Observers expect a close contest
By Liz Nass
Gongwer News Service
Ahead of the Michigan Republican Party endorsement convention later this month, the two candidates for attorney general are counting delegates and closing the gap, heading toward what looks like a tight race that could come down to whipping on the convention floor.
The two candidates come from extremely different backgrounds.
Kevin Kijewski rose to fame from the “false electors” case that was recently put to bed after Attorney General Dana Nessel’s decision to not appeal the decision to not bind over 15 defendants accused of attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Doug Lloyd has served as Eaton County prosecutor for over 12 years and has worked in the county office for just over 25 years.
The contest, in a race that is usually ignored until the general election, may provide insight into the state of the Michigan Republican Party: What do Republicans want to see from their attorney general? The activist or the steadfast prosecutor? A candidate focused on national issues or neighborhood streets?
Gongwer News Service sat down with both candidates to talk about their campaign ahead of the March 28 nominating convention. Party leaders also weighed in on how they see the nomination shaping up.
—————
Kevin Kijewski
Kijewski said it’s important to really understand the role and scope of the attorney general’s office, which faces a majority of civil claims, which is what he practices all the time.
In addition to representing Clifford Frost Jr. in the “false electors case,” Kijewski has been an attorney for the last 16 years. He also holds a superintendent position at the Archdiocese of Detroit.
The arguments and cases he fights tend to run alongside core conservative values in the President Donald Trump-era, such as fighting against the State Board of Education on sex education standards and organizing federal litigation to stop high school shutdowns in November 2020.
Despite his opponent claiming Kijewski will need on the job training because he has never served as a county prosecutor, Kijewski said it’s just as important to know the last time someone did a deposition, an evidentiary hearing with civil rules and filed a writ for certiorari in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
He also pointed to former attorneys general Frank Kelley and Bill Schuette, who were not prosecutors, saying while it’s important, you need “someone with a full gamut of experience tackling these issues.”
Election integrity is at the forefront of Kijewski’s priorities. He said the answer is simply stopping the political infighting on election, which has voters “questioning or scratching their head as a result.”
Instead, he would move to make sure the state is in compliance with the Help America Vote Act. The U.S. Department of Justice is currently suing Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for violating the act because she refused to provide unredacted voter records. He also said he would work with the secretary of state to remove ineligible voters from the voter rolls. If he finds the department not in compliance, he vows to take it to court.
In terms of other office initiatives, Kijewski said he would want to continue the efforts of the consumer protection unit. Some aspects he would change about the office is the record of suing the president and the size of the office’s budget, which he said
makes the Department of the Attorney General “the largest law firm in the state now.”
He also wants to create a Division of Parental and Student Rights. That would make Michigan the second state behind Florida to create a unit focused on the debate on school choice and parent’s rights in education, which has also been a political touchstone among the MAGA base.
Kijewski said he doesn’t believe name recognition resonates as much anymore, and he’s planning to visit areas where Republicans usually don’t visit, like Detroit and the inner ring suburbs to get his message on public safety, ensuring constitutional rights including the second amendment, evaluating affordable energy and taking a look at school choice issues.
Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be up against Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald in a candidate with national attention from the Crumbley cases following the Oxford High School shooting, or Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit.
One electability issue for Kijewski is a dropped misdemeanor domestic violence charge, which stemmed from a 2020 incident with his ex-wife. Some delegates and party leaders are worried the incident could make him vulnerable in a general election.
Kijewski said he is also facing these issues with delegates currently through a “whisper campaign” against him. He said he tells them “loud” that it is an “old matter from a long time ago during a difficult time for (his) ex-wife, and it was fully reviewed and completely dismissed by a Democratic prosecutor.”
“It's just really unfortunate how a political opponent would try to do something like this because they don't have any traction, and this is the only thing that they can do,” Kijewski said.
Kijewski said there are plenty of other politicians who have had accusations thrown against them like Trump, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and House Speaker Matt Hall, who faced allegations in a 2019 incident of breaking a then-girlfriend’s phone, saying “it's absolutely appalling when there's nothing there.”
He said he didn’t think the incident would hurt him at the ballot box.
“Voters really care about people that can make their lives better, day-to-day, and voters care about issues that are important to them and how you plan to as the attorney general address them,” he said.
—————
Doug Lloyd
Lloyd said as the last candidate to jump into the race from either party and a generally “unknown commodity” his campaign wanted to make sure there was a path forward. However, he said he’s seeing progress in reaching people, having hit now 70 out of the 83 counties to meet delegates.
He said in the meantime, he’s been intentional about having the best social media while also blasting out his priorities as much as possible, even if it’s just posting about hitting the best small-town restaurants on the way back from events and interacting with people.
In his relatively short time in the race, Lloyd has also pulled in big name endorsements: U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, former attorney general Bill Schuette and Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido. Alongside the heavy hitters, Lloyd has also received 62 endorsements from state prosecutors and 30 sheriffs.
Former attorney general Bill Schuette knows the intricacies of the race all too well, and he said Lloyd presents the best case for a Republican win in the race.
Schuette said he has known Lloyd for a long time, and he brings in both sides of the party: speaking the language of the GOP activists in his values and courting elected leadership, including major support from prosecutors and sheriffs.
“He’s got the ingredients that it takes,” Schuette said. “He's experienced and he's got integrity, his moral compass is straight up, straight north, and he is a strong worker.”
Lloyd will have a good chance against anyone the Democrats support, Schuette said, because he believes the party will prop up someone far left or what he calls “an AOC attorney general.”
Although Schuette said he didn’t know Kijewski, he thinks Lloyd has “the best credentials to win.” Still, Schuette said, he expects the endorsement convention contest to be close.
Between him and Kijewski, Lloyd said voters have to look at “who’s actually electable” and that experience matters, saying Kijewski has “never been in an elected position and never actually been able to show that he has the ability to win.”
“Everything that the attorney general does, I've already been doing, so training wheels (aren’t) going to be something that are necessary for me,” Lloyd said.
He also said Kijewski was just one of the many attorneys representing the electors, claiming he was conflating his involvement which “disfranchises all the work of (his) brother and sister attorneys who were working just as hard for their clients as well.”
Lloyd emphasized that one of the late electors, John Haggard, wrote him a check, and attorneys on the case, Steve and Dave Kallman, endorsed him.
Lloyd said he would also be aligned with consumer protection initiatives in the office and would address the amount of Medicaid spam calls Michiganders receive. He said he would also present better information to senior citizens on scams and look to reform the criminal department in the office rather than just focus on civil cases.
In general, Lloyd said the office needs new alignment, including helping the local county prosecutors with their workload by consolidating multi-county cases to the state level.
He generally questioned if the department is “getting bogged down and in the things that somehow don't matter instead of actually doing the things that will benefit the citizens.”
One initiative Lloyd suggests is to put assistant attorneys general in the Upper Peninsula office in Marquette rather than just having an office presence. Lloyd said he hears Northern Michigan prosecutors are overworked, including one county prosecutor who has not been able to take a vacation in three years because no one was able to pick up his docket for even a week.
He also called for modernization of the information system in attorney general’s office for more transparency and efficiency, calling their current methods “archaic.”
When it comes to a highly competitive candidate in the general, Lloyd said many Michiganders still live in bubbles when it comes to name recognition. That’s why he said he travels all over the state: to put in the time. When it comes to McDonald’s recognition specifically, he said he would save the discussion of her Hulu documentary on the Crumbley case and how tax dollars were spent for the general election.
Lloyd calls himself a disruptor because no one asked him to jump in the race, but he knew he wanted to do it anyway to effectuate change on a higher level than just in his county.
—————
What do the insiders and delegates predict?
John Sellek, CEO of Harbor Strategic Public Affairs, has worked on multiple successful campaigns for Republican attorneys general, working communications for Mike Cox and as campaign reelection manager for Schuette.
The most common thing he hears from voters is they are not even aware it’s an elected role, as nominations are usually overshadowed by the electoral races. Most of the time, Sellek said, the polls will remain undecided all the way until October when general election ads start flying.
He said, however, there is more emphasis on the office of attorney general now that it has become a litmus test for running for governor. He said AG could potentially stand for something else: “aspiring governor.”
Although it’s still a relatively smaller race, both the attorneys general’s associations are being flooded with more cash now than 15 years ago because the parties realized that if the attorney general candidate they support wins, then those offices can participate in policy battles or lawfare down the road.
Sellek said Lloyd and Kijewski are in two different lanes on building a base. Lloyd is hoping to play into the traditional lane of focusing on law enforcement issues and support from key players, and Kijewski is playing into the “MAGA activist lane.”
It’s not that the MAGA activist lane ignores the law enforcement piece, it just focuses on “the hot button issues,” mostly set by President Donald Trump and his administration on a national scale, he said.
Sellek said Lloyd’s has been an effective lane, but it has mattered less and less. Still, it’s a toss-up when it comes to his strong endorsements, which show he is gaining some momentum.
Kijewski started in a better position from the electors case fame, which Sellek said put him in a good position to court county level officials. Sellek said Kijewski has a narrowing lead.
“We're really seeing both wings fully occupied by each candidate, and so it's a test to see the strength of each,” Sellek said.
Oakland County Republican Party Chair Vance Patrick said both candidates have been putting in the work to earn the nomination, and the “enthusiasm for both candidates is off the charts.”
However, he said he hasn’t seen a “hometown” advantage for Kijewski in Oakland County, because delegates also see the merit of being a career prosecutor.
Ingham County Republican Party Co-Chair and former Sen. Norm Shinkle is putting his money on Lloyd, saying he has a best shot at a statewide race.
Shinkle said Lloyd is highly respected, has been around forever and has the right endorsements to make a difference.
Whoever wins the nomination, Sellek said, is going to have to compete with the unprecedented fundraising McDonald is raising on the Democratic side. This, and her notoriety in the Oxford High School shooting cases against both Ethan Crumbley and his parents, makes her a much bigger name than most attorney general candidates at this point in the race.
However, Sellek said they certainly have a chance to beat her because outside of the Detroit media market, people still don’t know who McDonald is, and it’s too early to call it now.
Patrick said Lloyd has name recognition in his own right with law enforcement because of his long history, and Kijewski can go toe-to-toe with McDonald, because his “youth and vigor” standout.
On the two paths to take as a candidate, Patrick said it’s important to remember Michigan is an epicenter for election integrity issues, which Kijewski keeps under his belt. Patrick said having what voters think is the right answer to election integrity could be a winning issue this year.
Overall, though, Patrick said ahead of the convention it’s not about someone rising ahead, it’s about someone tripping up. Hiring the right whip team to pull hardcore supporters on the floor is also important.
“It's just them in their final hours of the race trying to find out where the weaknesses are, and then just sharpen their tools to go into the convention,” Patrick said.
Sellek said up until more certain numbers in October, the candidates both need to run “retail campaigns” with targeted digital to build up awareness levels.
However, some of it just has to do with luck of how the rest of the Republican Party is doing in November, Sellek said.
“Those candidates are just going to have to hope that even if Trump is up and down in the issues that he's ends on the upswing, and there's little doubt that you're planning to try to end on the upswing,” Sellek said. “That means that things like the price of gas will have a more significant impact on candidates for attorney general and secretary of state than you would ever consider. The vibes and feelings toward that party and whether I'm going to vote straight ticket, that's going to really make a difference for them.”
Patrick said the most effective way to spend the weeks ahead of the convention is making it to all the clubs, sitting down with people headed to the convention and working the alternate voters. Overall, Shinkle believes this race will just have more interest with usual because of Republicans’ many complaints about Nessel. Some issues voters will need to hear about from the candidates will be remaining tough on crime and focusing on rule of law, which he said both candidates would “pass that test.”
Gongwer News Service
Ahead of the Michigan Republican Party endorsement convention later this month, the two candidates for attorney general are counting delegates and closing the gap, heading toward what looks like a tight race that could come down to whipping on the convention floor.
The two candidates come from extremely different backgrounds.
Kevin Kijewski rose to fame from the “false electors” case that was recently put to bed after Attorney General Dana Nessel’s decision to not appeal the decision to not bind over 15 defendants accused of attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Doug Lloyd has served as Eaton County prosecutor for over 12 years and has worked in the county office for just over 25 years.
The contest, in a race that is usually ignored until the general election, may provide insight into the state of the Michigan Republican Party: What do Republicans want to see from their attorney general? The activist or the steadfast prosecutor? A candidate focused on national issues or neighborhood streets?
Gongwer News Service sat down with both candidates to talk about their campaign ahead of the March 28 nominating convention. Party leaders also weighed in on how they see the nomination shaping up.
—————
Kevin Kijewski
Kijewski said it’s important to really understand the role and scope of the attorney general’s office, which faces a majority of civil claims, which is what he practices all the time.
In addition to representing Clifford Frost Jr. in the “false electors case,” Kijewski has been an attorney for the last 16 years. He also holds a superintendent position at the Archdiocese of Detroit.
The arguments and cases he fights tend to run alongside core conservative values in the President Donald Trump-era, such as fighting against the State Board of Education on sex education standards and organizing federal litigation to stop high school shutdowns in November 2020.
Despite his opponent claiming Kijewski will need on the job training because he has never served as a county prosecutor, Kijewski said it’s just as important to know the last time someone did a deposition, an evidentiary hearing with civil rules and filed a writ for certiorari in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
He also pointed to former attorneys general Frank Kelley and Bill Schuette, who were not prosecutors, saying while it’s important, you need “someone with a full gamut of experience tackling these issues.”
Election integrity is at the forefront of Kijewski’s priorities. He said the answer is simply stopping the political infighting on election, which has voters “questioning or scratching their head as a result.”
Instead, he would move to make sure the state is in compliance with the Help America Vote Act. The U.S. Department of Justice is currently suing Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for violating the act because she refused to provide unredacted voter records. He also said he would work with the secretary of state to remove ineligible voters from the voter rolls. If he finds the department not in compliance, he vows to take it to court.
In terms of other office initiatives, Kijewski said he would want to continue the efforts of the consumer protection unit. Some aspects he would change about the office is the record of suing the president and the size of the office’s budget, which he said
makes the Department of the Attorney General “the largest law firm in the state now.”
He also wants to create a Division of Parental and Student Rights. That would make Michigan the second state behind Florida to create a unit focused on the debate on school choice and parent’s rights in education, which has also been a political touchstone among the MAGA base.
Kijewski said he doesn’t believe name recognition resonates as much anymore, and he’s planning to visit areas where Republicans usually don’t visit, like Detroit and the inner ring suburbs to get his message on public safety, ensuring constitutional rights including the second amendment, evaluating affordable energy and taking a look at school choice issues.
Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be up against Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald in a candidate with national attention from the Crumbley cases following the Oxford High School shooting, or Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit.
One electability issue for Kijewski is a dropped misdemeanor domestic violence charge, which stemmed from a 2020 incident with his ex-wife. Some delegates and party leaders are worried the incident could make him vulnerable in a general election.
Kijewski said he is also facing these issues with delegates currently through a “whisper campaign” against him. He said he tells them “loud” that it is an “old matter from a long time ago during a difficult time for (his) ex-wife, and it was fully reviewed and completely dismissed by a Democratic prosecutor.”
“It's just really unfortunate how a political opponent would try to do something like this because they don't have any traction, and this is the only thing that they can do,” Kijewski said.
Kijewski said there are plenty of other politicians who have had accusations thrown against them like Trump, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and House Speaker Matt Hall, who faced allegations in a 2019 incident of breaking a then-girlfriend’s phone, saying “it's absolutely appalling when there's nothing there.”
He said he didn’t think the incident would hurt him at the ballot box.
“Voters really care about people that can make their lives better, day-to-day, and voters care about issues that are important to them and how you plan to as the attorney general address them,” he said.
—————
Doug Lloyd
Lloyd said as the last candidate to jump into the race from either party and a generally “unknown commodity” his campaign wanted to make sure there was a path forward. However, he said he’s seeing progress in reaching people, having hit now 70 out of the 83 counties to meet delegates.
He said in the meantime, he’s been intentional about having the best social media while also blasting out his priorities as much as possible, even if it’s just posting about hitting the best small-town restaurants on the way back from events and interacting with people.
In his relatively short time in the race, Lloyd has also pulled in big name endorsements: U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, former attorney general Bill Schuette and Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido. Alongside the heavy hitters, Lloyd has also received 62 endorsements from state prosecutors and 30 sheriffs.
Former attorney general Bill Schuette knows the intricacies of the race all too well, and he said Lloyd presents the best case for a Republican win in the race.
Schuette said he has known Lloyd for a long time, and he brings in both sides of the party: speaking the language of the GOP activists in his values and courting elected leadership, including major support from prosecutors and sheriffs.
“He’s got the ingredients that it takes,” Schuette said. “He's experienced and he's got integrity, his moral compass is straight up, straight north, and he is a strong worker.”
Lloyd will have a good chance against anyone the Democrats support, Schuette said, because he believes the party will prop up someone far left or what he calls “an AOC attorney general.”
Although Schuette said he didn’t know Kijewski, he thinks Lloyd has “the best credentials to win.” Still, Schuette said, he expects the endorsement convention contest to be close.
Between him and Kijewski, Lloyd said voters have to look at “who’s actually electable” and that experience matters, saying Kijewski has “never been in an elected position and never actually been able to show that he has the ability to win.”
“Everything that the attorney general does, I've already been doing, so training wheels (aren’t) going to be something that are necessary for me,” Lloyd said.
He also said Kijewski was just one of the many attorneys representing the electors, claiming he was conflating his involvement which “disfranchises all the work of (his) brother and sister attorneys who were working just as hard for their clients as well.”
Lloyd emphasized that one of the late electors, John Haggard, wrote him a check, and attorneys on the case, Steve and Dave Kallman, endorsed him.
Lloyd said he would also be aligned with consumer protection initiatives in the office and would address the amount of Medicaid spam calls Michiganders receive. He said he would also present better information to senior citizens on scams and look to reform the criminal department in the office rather than just focus on civil cases.
In general, Lloyd said the office needs new alignment, including helping the local county prosecutors with their workload by consolidating multi-county cases to the state level.
He generally questioned if the department is “getting bogged down and in the things that somehow don't matter instead of actually doing the things that will benefit the citizens.”
One initiative Lloyd suggests is to put assistant attorneys general in the Upper Peninsula office in Marquette rather than just having an office presence. Lloyd said he hears Northern Michigan prosecutors are overworked, including one county prosecutor who has not been able to take a vacation in three years because no one was able to pick up his docket for even a week.
He also called for modernization of the information system in attorney general’s office for more transparency and efficiency, calling their current methods “archaic.”
When it comes to a highly competitive candidate in the general, Lloyd said many Michiganders still live in bubbles when it comes to name recognition. That’s why he said he travels all over the state: to put in the time. When it comes to McDonald’s recognition specifically, he said he would save the discussion of her Hulu documentary on the Crumbley case and how tax dollars were spent for the general election.
Lloyd calls himself a disruptor because no one asked him to jump in the race, but he knew he wanted to do it anyway to effectuate change on a higher level than just in his county.
—————
What do the insiders and delegates predict?
John Sellek, CEO of Harbor Strategic Public Affairs, has worked on multiple successful campaigns for Republican attorneys general, working communications for Mike Cox and as campaign reelection manager for Schuette.
The most common thing he hears from voters is they are not even aware it’s an elected role, as nominations are usually overshadowed by the electoral races. Most of the time, Sellek said, the polls will remain undecided all the way until October when general election ads start flying.
He said, however, there is more emphasis on the office of attorney general now that it has become a litmus test for running for governor. He said AG could potentially stand for something else: “aspiring governor.”
Although it’s still a relatively smaller race, both the attorneys general’s associations are being flooded with more cash now than 15 years ago because the parties realized that if the attorney general candidate they support wins, then those offices can participate in policy battles or lawfare down the road.
Sellek said Lloyd and Kijewski are in two different lanes on building a base. Lloyd is hoping to play into the traditional lane of focusing on law enforcement issues and support from key players, and Kijewski is playing into the “MAGA activist lane.”
It’s not that the MAGA activist lane ignores the law enforcement piece, it just focuses on “the hot button issues,” mostly set by President Donald Trump and his administration on a national scale, he said.
Sellek said Lloyd’s has been an effective lane, but it has mattered less and less. Still, it’s a toss-up when it comes to his strong endorsements, which show he is gaining some momentum.
Kijewski started in a better position from the electors case fame, which Sellek said put him in a good position to court county level officials. Sellek said Kijewski has a narrowing lead.
“We're really seeing both wings fully occupied by each candidate, and so it's a test to see the strength of each,” Sellek said.
Oakland County Republican Party Chair Vance Patrick said both candidates have been putting in the work to earn the nomination, and the “enthusiasm for both candidates is off the charts.”
However, he said he hasn’t seen a “hometown” advantage for Kijewski in Oakland County, because delegates also see the merit of being a career prosecutor.
Ingham County Republican Party Co-Chair and former Sen. Norm Shinkle is putting his money on Lloyd, saying he has a best shot at a statewide race.
Shinkle said Lloyd is highly respected, has been around forever and has the right endorsements to make a difference.
Whoever wins the nomination, Sellek said, is going to have to compete with the unprecedented fundraising McDonald is raising on the Democratic side. This, and her notoriety in the Oxford High School shooting cases against both Ethan Crumbley and his parents, makes her a much bigger name than most attorney general candidates at this point in the race.
However, Sellek said they certainly have a chance to beat her because outside of the Detroit media market, people still don’t know who McDonald is, and it’s too early to call it now.
Patrick said Lloyd has name recognition in his own right with law enforcement because of his long history, and Kijewski can go toe-to-toe with McDonald, because his “youth and vigor” standout.
On the two paths to take as a candidate, Patrick said it’s important to remember Michigan is an epicenter for election integrity issues, which Kijewski keeps under his belt. Patrick said having what voters think is the right answer to election integrity could be a winning issue this year.
Overall, though, Patrick said ahead of the convention it’s not about someone rising ahead, it’s about someone tripping up. Hiring the right whip team to pull hardcore supporters on the floor is also important.
“It's just them in their final hours of the race trying to find out where the weaknesses are, and then just sharpen their tools to go into the convention,” Patrick said.
Sellek said up until more certain numbers in October, the candidates both need to run “retail campaigns” with targeted digital to build up awareness levels.
However, some of it just has to do with luck of how the rest of the Republican Party is doing in November, Sellek said.
“Those candidates are just going to have to hope that even if Trump is up and down in the issues that he's ends on the upswing, and there's little doubt that you're planning to try to end on the upswing,” Sellek said. “That means that things like the price of gas will have a more significant impact on candidates for attorney general and secretary of state than you would ever consider. The vibes and feelings toward that party and whether I'm going to vote straight ticket, that's going to really make a difference for them.”
Patrick said the most effective way to spend the weeks ahead of the convention is making it to all the clubs, sitting down with people headed to the convention and working the alternate voters. Overall, Shinkle believes this race will just have more interest with usual because of Republicans’ many complaints about Nessel. Some issues voters will need to hear about from the candidates will be remaining tough on crime and focusing on rule of law, which he said both candidates would “pass that test.”
––––––––––––––––––––
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