Jan. 30, 2026 | This Week in Government: Gubernatorial Candidates Head North to Talk Economic Development, State Agencies and the Path to the Primaries

Six downstaters vying to be the next governor walk into a hotel ballroom in the middle of a blizzard to make their pitches to a crowd of northern Michigan business leaders – just not all at the same time.

It’s not a setup for a joke, but it was the first time the six major candidates for governor appeared at the same event. Friday’s Northern Michigan Policy Conference saw Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, U.S. Rep. John James, former House Speaker Tom Leonard, former Attorney General Mike Cox, and Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt all take the stage to answer questions on the region’s most pressing issues.

The candidates didn’t participate in a traditional forum or debate format – it was proposed, but scheduling issues reportedly prevented all six from being available at the same time. Instead, they sat for individual, rapid-fire interviews for about 10 minutes each. For better or worse, most of the candidates didn’t directly interact with their competitors.

Economic development, housing and a makeover for the state’s bureaucracy were the topics most discussed across the candidate interviews. The conference’s first three interview subjects, Benson, a Democrat, Duggan, running without party affiliation, and Nesbitt, a Republican, expressed similar general statements about how they might approach governing a region that, while rapidly developing, faces an aging population and sky-high cost of living stifling talent retention.

All three said it’s time to get serious about cutting red tape and reconfiguring the state’s approach to economic development, but they differed on how. Benson and Duggan both emphasized the need to rework state departments and agencies to better serve regulated industries, particularly in the permitting process.

Nesbitt voiced similar views about the state’s departments but said foremost the next governor must “take a blowtorch to regulations” to drive economic growth.

“You look at a business that’s been here for four generations here in Michigan, with 700 employees, that does manufacturing in Holland,” he told reporters. “They build boats, and they’re four years into trying to replace their dock, and they still can’t get a permit to replace their freaking dock. That’s wrong.”

Although they disagreed on exactly how to go about replacing it, the Democratic, Republican and independent candidates each said they believe incentivizing businesses via tax breaks and grants is not a sufficient strategy to grow state and regional workforces and business ecosystems

James, a Republican, who was interviewed second to last, said if he’s elected, he would conduct an audit of state departments and agencies to weed out redundancies or identify organizations that could be consolidated within them. He also said the Michigan Economic Development Corporation needs to be “stripped down to the studs” and undergo a culture shift.

“The culture there needs to change, and this is what we focus on. We need to focus on retention,” he said. “We need to focus on retention and on the business that we already have here.”

On housing, perhaps northern Michigan’s most prevalent policy issue, the candidates proposed varying ideas on how to remedy a real estate market so expensive it’s begun affecting employers’ ability to hire and prevents the area’s young people from staying post-graduation.

Duggan proposed a gap funding pool that municipalities could access to support affordable housing, but which would only be available to communities with policies that would allow and enable affordability-focused real estate practices, like zoning for higher-density housing than many northern Michigan communities currently have.

“I don’t believe in overriding the local community, but if a local community only lets you build on one-acre lots of million-dollar homes, as far as I’m concerned, they should not be able to access assistance from the state out of housing subsidies,” Duggan said. “I envision creating a $500 million gap funding pool to help the communities that are willing. And that means you need to have policies yourselves that are going to encourage housing, and if one city isn’t willing to do it, maybe the next city over that wants to access the state money will do it.”

Benson said she would seek to reduce permitting fees for building new housing and work to cut down the waiting times for building permits, citing her experience overhauling the Department of State as proof she’s prepared to do so in other state departments. She also said another housing solution that should be explored further is regulating short-term or vacation rentals, controversial in the Grand Traverse region for contributing to shrinkage in housing supply and driving up of home prices.

“We have to partner with communities to redress the growth of vacation rentals that also drive up the cost of housing far too often,” Benson said. “That (could be done) in northern Michigan by working with local communities to make sure that we are creating and raising money off of the growth of vacation rentals, reducing the growth and proliferation of them, but also working with leaders in that industry to ensure that we are able to get funds to invest in tourism. We can actually regulate that piece of the process, and that will also drive down that cost of housing.”

On the political side, candidates were asked by press about their paths to victory, whether for Republican candidates in a still-crowded primary or once the general election kicks off later this year. Nesbitt said he feels confident about the support he has among the state’s most engaged Republicans. James has established himself as the frontrunner for the be the party’s nomination.

“We’ve been working hard every day, been building over the last year. We’ve raised over $3 million; we have over $2.25 million cash on hand,” he said. “We continue to grow the base. We’ve been engaging the grassroots – the last six straw polls that have happened in the state, with the grassroots, we’ve won all six of them. These are folks that know all the candidates best. That tells me that the grassroots is there. We’re getting the fundraising that’s needed.”

Duggan has the unique path forward among the candidates as an independent whose race could look quite different once the two major parties have their nominees this summer and activate statewide and national donor networks. The odds currently look to be stacked against him, but by a smaller margin than earlier in the cycle – a change he said shows that when people are made aware of a third option, they’re liking what they see.

“The reason that you’re seeing that I’m now only five or six points down is because a lot of the people who were never given a choice before are taking a serious look,” Duggan said. “When I started out, I was at 15%. They said that’s his cap. And I got to 21%, they said that’s his cap. Now I’m at 26%, they sort of say maybe he doesn’t really have a cap.”

Duggan is banking on a chunk of voters from both sides of the aisle defecting from straight ticket ballots but based on his status as a longtime Democrat prior to disaffiliating and his record in Detroit, he’ll be looking to pull more Democrats over to his camp as the cycle unfolds. He said he continues to hear from voters who feel disillusioned by partisan fighting or who feel like they aren’t well-represented in Lansing.

Benson acknowledged that there are many longtime Democrats that have fallen out of love with their party’s leadership in recent years and said the nominee will need to keep those concerns in mind alongside other priorities if they hope to win in November.

When asked how she would overcome the disillusion to rally support in a three-way race, Benson said she plans to take on not only the affordability and economic issues at the center of the 2026 midterm cycle, but also the social topics that are becoming increasingly important to many liberal voters under a second Trump term.

“(We overcome disillusionment) by building the winning campaign across the board,” she responded. “I’m going to be and I’m the only candidate in this race, I would argue, as a governor, (who) is prepared to not just improve our economy, but also stand up to anyone who would try to take our rights and freedoms away or threaten the safety of our communities. The next governor of Michigan is going to have to do both of those things in this environment and climate, and I think that’s going to become more and more clear to all voters in the state in the months ahead.”

More than anything, though, she said the next governor will need to show they understand voters’ concerns and priorities and be present in the places they care about.

“I think people are disillusioned by leaders who aren’t actually getting things done and standing up to protect them,” Benson said. “And as I’ve traveled the state, what is causing that disillusionment is that we’re in a moment where it feels like government is showing up everywhere we don’t want it, instead of where we actually need it.”

In a straw poll taken at the end of the conference, attendees were asked to rank the candidates on a scale of one to five based on how engaged they believe the candidate to be with the needs of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. A score of one indicated strong disengagement, and a score of five indicated strong engagement.

Duggan came away with the highest average engagement rating of 3.7, followed by Benson, who averaged 2.9. James had an average of 2.6, the highest average in the Republican field, followed by Cox’s 2.5. Nesbitt and Leonard tied for last place, each averaging 2.4.

A House committee considered ways to make sure that electric commercial vehicles were paying their fair share toward Michigan’s infrastructure.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee heard testimony on Tuesday on HB 5433, HB 5434, and HB 5435, which would establish a tax for electric commercial vehicles.

“When you look at how our road system operates today, there is a clear gap today. Diesel trucks pay for roads every time they fuel up, or in the case of interstate carriers, based on the number of miles driven in Michigan,” Rep. Pat Outman, R-Six Lakes, said. “Electric semi-trucks, however, can currently operate without contributing under that same structure, and that creates an obvious fairness issue, and also a long-term road funding issue.”

The bills apply a tax to commercial vehicles that use electric fuel and would be calculated using miles driven on Michigan roads. It would be tied to the existing motor fuel tax rate of $0.526 per gallon. The tax would not apply to passenger vehicles in addition to the use tax exemptions.

Four other states – Indiana, Iowa, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania – currently have tax structures for commercial electric trucks.

The bills would prevent a patchwork of electric truck taxes and would apply equally to interstate and intrastate trucks, Outman said.

“If Michigan fails to modernize this system now, we face a future where diesel use continues to decline, electric freight continues to expand, and road funding steadily erodes,” he said. “These bills ensure that as technology evolves, road funding adapts without shifting the burden on the families, taxpayers. or small businesses.”

Rep. Reggie Miller, D-Van Buren Township, asked if electric freight drivers would be unfairly double-charged with registration fees, but Outman said that it would not be different from the registration fees traditional diesel trucks already pay.

“It’s going to be the exact same tax structure as traditional diesel vehicles,” he said. “They’ll pay the registration, but they’ll also pay a user fee for the roads, just like traditional trucks do.”

Outman said he was open to changes if electric trucks were paying an enhanced registration fee.

Carmen Martorana of the International Fuel Tax Association testified in support of the bills.

“Being proactive now just makes sense,” he said. “The progression of electric vehicles is going to continue … if you have an electric commercial vehicle transversing through Michigan right now, they are not helping to contribute towards revenue to maintain the infrastructure, and that’s simply not fair … they’re not contributing in any form to the revenue that you use to support your infrastructure.”

Justin Carpenter, representing the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council, also testified on the bills.

The council was neutral, Carpenter said, but he acknowledged the importance of adapting to electric vehicles.

“There has been a nationwide challenge to adapt our transportation tax structures to electrification,” he said. “We wanted to express our mutual interest in ensuring that Michigan meets that challenge in a fair and balanced manner.”

No further action was taken on the bills on Tuesday.

When Republicans took control of the House last year, they created several new committees for the chamber.

Among them was the House Rules Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Bill Schuette, R-Midland.

A year into House Republican control and the Rules Committee process, Schuette told Gongwer News Service the committee has operated to ensure that lawmakers aren’t delegating their lawmaking duties to departments and to make sure laws are necessary.

“It’s to make sure that we’re looking for ways to reduce government red tape and make life more affordable for Michiganders,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re not doing legislation for the sake of legislation, and the legislation is doing what we wanted it to do.”

The committee also exists to make sure that there aren’t unintentional loopholes in legislation, Schuette said.

“We’re just making sure that the legislator’s intent and the Legislature’s role is clearly defined in the statue,” he said. “We benefit as a Legislature and as a body from making sure that the work that we do is fine-tuned and impactful.”

Of the roughly 433 bills that committees other than Rules have moved this term, 70 of those bills have gone through Rules, which is about one in every six bills, a Gongwer News Service analysis showed.

Those bills have been spread across 12 committees, but most of them have been referred to the House Rules Committee by the House Regulatory Reform Committee and the House Health Policy Committee.

The hard and fast rule for when a bill is referred to his committee, Schuette said, is if it deals with the promulgation of or the creation of administrative rules.

Of the 70 bills that have been referred to Rules, 18 of them have been referred by the House Health Policy Committee, and 17 bills have been referred by the House Regulatory Reform Committee.

The House Education Committee has referred seven bills to Rules, and the House Government Operations Committee has referred five. The House Energy Committee, House Election Integrity Committee, and House Natural Resources and Tourism Committee have all referred four bills each.

The House Agriculture Committee and the House Economic Competitiveness Committee have both referred three bills, while the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and House Finance Committee have both referred two.

The House Families and Veterans Committee has referred one bill to Rules. The House Insurance Committee and the House Judiciary Committee are the only two committees outside of the House Appropriations Committee that have not referred any bills to Rules.

“We’ve had a lot of bills from Health and a lot of bills from Reg, but we’ve also had bills from Natural Resources, and we’ve had bills from Education. We’ve had bills from Elections,” Schuette said. “So, a lot of great opportunities to work on a host of different issues.”

There have also been nine bills reported to the floor by other committees that were then re-referred to Rules.

For example, HB 4277, sponsored by Rep. Parker Fairbairn, R-Harbor Springs, would require intermediate school districts to employ one emergency and safety manager and at least one mental health coordinator. The bill was reported by the House Education and Workforce Committee in April 2025 and advanced to Third Reading on the House floor a month later. On May 14, it was sent to Rules.

Similarly, HB 4244, sponsored by Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford, would require Michigan to recognize the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. It was reported by the House Government Operations Committee in April, advanced to Third Reading, and then was sent to Rules in May.

Another example is HB 4279, sponsored by Rep. Jaime Green, R-Richmond, which would create an apprenticeship program for the Michigan National Guard. It was reported to the floor by the House Families and Veterans Committee on May 6, 2025, and it was referred to Rules later that month. The bill was then reported to the floor again by the Rules Committee in September with a new substitute, and it has sat on the floor since.

Schuette said the process of re-referring a bill to Rules allows the lawmakers to do more work on a bill without going through multiple floor amendments.

“If there’s a particular bit of legislation that has sat on the floor for a while and we think we need to do some additional work on it, there have been some cases where bills have then been referred to Rules for the opportunity to do that modification in a committee process,” he said. “The legislative process sometimes it takes building a consensus, and it takes collaboratively working on bills to do that.”

There are 34 bills and one joint resolution pending in the Rules Committee. Of the 34 bills, only one is a Senate bill. The committee has reported 62 bills so far this term.

Rep. Joey Andrews, D-St. Joseph, has had his bill, HB 4385, sitting in the Rules Committee since last June. This, he said he believes is mostly because House Republicans introduced a similar bill sponsored by one of their own members.

Andrews said that he is supportive of the mission of the Rules Committee as it was introduced at the beginning of the term.

“I’ve been pretty vocal that the Legislature needs to take its rules-making power back,” he said. “I just don’t know that I’ve seen the Rules Committee do that.”

Andrews said he would love to see the committee dig into the overly broad administrative powers that departments can use to skirt around the Legislature, but so far, he said he feels the committee has largely operated as a “redundancy in the process.”

“What we’ve mostly seen is it’s been a holding place for bills on the way to the floor,” he said. “Testimony has been largely perfunctory.”

He said he had no objection to a committee that operates that way, but he said he felt if that was the case, House Republicans should call it what it is.

“Just have a Ways and Means Committee,” Andrews said. “That’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do.”

There was a Ways and Means Committee in the 2019-20 term that functioned as a holding spot for most bills before they could go to the floor.

Schuette said he was proud of the work the Rules Committee has done in the last year.

He also highlighted the report put together by the committee on regulatory reform.

“Another part of the Rules Committee mandate is to make sure that we’re not over delegating the Legislature’s power to state bureaucrats, to allow them, through the rule-making process, to gain more authority,” he said.

In the coming weeks and months, Schuette said he expected that many of the regulatory bills proposed by the report would be moving through committee and passed by the House.

“That’s just about making life more affordable for Michiganders and making sure the government isn’t getting in their way,” he said.

The Michigan Strategic Fund Board approved over $4 million in grant funding for Volkswagen to keep the company in Auburn Hills amid its weighing of Michigan and Tennessee for continued operations.

Still, the company is downsizing its footprint. The move includes a $13 million investment from the company and retention of 909 jobs. Michelle Grinnell, chief communications and attraction officer at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, said the company’s decision is not utilizing the whole space currently and looking to consolidate operations.

“It will not be the grant alone that makes the case for Volkswagen to remain in Michigan as part of our proposal, and in our conversations with the company, our talent and workforce remain a North Star for Michigan,” Grinnell said. “Moving operations out of Michigan would have real financial costs in the form of relocation and rehiring costs, and also significant costs in lost productivity and building the talent pipeline that is ready to go in Michigan.”

But, the move is simply across town and includes a recent downsize. The company is cutting around 200 jobs, with 1,100 employees originally, according to the MEDC.

Danielle Emerson, spokesperson for the MEDC, said the positions were already in the process of being phased out due to company decisions related to call centers, and the decisions were made independently and prior to the project.

Grinnell told reporters the project is an “atypical structure,” butthe job retention is important with the grant keeping the company and those remaining jobs in metro Detroit for another seven years as laid out in the contract.

Grinnell also underscored the importance of keeping a global company in the state.

Kjell Gruner, Chief Executive Officer of Volkswagen Group of America, called the deal a practical plan to build on “what already works today and what positions (them) for the future,” while also being close to Michigan universities and research centers.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also praised the grant approval in its effort of protecting good-paying jobs for Michigan families.

“Michigan put the world on wheels, and since I took office, we’ve worked hard to grow our economy and secure more than 36,000 auto jobs,” Whitmer said in a statement. “I’m grateful that Volkswagen continues to see the benefit of Michigan’s strong auto supply chains and talented workers, and I look forward to their continued success here in our state.”

The Detroit Regional Partnership also promised talent service resources for Volkswagen.

Grinnell said it was clear the automotive industry was going through uncertainty and many European automakers are doing production in the South, with other real opportunities to consolidate, needing to highlight the benefits of staying in Michigan.

The board also approved changes to State Essential Service Assessment Exemptions for business property taxes, changing how the board would evaluate which companies would be eligible for those tax cuts.

The guidelines added employee wages and settling in economically disadvantaged areas as investment requirements for the board to weigh. The changes also added a 10-year exemption between the usual five-and-15-year programs, which would qualify for investments of $50 million to $100 million and removed a definite commencement time for businesses, changing it from three years from investment date to a board-determined investment period.

Erik Wolford, strategic project advisor for the MEDC, said he still expects many of the investment windows to be around three years, but now would allow the board to approve terms.

For the wage considerations, Wolford said it will be a general measurement of investment instead of providing specific wage requirements. While the MSF usually highlights above-median wages in projects, Wolford said theoretically, projects below the median-wage could be eligible anyways.

Other projects approved by the MSF board on Tuesday include $2.7 million for the Michigan Central Innovation District to partner with TechTown Detroit in fostering start-ups with entrepreneurs. The board first approved $7.5 million in 2022 for Michigan Central’s launch.

The board also approved $1.5 million for the Public Spaces Community Places Program, as a crowdfunding, match fund-based program to rejuvenate public spaces across the state. The program has been around since 2014 and created 31 new spaces just last year.

A lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s administration attempting to block future litigation against the fossil fuel industry by Attorney General Dana Nessel has been dismissed.

Judge Jane Beckering ruled in favor of the state in filing state-law claims against the fossil fuel industry on climate impacts. Nessel filed a motion to dismiss this federal suit last June.

Beckering, in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Michigan, claimed in her ruling that the case lacked jurisdiction to hear the case because the dispute from the Trump administration did not establish standing to bring the case where the U.S. Department of Justice claimed the suit obstructs federal efforts to regulate energy and the environment.

“This lawsuit was a cynical attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate my office into abandoning our responsibility to hold powerful corporations accountable for putting profits ahead of the health, safety, and energy affordability of Michiganders,” Nessel said in a statement. “I am relieved the court saw through this and dismissed this frivolous case. My office will not be bullied, and we will continue to stand up for the people of Michigan, no matter how domineering the interests we face.”

Beckering claimed the climate objections followed similar intent as lawsuits against industry leaders in tobacco, opioids, lead pain and previous climate litigation, emphasizing the importance of state authority in litigating on behalf of public welfare.

Nessel, however, has set her sights on other goals rather than just the climate change impacts, filing a new federal antitrust lawsuit last week against BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute for violations of antitrust laws in the state and federally.

She claimed the companies acted as “cartels,” in restraining competition from renewable energy and maintaining market dominance over cheaper energy prices for Michiganders.