How Did We Get Here With The Duggan Drop?

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 05/22/2026) A small group of folks close to former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan received a 48-hour notice that he would publicly end his independent campaign for governor. One source told MIRS that when he no longer saw a path toward winning, he wouldn't wait and pretend that he did.

Duggan made headlines on Thursday when he ended his independent governor's run 56 days before the upcoming fundraising filing deadline. It was also more than 530 days after he announced in December 2024, attracting national attention as a well-connected, viable independent challenger in the aftermath of President Donald Trump winning Michigan by 1.4 percentage points.

He had wealthy allies like Rocket Companies Chair Dan Gilbert, Executive Chair Bill Ford of the Ford Motor Company and Roger Penske of the Penske Corporation, the transportation services company.

Despite notable relationships with Michigan's top business leaders, as well as $14 million dropped on third-party ad spending, there was skepticism towards how well it would compare to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) and Democratic Governors Association's (DGA's) long-standing fundraising infrastructure.

The Duggan camp also watched as new Sen. Chedrick Greene (D-Saginaw) won the 35th Senate district – which was recently considered a political battleground, home to numerous blue-collar Trump voters and union Democrats – by nearly 20 percentage points.

Lon Johnson, 2013-15 chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, said it was honorable for Duggan to drop out ahead of the Mackinac Island Policy Conference, where the Detroit Regional Chamber (which endorsed Duggan last year) would have given him significant stage time.

"He did the honorable thing . . . he wasn't going to put his supporters through a process that he, in his own mind, knew wasn't going to work out," Johnson said. "He did the honorable thing by saying it wasn't going to work out. He can hold his head up high, and he doesn't drag a lot of people down with him on a failed effort."

Johnson said the reality is, for a third-party candidate to win in Michigan, one major party must absolutely collapse. '

"For a victory path for Mike, he needed to keep both major parties below 35%, and that just wasn't going to happen," Johnson said.

In 2025, Duggan supporters touted polling by a Glengariff Group Inc. that used a sample of 600 registered voters. It found that in a hypothetical matchup, Duggan would receive 21.5% of the vote, behind U.S. Rep. John James (R-Shelby Township) with 34% and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson with 34.5%.

A similar Glengariff poll released on May 12 of this year found Duggan at 23%, James at 29.2% and Benson at 34.2%.

Republican strategist Jason Cabel Roe, who served as the Michigan Republican Party's executive director in 2021, saw Duggan's campaign suspension as a "premature evacuation."

"He is not on the ballot for six months, and so what a poll says six months out is meaningless to me," Roe said. "I've talked to people in his orbit about this . . . they talked about how everyone in the electorate was getting more partisan and going to their corners. Well, yeah, because there's a primary going on in which the partisans are participating, and he is not."

Roe said that Duggan's job should have been to stand and hold the partisans' coats "while they kick the crap out of each other." He thinks Duggan is going to regret this week's suspension at some point.

In August 2013, Duggan was the top vote-getter in a primary featuring then-Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon and former controversial city attorney Krystal Crittendon. As a write-in candidate, Duggan walked away with 51.7% of the 94,239 votes cast that summer.

But on June 21 of that year, Duggan told radio journalists that he didn't have any desire to get back into politics after being barred from having his name on Detroit's ballot because he had not lived in the city long enough. A week later he announced that he would attempt a write-in candidacy.

"He's a guy from Livonia who won a write-in campaign for mayor of Detroit. If anybody could have pulled this off, Mike Duggan could have," said Brad Williams, the director of the Lansing-based Clark Hill Public Strategies and former Detroit Chamber government relations vice president.

Williams said he wholeheartedly supported Duggan's candidacy and felt it would be seen through to the end. But when the latest Glengariff poll, which the Detroit Chamber paid for, showed Duggan not holding onto his support, Williams said Duggan had to do what was best for him and his family.

"What I think this shows is that real reform, the olive branch that comes from bipartisanship, is going to have to come from the two-party system," Williams said. "Duggan supporters are going to come back to their original party, and they'll need to push their candidates to break this duopoly of ideas from the two-party system."

He noted that running as an independent comes with organizational challenges, unable to be introduced and hosted by local county chairs and party clubs like partisan candidates can be.

Suspicions are now circulating around what could be Duggan's next move. Does Duggan get tapped to become the University of Michigan's next president, as he has both a bachelor's and a law degree from the university?

Additionally, who does he endorse, as moderate voters who knew him the most in Metro Detroit, ticket-splitting battlegrounds like Downriver, Macomb County and certain white-collar Oakland County hubs wonder where to go now?

Democrats suspect his supporters will come to them, so they are treating Duggan as graciously as possible.

Benson earlier this week called Duggan at the UAW debate a lying “corporate candidate." Now, she said Duggan made the case to bring "more civility, more listening, and more people willing to work together" to politics.