Michigan is a key battleground for 2028, and the fight starts now.
The key to winning in 2028 is being smart about who to support for the governor’s seat in 2026.
Many names are being thrown around, but the need to keep Republican control of the House and Senate for President Trump in 2027 and 2028 (and for the MAGA movement as a whole beyond 2028) limits the pool for governor.
So, let me suggest someone who grew up the son of a carpenter and domestic maid in a working-class neighborhood, and—like JD Vance—enlisted in the Marine Corps. From there, he became a homicide prosecutor in Detroit and then won statewide office as a pre-Trump tea party populist and working-class warrior.
Former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is looking at running, and he fits the bill of what the Republican Party needs in 2026. He won the closest statewide race in at least 50 years when he defeated Gary Peters by 5,200 votes–a razor-thin, 0.17 percent margin that was even more of a squeaker than when President Trump won Michigan in 2016 by 10,700 votes and a 0.23 percent margin. Mike won despite the top of the ticket in Michigan losing, and he beat retiring U.S. Senator Gary Peters in that race—handing Peters the only general election loss he’s ever had. (Full disclosure: I helped Mike in that race). In 2006, Cox again won by nine percent, despite Republicans losing the Governor’s and Senate races by large margins.
As attorney general, he refused to use his office to defend the University of Michigan when Jennifer Gratz, a white woman from a working-class suburb of Detroit, sued the university over its affirmative action admissions policies. After Gratz won in the United States Supreme Court, Cox supported Gratz’s and Ward Connerly’s effort to enact a Michigan constitutional amendment banning affirmative action in university admissions, public employment, and public contracting. Cox was one of the very few Republicans to vocally support what was called the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI). The voters of Michigan amended the Michigan constitution by enacting MCRI by a 58 to 42 percent margin, despite MCRI being massively outspent. Cox then led the fight to defend MCRI in federal court. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the validity of MCRI in 2014.
In 2007, after learning the State of Michigan was issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens and other non-residents, Cox again fought the status quo by issuing an attorney general’s opinion to prohibit Michigan from providing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. Just this past December in a lame duck session, Michigan Democrats tried to overturn Cox’s opinion with legislation, but that effort fell apart.
In 2010, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer tried to stem the tide of illegal aliens by signing the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (Arizona SB 1070), which, among other things, required local police to verify the legal status of all arrested or detained persons. When the Obama administration sued Arizona and Arizona’s Democrat Attorney General Terry Goddard refused to defend Arizona in court, Cox led other conservative state attorney generals to file a brief in support of Gov. Brewer and the people of Arizona.
Cox ran the Attorney General’s Office with a DOGE-like efficiency, cost-cutting and increasing performance for the benefit of Michigan taxpayers. He reduced the size of his office by over 20 percent while handling more cases and advocating for consumers, crime victims, and children who had gone without child support
In 2010, Cox was a tea party candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary where he lost to moderate Rick Snyder when he and three other conservatives divided up the conservative primary vote.
Since that time, Cox has been out of office for over a decade—and that’s a good thing. He is not a career politician or career candidate. After his public service, Cox started his own law firm and built a successful business taking up Republican causes and defending victims of overreaching big government and predators protected by institutions. For instance, in 2020, he successfully represented the Unlock Michigan committee, which sought by citizens’ initiative to strip Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency powers that kept Michigan shut down during COVID longer than most states, and shut down 32 percent of all Michigan businesses–the highest of all the states. Ultimately, in a different case, the Michigan Supreme Court found Whitmer’s asserted powers to be unconstitutional. This past November, the RNC hired Cox to represent it in federal court to defend President Trump and the Republican ticket over any election day integrity issues, which fortunately did not materialize. As a private lawyer, Cox is well known in Michigan and in the sports world as one of the three court-appointed lead counsel for 60 lawyers and 1,000+ former University of Michigan athletes who sued the University for the widespread, decades-long cover up of a predator team physician who sexually abused over a thousand athletes and students between 1965 and 1995 during medical treatment.
Cox is now exploring retiring from his private practice to run for governor and has already contributed $1,000,000 to his exploratory committee. He has stated that he wants to demonstrate he has skin in the game before he asks for a single vote, volunteer hour, or donation. If he runs again, Michigan would be on track to be “Great Again” under a populist Republican with a working-class agenda of eliminating the tax on work, enhancing public safety, and fixing Michigan’s failing public school system.
For Michigan’s sake, I hope he runs.
Steven Hantler was the political advisor to Bernie Marcus and is a retired auto-executive and father to two wonderful children.
