The Democratic Governors Association Victory Fund announced today that they are launching a digital ad targeting Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who is running an independent campaign for governor.
The ad accuses Duggan, who serves as a Democratic mayor, of corruption, highlighting a 2022 incident in which Duggan was linked to the outing of an FBI informant and alerted the target of an ongoing investigation.
“As Mayor, Mike Duggan put himself and his corrupt insiders first, including apparently trying to undermine a federal investigation into one of his closest political allies who went to prison for accepting bribes,” DGA Communications Director Sam Newton said in a statement, adding, “Michiganders don’t need a corrupt mayor to be their next governor.”
Michigan, a battleground state in federal and statewide elections, is preparing for a competitive race for governor next year, as incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, is term-limited and cannot run for re-election.
With primaries shaping up on both sides of the aisle, Duggan is hoping to find a path to victory by drawing support from Republicans and Democrats. And the digital ad, Democrats’ first paid attack against Duggan, could be a sign that the party is worried that Duggan could pull from their voter base in next year’s election.
Michigan’s statewide elections are known to be decided by razor-thin margins, with Whitmer winning the statewide vote in 2022 but Trump winning the statewide vote in 2024 by just over 80,000 votes.
In a statement to NBC News, a Duggan campaign spokesperson criticized the DGA ads as “toxic rhetoric.”
“The Democrats are nothing if not predicable. Mike Duggan said in his keynote address at the Mackinac Policy Conference that year-round political attack ads would become the norm in Michigan, and these ads prove that point,” the spokesperson said. “Unfortunately, this is the kind of toxic rhetoric between the two parties that we have come to expect, at least now they’re getting more interesting by going after a third party.”
