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Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist will be Michigan’s next secretary of state, the man leading a key swing state through the 2028 election.
The Associated Press called the race for Gilchrist at 2 a.m. Wednesday. At the time, with 80% of the expected vote in, Gilchrist had 53% of the vote, while Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini had 44%.
Gilchrist, a Democrat who served two terms under outgoing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, will become the 44th secretary of state, replacing Secretary Jocelyn Benson.
He will be only the second Black man to hold the job, the first being Richard H. Austin starting in 1971. He is also the first Democrat since Austin to succeed another Democrat for the job.
“I’m very excited to serve as secretary of state of Michigan to make sure all the people of Michigan retain this right,” Gilchrist said Tuesday while voting with his family.
In the job, Gilchrist will be Michigan’s top election official. He will also be in charge of making sure Michiganders around the state have access to driver’s licenses, license plates, and more, as his name will now appear in the more than 100 Secretary of State Offices around Michigan.
Gilchrist’s victory means the office will stay under Democratic control for at least four more years. As part of that, he promised he would continue the Michigan Department of State’s current stance of not turning over the state’s voter roll to President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.
He told Votebeat last month that when people give their private information to the government, they “expect us to protect it, not fork it over to the president for his priorities.”
Gilchrist also wants to improve campaign finance reporting by fixing the broken MiTN system and improving voter education.
A native Detroiter, Gilchrist leaned on his experience as a software engineer to win over voters. His promises to use the skills he gained working at Microsoft, political advocacy groups, and even the City of Detroit resonated with voters, who said that they felt he already had the experience necessary to take on a major statewide role.
“He seems to really know what he’s doing,” Fay Saad, a Dearborn voter, said Tuesday afternoon.
While not a legislator, Gilchrist will have to work with a new legislature to try to implement his proposals. Few races have been formally called for the Michigan legislature, but early numbers indicate Democrats had a good night in much of the state.
If Democrats do win a trifecta — control of the governorship and both chambers of the legislature — voters should expect to see a renewed push for the Michigan Voting Rights Act. The most recent versions of the legislation, which have failed to pass for several sessions, aim to fill in the gaps of the federal Voting Rights Act. During the campaign, Gilchrist promised to champion the act, saying “Michigan voters deserve to have their rights explicitly protected.”
He will take office Jan. 1, 2027.
Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.
