Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson has put 70,000 miles on his truck since announcing his run for Michigan governor, crisscrossing the state to build a case that he’s the Democrat who can win back voters the party has been losing.
Swanson, who launched his campaign at a Flint rally on Feb. 6, 2025, is chasing the Democratic gubernatorial nomination against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. He’s behind her in both polling and fundraising. He knows it. But he’s betting that grassroots reach and a stack of union endorsements can close the gap before the primary.
“I’ve said from the beginning, this dark horse has been underestimated, and I knew that my work ethic and my energy would carry me to where I’m at right now,” Swanson said.
The Outsider Play
Swanson is leaning hard into distance from the Whitmer administration, calling himself “a different type of Democrat” and positioning his county-level record as a contrast to Lansing insiders. He’s careful not to attack Benson directly. He told Michigan Advance he sees her as “an option, not an opponent” in the primary.
That’s a strategic line, not just a polite one. Swanson doesn’t want to alienate Democratic voters who like Benson. He’s trying to win them over, not drive them away.
His pitch rests on biography: paramedic since age 20, professor of public health at the University of Michigan-Flint, and now the elected sheriff of Genesee County. He’s framed his entire campaign around what he calls direct listening, not polling or focus groups, but actual conversations in living rooms, union halls, and diners across Michigan.
“You’ve got to listen to people and ask them where they hurt, and then give them hope and an inspiration that you can figure out a way to help them,” Swanson said. “When you are serving people who are absolutely broken, and I’ve seen so much death and violence, my heart breaks for people, and we try to fix and solve.”
That’s the core of his argument: that years of frontline public safety work taught him something political careers don’t.
Union Ground Game
The endorsements are piling up. Swanson has secured backing from more than a dozen labor organizations across Michigan, a list that stretches from the Wayne County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association to the Northern Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council. On Monday he added Boilermakers Local 169 to that list. IBEW Michigan endorsed him the week before.
Labor isn’t everything in a Democratic primary, but it’s a lot. Organized labor means phone banks, door-knocking, and turnout infrastructure that money can’t always replicate. Swanson doesn’t have Benson’s fundraising operation, so he needs that infrastructure to matter.
He’s also making a crossover electability argument, telling voters he can pull Republicans and independents in a general election in ways a candidate tied to the current state administration cannot. Michigan’s governor’s race is expected to be one of the more competitive statewide contests this cycle, with Democrats defending ground in a state that has swung both ways in recent presidential elections.
The Division Message
Swanson keeps coming back to one word: unifier. It’s deliberate. He’s watching national politics fracture along familiar lines and betting that Michigan voters are tired of it too.
“In politics today, I think people are looking for different leadership, somebody who can take care of everybody,” he said. “And if you look at the division throughout the country, starting from the national level and splitting down, people are looking for unifiers. And I’m tired of division. I’m tired of hate.”
It’s a message with real traction in a state that went for Donald Trump in 2024 after twice backing Joe Biden. Whether Swanson can translate that message into primary votes against a better-funded opponent is a different question.
He calls himself “the people’s champion.” After 70,000 miles, he’s still got time to make that stick.
The Democratic primary for governor doesn’t have a set date yet, but both Swanson and Benson are already deep into organizing across Michigan’s 83 counties. Swanson’s next test is whether his union ground game and crossover appeal can survive contact with Benson’s structural advantages when voters actually show up.
