $5 million by last week. A number of prominent Democrats endorsed him either officially or made it clear they were supporting him behind the scenes. For a while, he was running even or slightly ahead of whomever the major parties ran.
Mike Duggan’s strategy was simple. He believed that Michigan voters had lost confidence in both major parties, and their unwillingness to work together to find solutions was ruining what had once been a vibrant, successful and powerful state.
As a result, he thought he could persuade voters it was time to turn to an independent with a track record of getting things done.
In a letter he sent supporters the day he ended his campaign, Duggan indicated that at first it seemed to be working.
“The excitement for real change carried this campaign upward for more than a year,” he said. But then, around April, “the mood of the country had shifted suddenly and dramatically,” he said.
What happened is Democrats and independents became “unified in anger as Trump’s war in Iran dragged on and gas prices rose above $5 a gallon.” People -- voters -- seemed to have forgotten their disenchantment with the Democrats.
This “intense anger was boosting Democrats in every office nationally.” What seems to have been the thing that drove Duggan to drop out happened May 5, in a special election in the Saginaw area for the Michigan State Senate. The vacancy was created when the incumbent was elected to Congress in 2024.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer clearly waited more than a year to call the election because she was afraid a Republican might win it, which would have resulted in a 19-19 tie in the upper chamber.
The Republican candidate, a former prosecutor, also appeared slightly stronger than the Democrat, a firefighter. But to everyone’s surprise, the Democrat won, 60 percent to 38 percent.
This was in a district Donald Trump lost by less than one percent of the vote. Duggan concluded this will be the year of an unstoppable Democratic landslide. In a letter to his supporters the day he pulled out, he said “I got into this race to change our politics, not to be a spoiler,” adding that it didn’t feel right to ask his backers to continue when “I no longer feel good about our chances to win.”
He also said that while he was raising money from Michigan donors, he couldn’t compete with the vast sums, perhaps exceeding $100 million, the national Democrats and Republicans could pour into the race.
It is clear that many of his supporters felt let down, even betrayed. Donnelly Wright Hadden, a 91-year-old environmental attorney was “deeply disappointed with Duggan now.”
“A viable third choice was SO very welcome, and his moderate, sensible and pragmatic democratic philosophy was SO well attuned to solving Michigan’s problems. I don’t understand why he quit so early, Hadden wrote to me.
It’s not clear whether Duggan, who turns 68 next month, has or wants a political future, or how he will use the $2.4 million left in his campaign war chest. In his farewell letter he talked about the continued need to reduce Michigan’s “toxic partisan politics.”
But it’s not clear how Mike Duggan thinks that can, or will happen now.
I'm still shocked and surprised. I know this man, and he would have been great. I keep waiting for news that he's changed his mind.
It's a shame Duggan isn't running as a Dem for the Senate. I would prefer him over the three candidates, and I believe he'd have a real shot. Thanks for the thoughtful post.