Michigan’s Republican primary for governor is now a twoman race. Former Attorney General Mike Cox ended his campaign on July 17, throwing his support behind U.S. Rep. John James and leaving businessman Perry Johnson as the only Republican still standing between James and the party’s Aug. 4 nomination.
Cox bent the knee due to President Donald Trump’s endorsement of James in late June that “placed him out of reach” in what had been a threeway race.
The move caps a fast-moving few weeks. Within hours of the endorsement, state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt dropped his own bid and endorsed James as well, shrinking a once-crowded field to three — and now, with Cox’s exit, to two.
James, 43, represents a district north of Detroit and is in his second term in the House after two unsuccessful runs for U.S. Senate. He’s built his campaign around Michigan’s economy, pointing to manufacturing job losses and what he calls economic stagnation under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He’s also made education a centerpiece, calling for a return to phonicsbased reading instruction and more accountability in schools, and has said that as governor he’d work with the Trump administration to tighten election security. Much of his message has been aimed squarely at Whitmer’s two terms in office, which he blames for the state’s problems on everything from education to jobs.
That record didn’t stop his own primary rivals from going after him first. At a pair of increasingly heated GOP debates on July 8 and 9, Cox and Johnson both took direct aim at James. Cox called him a “nepo baby” and argued that James Group International, the family logistics business James once ran, had collected state tax credits without delivering the jobs it promised. Cox also cited data from the trade-tracking site ImportGenius showing the company had brought in more than 900 shipments from China worth an estimated $1.25 billion, and accused James of hypocrisy on trade. James pushed back hard, saying the company’s work is for Ford Motor Co. and General Motors and dismissing the attacks as “deceit and defamation” from rivals he called desperate.
That leaves Johnson, a Bloomfield Hills businessman who built his fortune in qualitymanagement consulting, as the last Republican standing in James’s way. Johnson is selffunding much of his campaign — he’s said he plans to put roughly $9 million of his own money into the race — and has made eliminating Michigan’s roughly $13.5 billion income tax the centerpiece of his platform, along with a broader propertytax overhaul and a promise to consolidate and modernize state government using the efficiency playbook from his business career.
This isn’t Johnson’s first run at the governor’s office. He was one of five Republican candidates, including then-frontrunner James Craig, disqualified from the 2022 primary ballot after state elections staff found thousands of fraudulent signatures submitted by paid petition circulators — a scandal that later led to forgery charges against three people. Where that leaves the race heading into the primary’s final two weeks depends on which poll you look at.
Whoever wins will face a steep climb in November for a state that has not gone blue at the governors level since Rick Snyder.
