Last week, Republican Michigan Representative and gubernatorial candidate John James was handed a political gift. Al Sharpton bemoaned on MSNBC that Michigan has been deprived of black members of Congress for the first time in decades.
“Al, are you that blind?” James, Michigan’s only black representative, said in a reaction video he posted to X. “I’m here and I exist whether you like it or not. I went to war for the right to think for myself. You are not going to erase me because I don’t fit your bigoted idea of what a black man is or has a right to be.”
James then turned to the picture-perfect resume he has leveraged in the four races he has run since 2018: His 2018 loss to then-Senator Debbie Stabenow by a wide margin, his 2020 devastatingly narrow loss to Senator Gary Peters, his 2022 by-the-thinnest-of-margins win of his current seat, and his 2024 reelection. (RELATED: Battleground Michigan Is Up for Grabs Again in 2026)
“I’m a West Point grad, Ranger-qualified Apache pilot, combat veteran and businessman. I have one wife, two master’s degrees, three kids, and I am the black congressman from Michigan.”
John James has always seemed to be the ideal political candidate. His family values, insistence that service is his “calling,” and down-to-earth charisma made many believe that he could beat the odds and reclaim a Michigan Senate seat for Republicans by defeating Debbie Stabenow or Gary Peters. When both attempts fell short, it seemed a great waste of a generational political talent. John James had come within less than a percentage point of defeating Peters — a dramatic 13-percentage-point improvement over Peters’ previous election — and yet it hadn’t been enough.
When James announced a bid for a U.S. House seat so soon after his losses, he seemed at risk of being a career candidate. But he put his resume to work — including using a helicopter in his campaign logo to reference his service as an Apache helicopter pilot in Iraq — and pulled off a narrow victory on a grim night for Republicans. Despite expectations of major GOP gains amid skyrocketing inflation under then-President Joe Biden, James’s half-point win in a purple district was one of the party’s few bright spots. It seemed to confirm what many had long believed: that James had a promising political future ahead of him.
Yet since James’s announcement earlier this year that he will run for governor of Michigan to succeed term-limited Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, the reaction from Republican leaders has been less than enthusiastic. Many in the party worry that his decision puts his hard-won House seat at risk at a time when their majority in Congress is already razor-thin. (RELATED: The ‘Peter Principle’ Targets Michigan)
One of the House’s highest-ranking members, Michigan Representative Lisa McClain, voiced her concerns with James’s decision last month in an interview with the Washington Examiner. She called it an “understatement” to say that James’s planned departure from his House seat “is not ideal.” Later, she even said he was “absolutely” jeopardizing GOP control by running for governor, per Michigan Advance. McClain gave the negative commentary at the Michigan Republicans’ biennial meetup on Mackinac Island.
Disgruntlement with James seemed to be ruling the day on Mackinac Island. In a straw poll of 500 registered attendees of the conference, James attained only 14 percent support, following behind Michigan State Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, with 29 percent support, former Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard, with 23.5 percent support, and former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, with 18 percent support. Conference attendees seemed offended that James left the island prior to the Michigan Issues forum that included announced gubernatorial candidates and those laying the groundwork for a campaign. Kaitlyn Buss, one of the moderators of what was effectively an unofficial gubernatorial debate, wrote for the Detroit News of James’s absence: “[T]o be taken seriously as a gubernatorial contender, and even to assure others that he should be in that race, James must engage more publicly.” To some observers, James’s absence meant that he felt himself to be above the traditional rituals of party politicking.
Following the criticisms over James’s absence at the Mackinac Island event and his poor showing in the straw poll, James’s campaign sought to downplay the conference. Spokesperson Hannah Osantowske characterized it as an insider event disconnected from the Republican electorate.
“Political insiders and their echo chambers, along with agenda-driven media outlets, are completely out of touch,” she said. “Michigan’s primary voters are making their voices heard loud and clear, overwhelmingly supporting John James, who leads the Republican primary by nearly 50 points.”
“We can’t play small ball anymore. We can’t be cowardly conservatives.”
For his own part, James said, “In the past 48 hours I’ve spoken with seven media outlets; local TV, radio and print. I’ve participated in three public and grassroots events in three cities on two peninsulas and still made time to take my three boys to church and call my mom on Sunday. Despite what the pundits say, know that I’ll be a governor who continues to work as hard as you do!”
He attended a “mixed martial arts cage match” in Southgate instead of the debate.
James’s campaign says that internal polling puts him nearly 50 percentage points ahead of the next candidate. The little neutral polling that has been done on the race indeed shows him to be in the lead. A May Glengariff Group poll found that he had 42 percent support among registered Republicans, making him by far the top candidate.
In a May interview with the Daily Caller, James combatted the dissatisfaction with his decision to give up his House seat by arguing that a strong gubernatorial candidate could help lift Republicans across the ballot in the midterms.
“We can’t play small ball anymore. We can’t be cowardly conservatives,” he said. “We have to be bold. Without a strong top of ticket, we will lose seats in Michigan that jeopardizes President Trump’s agenda.”
He went so far as to assert that the party’s previous nominees against Gretchen Whitmer in 2018 and 2022 were “weak” and that their poor performances hurt downballot candidates. James even singled out Tudor Dixon, who faced Whitmer in 2022. “Our last midterm,” said James, “the last Republican nominee got blown out by ten and a half points.”
Dixon indeed seemed a poor choice to take on Whitmer. Her resume was thin. She’d worked for her father’s steel foundry for three years after being a stay-at-home mom for 15 years. In 2018, she began hosting a once-weekly program on the streaming channel America’s Voice Live. The talk show was a perfectly respectable endeavor, especially when raising children, but whether it qualified as sufficient preparation to govern a state of 10 million people was less than clear. (She had also had a few acting roles in low-budget horror films, for whatever that’s worth.)
“If we have a weak top of ticket,” James told the Daily Caller, “then we will lose seats in Michigan. We cannot lose seats in Michigan by having anybody else on the top of the ticket than somebody who has proven to outperform, to fundraise, and to make the ticket stronger. The priority is to make sure we have the strongest top of ticket. Because when we haven’t before we have lost seats, but with a strong top of ticket we will gain seats.”
In that same interview, James previewed the themes and priorities for his campaign.
“I love my state,” he said. “I was born and raised in Michigan, and it’s a state that my mom and dad moved to from the Jim Crow South. We came to Michigan for opportunity. They came for a better life. But now it seems that unless something changes, their grandchildren are going to have to leave for the opposite reason. They’re going to have to leave for a better opportunity. They’re going to have to leave for their life. And that’s unacceptable. The ten million people in the state of Michigan deserve better.”
As for his priorities, James says he will be “focusing on a prosperity agenda” that “centers on academic excellence, economic mobility, and public safety.”
If James manages to win the Republican primary, he will face a tough general election contest. He would go up against independent Mike Duggan, who has served as Detroit’s mayor since 2014, and who appears likely to pull votes from both Democrats and Republicans, as well as either Garlin Gilchrist, the current lieutenant governor, Jocelyn Benson, the current secretary of state, or another candidate. A possible entrant is the very liberal Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, who has not said whether she will join the race.
What is certain is that James will once again base his campaign on his familiar themes of family, faith, and service. In his video response to Al Sharpton, he declared, “Michigan is my mission field, and service is my calling. My loyalty is to God, my country, and my family.”
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