Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, a Michigan Republican who was ejected from the 2022 primary ballot for governor over fraudulent signatures, seems to have trouble both starting and ending his campaigns.
Craig said just last month that he was 99% sure he'd run to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a figure that appeared to increase to 100% when he told Politico over the weekend, "I will be a candidate for the workers because I am a worker." He then tweeted out that same statement on Monday in boldface.
But while that declaration, as well as his accompanying assurance—"We are going to win"—sure sounded like the words of a man who is 100% sure he is running for office, no news outlet appears to be treating the former chief as a declared candidate. Craig himself has yet to set up a fundraising account with the FEC, so he still seems to be content to merely talk like a candidate rather than behave like one.
Yet this is by no means the first time Craig has turned the routine task of announcing a run for higher office into an adventure. He told the world in July of 2021 that he was forming an exploratory committee to take on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, even though that sort of entity doesn't actually exist under Michigan law. He then went on Fox hours later and unequivocally told Tucker Carlson, "I am running," but he still insisted on waiting almost two months before holding a formal campaign launch.
But as hard as it is to believe, Craig would have been better off if he'd just let his comments to Carlson serve as the final word on his plans. About 50 protesters showed up to his long-planned kickoff at Belle Isle Park and chanted slogans like "Black Lives Matter." Craig, as the Detroit Free Press described the scene, was drowned out as he made several unsuccessful attempts to deliver his remarks before giving up and belting out, "I've got one thing to say: I'm running for governor!"
The candidate, who promptly left after delivering that line, made his case against Whitmer later that day in a far more controlled setting at an event space in Detroit, but almost all of the media coverage focused on his misbegotten first try. "I feel like they were paid," the Republican said of the demonstrators. "I don't have any hard evidence, but I feel like they were paid."
Craig also baselessly speculated that the state Department of Natural Resources, which oversees Belle Isle, was in on a plan to disrupt his launch. "They indicated they were going to come and move the protesters back," he told the Detroit News. "That never happened. So it makes me wonder if it was by design." However, the Free Press soon obtained texts in which a campaign staffer informed a parks official they understood that managing the crowd was "not on you guys." That Belle Isle event foreshadowed the chaotic operation that Craig would run over the next eight months, which culminated in him failing to make the ballot at all and waging a doomed write-in effort.
Normally, when a major (okay, or "major") candidate enters a race, our practice at Daily Kos Elections is to provide our readers with a reasonably detailed backgrounder on the new entrant—beyond their failed campaign launches, that is—and the race awaiting them. But given Craig's history, we think it's probably prudent if we hold off.
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