DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – After being disqualified to be a Republican candidate for governor because of forged nominating signatures, former Detroit Police Chief James Craig decided to run as a write-in candidate. He only received 23,521 write-in votes in the August primary election according to the Secretary of State’s
official election results.
The amount of votes that Craig received is equal to 2.14% of the votes cast for Republicans in the August primary election for governor.
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In Wayne County, where Craig lives and was Police Chief, Craig received 4,411 votes, with a large number of votes (239) coming out of Grosse Pointe Woods, a ten minute drive from his home. Only 265 votes came from the Detroit precinct. And in every precinct of Wayne County he received at least one vote.
After being disqualified to be on the ballot, Craig announced on June 14th that he would launch a write-in campaign for the Republican nomination. He said at the time on Fox 2 Detroit, “I’m going to run as a write-in. I’m going to be the next governor.” He had told the media outlet that he made the decision because of the appeals from his supporters who didn’t want him to abandon his campaign.
He said, “I’m not going to roll over. This is not about me as a candidate, this is about the voters of Michigan. We want to clean out the swamp.”
The campaign, in the end, wasn’t a visible one, and his appearances on radio, TV and in-person were scarce.
Another opponent who was disqualified from the ballot, Metro Detroit businessman and millionaire Perry Johnson, understood from the beginning that running as a write-in candidate would be “very difficult” and cost millions of dollars. He told Fox 2 that that he really wanted to run as a write-in candidate but that it would have taken $15 to $18 million to run the commercials, do the town halls and send out the mailings to even have a 30% chance at winning.
Both Perry and Craig had been the frontrunners in the Republican quest for the Republican gubernatorial nomination before the signature issue came to light.
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Between the time that Craig announced his write-in candidacy and the vote in August, he only tweeted 20 times and did the same amount of social media posts on Facebook.
His social media accounts showed only a few ways he was working to connect to his voter base including a virtual interview with Tim Skubick, a radio interview with Port Huron’s WGKT 102.3 FM and a billboard campaign.
After the official results came in, Craig tweeted, “Thank you to all of the supporters who wrote-in James Craig. Your support will not be forgotten.”
Similarly to losing candidate Ryan Kelley, Craig has not endorsed chosen candidate Tudor Dixon yet.
