The other Michigan race corporate America is watching

Por Joseph J. Schatz — POLITICO – TOP Stories

It’s nearly impossible to break through the political media maelstrom in Michigan right now if your name isn’t Abdul El-Sayed or Mike Rogers.

But GOP and Democratic operatives in Lansing, Washington and beyond — not to mention utilities, energy and health care companies and law firms — are closely watching the low-profile, undercard struggle to succeed Dana Nessel, the state’s term-limited Democratic attorney general and one of the country’s most active corporate enforcers.

With 31 attorney general seats up for grabs in state capitals and D.C. this November, the Republican Attorneys General Association sent donors a fundraising plea Oct. 15, shared with POLITICO, saying that the Michigan race between two local government prosecutors — Democrat Eli Savit and Republican Doug Lloyd — is the party’s best opportunity to flip a seat in a punishing electoral environment.

As Adam Piper, RAGA’s executive director, put it: “There are two statewide elected officials who have the ability to alter, stop or change federal policy: a U.S. senator and a state attorney general. The difference is a state attorney general doesn’t need to ask permission to take legal action.”

Corporate and big-dollar donors have been particularly responsive this cycle; the Republican group and its Democratic counterpart in Washington are both reporting record contributions as corporations see state attorneys general ramp up their activity in the energy, tech, AI and health care sectors.

And Nessel is one of the attorneys general who’ve put their offices on the front line of the fraught energy, utility and data center battles roiling the American polity. In battleground Michigan, Nessel — who is finishing her second four-year term — has been challenging rate hikes from some of the state’s largest utilities, probing the impact of data center expansion plans and challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to keep an aging coal plant from shuttering.

Savit, a prosecuting attorney from Washtenaw County who clerked for former Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is pledging to carry that banner on utility rates, and to ensure that tech companies building data centers don’t pass the costs onto ratepayers.

“The attorney general is the one actor that can go in front of our Michigan Public Service Commission, which approves rate hikes from our utilities, and challenge rate hikes as unjustified on behalf of the people of the state of Michigan,” Savit said by phone last week. “I intend to wield that authority aggressively.”

Internal polling from RAGA conducted by OnMessage Inc. showed Savit ahead of Lloyd, 43.8% to 42.2%, with 14% undecided, within the poll’s margin of error. An internal DAGA poll from Global Strategy Group shared with POLITICO this week showed Savit up 43% to 40%.

Savit, an adjunct lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School who wrote a 2017 article titled “The New Front in the Clean Air Wars: Fossil-Fuel Influence Over State Attorneys General — and How It Might Be Checked,” says he isn’t taking contributions from utilities. (Michigan progressives are simultaneously backing a ballot referendum that would limit campaign contributions from utilities like Consumers Energy and DTE — whose rate hikes Nessel has challenged.)

Lloyd’s campaign did not respond to multiple interview requests and questions from POLITICO.

Lloyd, who has been the elected prosecuting attorney in Eaton County since 2013, said in a Sept. 28 debate with Savit that he intends to be “very aggressive” on utility rates and has said he wants regulations put in place on data centers.

But he also argues that Nessel — who brought a federal antitrust suit against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan earlier this month — has politicized the office by taking legal action too often. “Nobody ever asked me who I’m going to sue. Everybody’s always asking me who I’m going to prosecute,” Lloyd said in the debate. “And that’s where I really think Dana Nessel has not done a good job in the attorney general’s office.”

Nessel did not respond to an interview request from POLITICO.

That right to sue — companies or the federal government — is at the heart of the growing influence of state AGs in energy, tech, health care and beyond.

Foley & Lardner LLP, one of the national law firms closely watching attorney general races, noted in an Oct. 9 analysis that “given Michigan’s importance to the automotive, manufacturing, energy, and consumer-facing sectors, the race is particularly significant for businesses as changes in leadership directly impact labor law enforcement, environmental transition mandates, and regional consumer safety standards.”

How one uses that leadership pulpit obviously also depends on who’s in the White House. Democratic attorneys general have sued the Trump administration more or less constantly since the beginning of 2025 over tariffs, funding battles, voting rights and more, just as Republican attorneys general complicated life for Barack Obama on health care and Joe Biden on energy policy.

Savit points to Nessel’s efforts to overturn the Department of Energy’s emergency orders keeping the J.H. Campbell coal plant in West Olive, Michigan, running months past its planned retirement date last year as a key success. A federal appeals court overturned the emergency order in September, a blow to the Trump administration’s broader efforts to save coal plants.

Lloyd hasn’t waded into the Campbell debate. That said, RAGA’s Piper calls energy one of the biggest divides between the parties in AG races.

“You have Republican AGs who are entirely pro-energy: below our feet, secure, affordable, reliable American energy. You have a lot of Democrat AGs who view themselves as climate warriors, the Green New Deal,” Piper told POLITICO.

But it’s instructive to see how Republicans are spending their money in the final weeks of the campaign — not focusing on the Green New Deal or energy prices, but rather hammering Savit on issues related to public safety, crime and drug prosecutions and his Washtenaw office’s decision to, in effect, decriminalize consensual sex work.

Savit argues that “it’s personal attack after personal attack, negative ad after negative ad, and I really do think that people in the state are just tired of that.”

RAGA has sought to paint Savit as too left-wing for Michigan — seizing on El-Sayed’s progressive campaign — as it tries to motivate national donors in the final weeks of the election to send an additional $2 million for the Michigan race, on top of more than $1.6 million that RAGA says it has already spent in support of Lloyd.

“He has been supported by Bernie Sanders in the past and is debatably to the left of Abdul El-Sayed,” the memo says. “Getting in money now can increase RAGA’s ad buys for the final three weeks.”

Sean Rankin, the president of the Democratic Attorneys General Association, projected confidence that Michigan’s AG seat will remain blue. “I don’t think they can spend significantly and change the fundamental dynamics of the race. We made a real smart early investment in the state. We knew we needed to get things set early and Eli has been a great candidate.”

The dynamics of the Senate battle will also undoubtedly affect the Savit-Lloyd outcome. But for now, Savit says that the Senate drama is keeping his race under the radar, for good or bad.

“If I’m being honest, it has certainly made it more difficult to break through. There’s no question about that,” Savit says. “You turn on the TV here at any given time, and you’re going to be besieged with ads focused on our U.S. Senate race.”

Hassan Kanu contributed to this report.

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories