As 2025 begins, time to ponder Michigan’s Top 5 political questions

Shouldn’t we be taking a break from politics?

Yes. 2024 was exhausting, but we got our break. The world doesn’t stand still, and there are many questions going into the new year.

We’ll discuss city politics with Mayor Andy Schor, et al., later. For now, we have state-level political questions.

First up is whether this new Republican-led state House will work with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and a Democratic-controlled state Senate. The answer is somewhat obvious.

Yes. They’ll work together, slowly. There will be contention. There will be some deal-making. The House will pass stuff that never gets signed.

Let’s move on to more definitive political questions.

Does John James run for governor? We can talk about Kevin Rinke or Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt or Mike Cox, but the 800-pound gorilla in GOP politics is U.S. Rep. John James, R-Southfield, Republicans have poured four years of money into getting him elected to Washington, D.C., but he’s reportedly interested in a spot where he can make more of an impact.

A James gubernatorial candidacy could put the U.S. House Republican caucus in a bind if he constantly campaigns in Michigan. With its slim majority, every vote counts.

If history is any indication, the Republican gubernatorial field that emerges in 2025 will be substantial, but many dominos will fall depending on whether James pulls the trigger.

Is an independent gubernatorial campaign viable? Possibly the most significant problem Democrats face going into the 2026 election cycle is a credible independent Mike Duggan gubernatorial campaign taking flight.

Let’s be honest: Duggan has always been a Democrat. He’s buddies with President Joe Biden and has rolled in Democratic circles. Sure, being mayor of Detroit is a nonpartisan deal, but being governor has been a partisan position since the founding of the state. (I looked: no independent governor, ever.)

It’s early. Maybe Duggan will change his mind and seek the Democratic nomination. But as it stands, an independent Duggan candidacy draws a lot more Democratic voters than Republican votes. Added up, does that equal more votes than what a Republican can get?

That’ll be a question asked a lot this year and next.

How long can Whitmer play nice with Trump? While other Democratic governors have attacked incoming President Donald Trump, Whitmer is taking a different approach. She’s using D.C. back channels to reach out to the incoming Republican president to seek a more positive and constructive relationship with him.

Whitmer and Trump didn’t get along during COVID, but apparently she’s burying the hatchet and moving on. “Common ground” were the words she used during her interview on WKAR-TV’s “Off the Record.”

(Sub question: When does Whitmer make her first public trip to New Hampshire, Iowa or South Carolina?)

Will the MSU Board of Trustees PLEASE get along? I’ll sing the MSU Fight Song outside Beaumont Tower if I don’t have to write about more discord among the Michigan State University trustees. The elections of Rebecca Bahar-Cook and Mike Balow give me hope.

New MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz has more of a personal shine than his predecessors, too, and I’m told that’s helping keep the board out of the news.

Can Nessel finally win a political prosecution? Attorney General Dana Nessel swung and missed on the Flint Water Crisis prosecutions. She slowed but didn’t stop the Enbridge pipeline tunnel.

Now, can Nessel finally score a prosecutorial victory against the 2020 Republican electors? You remember those so-called “fake electors” who claim they only tried to present Vice President Mike Pence with an alternate slate of electors from Michigan? Maybe.

Meanwhile, criminal charges remain outstanding against former Speaker Lee Chatfield, his former top aides Robert and Anné Minard and fundraiser Heather Lombardini.

From the outside, the case against the Minards appears the strongest, but if these cases aren’t resolved by 2026, the next AG cannot guarantee that they will continue.

(Kyle Melinn is the editor of the Capitol news service MIRS. You can email him at melinnky@gmail.com.)