Representative John James, Republican of Michigan, announced on Monday that he would run for governor, jumping into an increasingly crowded, high-profile contest.
In a post on social media, Mr. James tied himself closely to President Trump while criticizing recent Democratic leadership of Michigan as “radical” and “out-of-touch.”
“It’s time to get Michigan’s government out of fantasyland and back to common sense,” Mr. James wrote.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat elected in 2018, is term-limited, which has set up a competitive 2026 race to determine her successor in the battleground state. On the Republican side, Mr. James joins Aric Nesbitt, the minority leader in the State Senate. Two prominent Democrats in Ms. Whitmer’s administration, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II and Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state, have also announced runs for governor.
Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary and 2020 Democratic candidate for president who is often mentioned as a likely 2028 presidential contender, said last month that he would not enter the governor’s race, nor would he run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Gary Peters, a Democrat who is retiring.
The governor’s race could be further complicated by the candidacy of Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit, a longtime Democrat who announced last year that he would run as an independent, an effort to distance himself from the Democratic Party brand after Mr. Trump flipped the state back to the Republican column in the presidential race last November.
Closely divided Michigan has seesawed between the two parties in recent years, with voters narrowly electing Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, to an open Senate seat while at the same time backing Mr. Trump for the presidency.
Mr. James, 43, has represented a competitive district in the northern Detroit suburbs since 2023, after previously losing two bids for the Senate. A businessman and former Army helicopter pilot who served in Iraq, he would be Michigan’s first Black governor.
In his announcement post, Mr. James underscored his credentials and suggested he would help to reverse a decline in manufacturing jobs in Michigan. “Our state has suffered long enough,” he wrote.
In a statement, Sam Newton, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, dismissed Mr. James as a right-wing politician who supports policies that would harm Michiganders. “John James has spent his time in Congress putting his own extreme partisan politics first, and now he’s running to bring the chaos and dysfunction of D.C. to Michigan,” Mr. Newton said.
