MACKINAC ISLAND — The most important voter to every Republican running for governor in Michigan is actually registered in Florida.
His name is Donald J. Trump.
On the first day candidates, business and nonprofit leaders, and swells from both political parties arrived at the Grand Hotel for the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual policy conference, Trump chalked up yet another victory in a GOP primary.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s victory in the Lone Star State’s Republican U.S. Senate primary over incumbent four-term GOP Sen. John Cornyn on May 26 was Trump’s ninth victory in the nine U.S. Senate races in which he endorsed a candidate this year.
“Today, change was on the ballot, and change won,” Paxton told supporters in his victory speech, in which he thanked Trump for his endorsement and called him “the most powerful force in politics.”
It’s tough to argue otherwise.
A week before Paxton won, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie lost his bid for an eighth term when Trump-endorsed upstart Ed Gallrein won the Republican primary for Massie’s seat in Congress from Kentucky. And two weeks earlier, two-term U.S. Sen. Jim Cassidy finished third in the Louisiana GOP primary. Cassidy’s fate was sealed in January, when Trump encouraged U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow to run against him.
More than 100 of the U.S. House candidates Trump endorsed won their primaries, according to Fox News.
And the president was eight-for-eight in gubernatorial primaries until last week, when U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra lost in Iowa’s GOP gubernatorial primary. Zach Lahn barely beat Feenstra, who didn’t get Trump’s blessing until the last week of the race.
Trump’s near invincibility in Republican primaries got me wondering whether any of the four GOP candidates for Michigan could win their primary without the president’s imprimatur.
Since we were all on the island, I asked each of them what they are doing to woo Trump, whether they expect to get his endorsement, and whether they see a path to victory without his blessing.
I also asked some pretty savvy GOP operatives for their perspective on Trump’s prospective pick. What follows is the collective wisdom of the candidates, consultants and experienced Trump watchers.
The sincerest form of flattery
The Republican who gets the most votes in the gubernatorial primary will represent the GOP in the Nov. 3 general election, but you can be forgiven if you perused their campaign websites and thought the race would be decided by which candidate can plant the most puckers on the president’s posterior.
Mike Cox has all the subtlety you’d expect of a former Marine, homicide prosecutor and Michigan attorney general. That’s likely why he used ALL CAPITAL LETTERS to put the most MAGA of messages at the top of his website home page: FIGHTING TO MAKE MICHIGAN GREAT AGAIN.
MAGA, or Make America Great Again, has been Trump’s rallying cry since he first ran for president more than a decade ago.
But Carbon Copy Cox didn’t stop there. His website says he will “DOGE” state government, a clear reference to Trump and Elon Musk’s campaign in 2025 to pare down government and eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” via their Department of Government Efficiency.
Cox also promises to “Teach the ABCs, Not DEI,” parroting Trump’s call to eliminate “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs. He also promotes two other signature Trump issues: Gun rights and a crackdown on illegal immigration.
To bolster his border security bona fides, Cox mentions his wife, Laura Cox, a former special agent with ICE, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Laura Cox also could be problematic in the pursuit of Trump’s favor, but we’ll come back to that in a minute.
Quality control guru Perry Johnson calls himself a “MAGA conservative,” says he supports ICE and calls for a “mega audit.” There isn’t a ton of other information on his website, but his plan for “The Michigan Comeback” includes one of the most blatant examples of political pandering I’ve every seen in more than 30 years of covering government and politics: Johnson says eliminating the Michigan income tax will send $4,747 back to Michigan families.
Johnson’s website doesn’t explain how he came up with that precise figure, but a few people who are more cynical than me have suggested it has something to do with Trump being our 47th president.
If you’re big on Trump photos and thumbs-up, you’ll love Michigan Senate Republican Leader Aric Nesbitt’s website. Nesbitt and Trump combine to flash FOUR thumbs pointed skyward and, as of Friday, June 5, the website features at least two additional photos of Nesbitt and Trump.
Nesbitt also promises to fight the “woke” — Trump’s preferred term for liberal and what used to be known as “politically correct” policies — and says: “As governor, I’ll stand with President Trump and get to work on the priorities that matter to Michiganders — cutting taxes and red tape, backing the blue to lower crime, getting DEI out of our schools, and making sure our kids don’t have to leave our state to find opportunity.”
Nesbitt also wants to “Make Michigan Great Again,” and his online store features a variety of hats — including a red one that says “Trump was right about everything.”
Not to be outdone, U.S. Rep. John James has multiple photos of the congressman with Trump on his website, but so far he has had to settle for endorsements from pro-Trump Michigan rock legends Ted Nugent and Kid Rock.
James also wants to make sure you won’t miss that he will “Make Michigan Great Again” by making that vow in about a half dozen spots on his website. He also puts his own twist on MAGA by promising to “Make Work Great Again.”
In their own words
Repetition seems to come naturally to James who, each time I asked him about Trump, said almost verbatim: “The president is busy trying to bring peace to the Middle East and psychopaths are trying to murder him. The president has his hands full.”
When I interrupted to point out that Trump found time in his busy schedule to endorse Paxton in the Texas U.S. Senate race, James said: “Well, you’d have to talk to him about that. But he, right now, he’s focused on bringing peace to the Middle East. And right now, while he’s trying to bring peace to the Middle East, he had another attempt on his life in the past two weeks.”
He did add: “The president has endorsed me four times. He’s a friend. He’s said as much. And so I’m confident we’re going to try to earn his endorsement. But, ultimately, it’s up to him.”
On average, Nesbitt mentioned Trump once every two minutes when he chatted with my colleague Arpan Lobo and me. When I asked whether he had heard from Trump, he said: “I would love to have President Trump’s support.”
So he dodged the easy question. But when I asked Nesbitt whether he thought he could win without Trump’s blessing, he said only: “We expect, if he does make an endorsement, that we would get it.”
Johnson also declined to discuss whether he has heard from Trump.
“When we have communications, if I have communications, I can’t talk about communications,” Johnson told me. “I can tell you one thing, that I’m out here to win. That is the objective. And, obviously, if you’re going to win, you want to win over the White House as well.
“And I don’t think anybody argues that President Trump has a tremendous influence on all races.”
When I asked Cox whether there was any way a Republican could win the primary without Trump’s support, he said: “I haven’t really thought about that, ’cause I just assume he’s gonna give it to me.”
Then, like a good lawyer turned politician, he flipped the question, casting doubt on his opponents’ ability to get Trump’s coveted endorsement.
“One guy ran against him, called him names in Iowa. Said he was ‘Trump without the baggage.’ Tried to belittle the president,” Cox said, in an apparent reference to Johnson, who ran against Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries.
“The other guy called the president, said the president wasn’t fit to lead and couldn’t be trusted when he thought the president was gonna fail in his reelection, and now has abandoned him and has essentially cost the president a House majority seat, right?” Cox continued, in an apparent reference to James, who some pundits believe has made it more difficult for Republicans to hold his 10th District congressional seat by giving it up to run for governor.
“So, by process of elimination,” Cox concluded, “where else would it go?”
“Mini-strikes”
Since Cox brought it up, every candidate has what one GOP insider referred to as “mini-strikes” against them.
Cox’s wife, Laura, was state Republican Party chairwoman when Trump supporters in 2020 concocted a scheme to have Republican electors meet in Lansing to cast Michigan’s votes in the Electoral College for Trump — who had lost the election to Joe Biden.
“They were asking me to facilitate having the electors meet and sign some sort of document,” she said during a May 2, 2022, deposition with investigators from the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. “I was very uncomfortable with that.”
Laura Cox said she instead convened a ceremonial meeting to have the 16 GOP electors “sign a document stating that if perhaps something were to happen in the courts, they were willing and able to serve as electors from Michigan for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.”She also said she told a lawyer working with the Trump campaign that his plan to have electors hide in the Michigan Capitol overnight to cast their fake ballots was “insane and inappropriate.”
Nesbitt’s transgression was more straightforward, but no less offensive to Trump: He endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.
Johnson, as Cox mentioned, ran against Trump for president in 2024.
Not only did James potentially jeopardize Republican control of the House by running for governor, there is a Politico report from 2020 that quoted James as saying he disagrees with Trump on “plenty of issues.”
“Everything from cutting Great Lakes funding to ‘shithole countries’ to speaking ill of the dead,” James said, apparently referring to Trump’s comments about the late Sen. John McCain. “I mean, where do you want to start?”
On the other hand …
The two things every candidate agrees on is that they want Trump’s endorsement and, if they can’t get it, they want him to stay out of the race.
They won’t cop to that second point. But Michigan GOP Chairman Jim Runestad said he thinks that’s the most likely scenario.
“I would be surprised if the president weighed in, because what I’m seeing in some of these other races is where there’s a pretty solid chance that the person he is endorsing is gonna be the nominee. And for him to go out on a limb where there’s a lot of uncertainty, I mean, he’s really got to have a lot of stake in making that decision, and I don’t see that happening in Michigan,” Runestad told me, adding that with four formidable candidates, the outcome is still too uncertain.
Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall said he doesn’t know whether Trump has a favorite in the Michigan horse race.
“I think it’s a wide-open race,” he told me. “I have no indication that he will endorse.”
One factor that could sway the president is if a candidate pulls away from the field. Even though Trump received a lot of credit for Paxton’s victory in Texas, polls showed him leading Cornyn long before the president weighed in.
“He’s less concerned about governor’s races and more concerned about House and Senate races and enacting his agenda,” Republican consultant Jason Cabel Roe told me. “It would not surprise me if the president sat this race out.”
Polls show James and Johnson leading the pack.
Roe said Trump may have concerns about Johnson’s electability. But he added that if James pulls ahead in the last month of the race, which will be decided in the Aug. 4 primary, Trump might get off the sidelines.
“He loves to be in the winner’s circle,” Roe said.
Ultimately, Trump’s decision may come down to whether there’s a clear front-runner or, as in the Feenstra race in Iowa, he feels the only way his favored candidate can win is if he gets involved.
If Trump makes a late call in Michigan, will it be too little, too late — like it was in Iowa? Will the “mini-strikes” be a factor?
Another thing everyone agrees on is that the president has a long memory.
Then again, he did end up choosing a guy — we’re looking at you, JD Vance — who once wondered aloud if Trump was an “American Hitler” as his vice president.
So, while he doesn’t forget, on rare occasions, Trump forgives.
M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, director of student investigative reporting program Eye On Michigan, and host of the ML’s Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on X at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Voter Michigan GOP governor candidates covet is registered in Florida
Reporting by M.L. Elrick, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By M.L. Elrick, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
