Hi there, beautiful Michiganders.

Two weeks from now, the first absentee ballots will be on their way to voters across the state. How exciting! In the meantime, we’ve finally locked down what will and will not be on our ballots. MMOP is in; Americans for Citizen Voting is not. I’ll have a deeper guide in the next few days breaking down what else you can expect to see.

In the meantime, you and I are overdue for a campaign finance check-in. 

We’re down to only two major candidates for secretary of state — Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini on the Republican side and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist on the Democratic side. 

Gilchrist has a pretty significant financial advantage over Forlini, according to their respective pre-election campaign finance reports. Gilchrist has raised $1.76 million and has more than $1 million still on hand, according to his most recent filings. That of course includes just over $185,000 transferred from his original gubernatorial campaign, but it also includes significant donations from a number of unions including the UAW, AFSCME, and the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights. Each (along with the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State) gave the maximum of $83,250.

Forlini has raised just shy of $500,000 since launching his campaign and still has nearly $300,000 on hand. His big PAC money has largely come from business groups — the Realtors PAC of Michigan gave him $15,000, while the Auto Dealers of MI PAC gave him $10,000. Mike Cox, the Republican former Michigan attorney general who dropped out of the gubernatorial race in July, gave the maximum individual donation of $8,325. He got the same amount from Ron Weiser, former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, and a few other business leaders and their family members.

There are also a few minor party candidates — Eric Borregard is the Green Party candidate, Christine Sloan is in for the Libertarian Party, and Scott Aughney is the candidate for the U.S. Taxpayers Party. They have not submitted reports I’ve seen.

It will be interesting to see what kind of money comes in with less than two months until Election Day. This is usually when big donors become strategic — who has a real chance to win if they get a financial boost? It’s also when smaller donors, people who might be slightly less in tune but still interested in politics, often get more invested as well. We’ll get our next taste with the pre-election reports, due in late October, but we won’t have much more on the money front until after Election Day, and at that point, we’ll already know who won.

I’ll be watching it all — the candidates, their platforms, and the way voting changes (or stays the same!) under the next administration. Encourage your friends to join us in Subscriber Land so they can stay up-to-date. They can subscribe here for updates on elections and my bunnies. And if you or someone you know has questions about elections, I’d love to hear them: You can reach me at [email protected]. 

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