DETROIT — Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who was disqualified from the gubernatorial ballot for the August primary amid alleged petition forgeries, announced Thursday that he intends to run as a write-in candidate.
Craig revealed his plans during an appearance on Fox 2's "Let It Rip."
"I'm not giving up," he told host Roop Raj. "They have robbed me ... And guess what? There are so many people that reached out through my campaign and said: 'Chief, you're a fighter. Don't give up. Continue to fight. We need you to do what you're doing.' "
Last month, the Michigan Bureau of Elections reported 11,113 of the 21,305 signatures Craig's campaign submitted to appear on the ballot were invalid, leaving him 4,808 signatures shy of the 15,000-signature threshold.
His was among five Republican gubernatorial campaigns that fell short after the bureau determined thousands of signatures were forged by circulators.
The Board of State Canvassers deadlocked May 26 on whether the group of candidates should be on the ballot.
Craig and three other candidates appealed the decisions, arguing that the bureau should have examined each signature individually rather than invalidating whole pages from suspected fraudulent circulators.
When Craig's appeal in the Court of Claims was unsuccessful, he appealed up to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Last Friday, the Michigan Supreme Court, in 6-1 rulings, upheld the moves of the Bureau of Elections and the Board of State Canvassers to keep Craig and the other candidates off the ballot.
The Bureau of Elections last Friday also sent out the official candidate list to local clerks, launching the process of formatting and printing ballots for the Aug. 2 primary.
When Raj asked whether Craig believed he had the name recognition to mount a successful write-in campaign, he said: "Absolutely."
"This is crap. You know it's crap," Craig said, referring to the petition issue. "I have been approached by so many folks across the state who have called me and said: 'Chief, continue to fight.' I got emails, text messages through my campaign that says: 'Chief, we know you were robbed.' And you know what? I'm not going to roll over. Because this is not about me as a candidate. This is more about the voters of Michigan. They deserve to have the best candidate. And I'mma tell you: I'm going to win. I am the best candidate to unseat Governor Whitmer."
Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer is seeking her second term for the state's highest office and announced in March that her campaign submitted about 30,000 petition signatures to appear on the ballot.
Shortly after Craig's announcement Thursday night, the Michigan Democratic Party criticized his decision.
"If the last few weeks of submitting signatures from dead voters, skipping debates, and conducting interviews from the parking lot of a local watering hole are any indication of what's to come, the fourth iteration of James Craig's campaign is sure to end as well as the first three," the party said in a press release.
Before the petition decision, Craig was considered a front-runner in the large GOP field.
Another kept off the ballot, businessman Perry Johnson, who spent millions of dollars on his campaign, also appeared with Craig on "Let It Rip" on Thursday.
When asked about how successful a write-in campaign would be, Johnson told Raj: "We have roughly nine and a half, 10 million people in the state. So that's a lot of people to cover. That makes it very, very difficult. I think you have to get on the ballot. That's why I filed in the court."
The Bloomfield Hills resident asked a federal judge Monday to order the Michigan Secretary of State's office to "immediately cease the printing of August 2022 primary ballots."
