I were back then with over tim with Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist, right in the middle of a brilliant soundbite on the affordability issue.

I owe you one.

Would you like to figure it out from there?

Well, look, I just what I hear from Michiganders is that they don't want to fee like they're running in place.

They have a system that feels like it is rewarding the wealthies people and the biggest companies while they struggle.

You know, the people who are when these prices go up, it is working.

People who feel tha more than the wealthiest people.

And so, like, I just think that they know that that's wrong.

They know that it's unfair.

And it was my to do something about that.

It was might actually solve their problems and make this system work and fix it.

And so, look, I'm running for governor as someone who will fight to fix that system so that people can afford to stay here in Michigan and succeed.

I mean, that's grounded in my own story, like when I graduated from Michigan with two engineering degrees to be a software developer, I ended up leaving Michiga because in 2005 we didn't really have a software industry here.

But I have done work as lieutenant governor to try to lay the foundation for that.

The Michigan Innovation Fund, the Research and development tax credit, the small business venture capital program that makes it possible to grow that sector.

And trust me, that's how getting more important than ever you know, as the economy evolves and change and people are anxious about it, people want to know what does this technology mean?

For me?

What does it mean for my job today?

What does it mean for my kids job prospects?

What does it mean for how we educate and prepare Michiganders for success?

And I'm the only, you know, person serving in statewide elected office today the only candidate in this race, and frankly the only person in the country who has experience of being an actual software developer at a time when software is leading the world, at a time when artificial intelligence is not just coming, but is here and is evolving and growing.

And so I'm I think I'm the best person who can therefore make sure that there's a human centered approach that that that that technology works for us, not against us, that it creates more opportunity and possibility, not less.

And we need that more than ever for our most important industries, like, you know, manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, but also to create the new industries and have Michigan lead.

And, you know, because 60% of the jobs in our kids who are in school today are going to take haven't even been created yet, we for it.

What is your path to the Democratic nomination for governor?

I mean, you've got Jocelyn Benson out there who just seems to be soaking in all the, you know, not all of the but many of the traditional bi Democratic Party endorsements.

Mike Duggan running as an independent, of course, is getting a lot of those that would go to Democrats.

In terms of the financial chase you're running behind at this point.

You lay out like, how do you win this.

Thing, this is about people and coalition.

Look, if the people of Michigan, the voters of Michigan, they're not looking for the person who is connected to the most millionaires like it.

This is a contest about who got the most millionaires and their falling like, that's not me.

I'm connected to working people.

I don't come from that world.

You know, I come from a famil that came up here from Alabama.

Well, my granddaddy's worked hard and the UAW members from Ford and Chrysler, you know, my parents grew up on the west side of Detroit.

I don't have any politicians in my family.

I don't have any any astronauts in our family.

This was working people who worked really hard to build a future for their only son.

And so when I came into this, I came into somebody who then got a seat at the table, you know, as an outsider, come into Lansing like you.

I didn't know me before I got here.

But then I saw how this syste has worked, who has worked for and who has failed.

And I think the Democratic voters are hungry for somebody who is now ready to mak that system work and to fix it.

So the coalition is a broad one.

The coalition is about thinking about the the voters that Democrats need to win.

How do we mobilize young people?

How do we mobilize young men in particular?

It's going to take the right kind of candidate to get that to happen.

So that's the work that I'm doing.

It's a coalition I'm building the fact that I've bee all over the state in Michigan.

I mean, the only person who's create value for every single community in the state competing in this race, that's the argument that we're making.

That's the path for it.

Yeah.

To that point, though, with, you know, this issue about not having a budget and this sense, I think not, you know, just nationally in Michigan, that, you know, politics is broken, right?

I mean, Mike Duggan is sort of playing exactly into that.

And the more days without a budget and this ability to say, you know, sort of a plague on both our houses, what is your response to that?

That that things are broken and that both parties are unwilling or unabl to work together in this moment and that there needs to be someone that's an independent candidate?

I'll ground that in a conversation that I had with a guy in Kalamazoo, just like earlier in the spring.

And he told me that what broken what seems to him to be broken about his politics is that we seem to be more interested in how rich people can have more money to buy their fifth or sixth house than they are.

If I can get another bagging groceries, it's not working for m and working for people like me.

That's what's broken.

And frankly I've been able to be with people and see like who this serves and who doesn't.

These these corporations and their greed and they they set the prices that people can't afford.

I need to be held accountable for that.

And I think what what we need to d is have people who are willing to call that out, but also have the credibility to actually do something about it.

Like I have done things that people told me was not possible because I'm becaus I have a different background.

I'm a software.

I'm not a lawyer, you know, you know, the last I'm saying a governor who was governor and Bill Milliken, he also was the last person who was governor, who was not a lawyer.

You know, I think like being able to be a problem solver who can fix things and look at them differently.

Look, I've done that on issues that matter.

You know we put tens of thousands of new housing units online just in the last few years.

That's because I drove an investment in the community Development Fund that is now funding housing in an ongoing way, and we can accelerate that.

So I think people are looking for someone not only who matches their energy as he' that urgency of what's broken, who it's broken for, why it's that way, and then also has the credibility to fix it for communities across the state of Michigan.

And I offer that uniquely.

You talked a lot about affordability, wages, people's health care as pressing issues you're hearing about.

I didn't hear the word Rhodes in that answer at all.

And why is Lansing careening toward state government shutdown over roads right now if that's not what it is, the big priority of voters?

Well, you know, look, I I think what's important is that we we do need to focus on what we need for and for people in Michigan to know that they can afford to stay and succeed here.

And like, make no mistake abou it, car repairs are expensive.

Car insurance is too damn expensive.

Like my car insurance only gone up in the last three years.

You know, we have to do something about this because in order for people to have a pathway to good paying jobs, in order for businesses continu to invest and create those jobs, in order to create jobs serving that infrastructure of high speed Internet an and roads and bridges and water, we're going to need t have a way to sustainably fund, if that is important, like foundational work that the public sector needs to do.

It is also connected, though, to building the kind of community that people actuall want to live in, and that starts with being able to afford to live in those communities, to be able to afford to get a house or an apartment, to be able to afford to pay for school or a training program, to be able to have jobs that are in a wide enough area of of the our industries in the economy so that people have options for what they want to do and pursue.

And they can do that in the state of Michigan.

So this is all connected.

I'm just sharing, though like what comes up top of mind in a conversation that I have with Michiganders every day.

If you had to cast a tie breaking vote on raising the corporate income tax to fund roads, how would you vote?

I would certainly support the fact that our corporate income tax needs to be raised so that we can pay for priorities in Michigan is a race.

We can pay for education to raise race.

We can do the things that Michigan needs to position for success.

Lieutenant Governor you obviously know in this town that this storyline is is that there's no way you can win this job.

Speak t those people who believe that.

Or is that a false story out there?

It's absolutely false.

So what I kno is that the people of Michigan and frankly, we're seeing this politically all around the country, people are hungry for somebody who's different and who will speak to them in a really direct and clear way.

I don't sound like people in Lansing, so therefore, the Lansin conversation doesn't make sense.

But instead, what I'm doing is going directly to people and letting them know that they have an opportunity to decide side who goes forward.

The truth is that talkers in Lansing are not the ones who decide this election.

Who decides this election are the people in the state of Michigan, in communities who are working hard every single day and want to see somebody who's ready and willing to go there, to be with them in community to fight for them.

I've spent more time than anybody else in the state of Michigan, and that's what we're working toward.

That's the coalition We're going to build one that is about how we make the system actually work for working people who are the overwhelming majority of people in the state of Michigan who've been failed by a system and or want to see a fix are in there to make something happen.

How did the governor break the news to you that she had chosen not to make an endorsement in the race for governor?

In the last three governors, th lieutenant governor's all ran.

They endorsed them.

Governor decided she was just going to stay out of this.

How did she tell yo and what went through your mind when she gave you that news?

You know, look the governor has made a choice.

And I think that that is a conversation for her to address about Mike, what the conclusions were for making that choice.

You know, she she let me know.

And I said, okay, well, got to appreciate the work that we are going to continue to do together.

The work and the things we've gotten to accomplish.

She has shown absolute trust in my leadership.

She's asked me to do things that are important to the people of Michigan, and I've done that and exceeded it.

Whether that's one, again, driving affordable housing, whether that's in helping position Michigan for the future of the economy or that is in leading on providing more mental health services because that system had been divested in in the last 30 plus years.

Whether that is in leading our efforts to reform our justice system to make sure that people are held accountable and their position for success.

We have a we did the most significant, forthright jail system, restored people's driver's licenses.

We did the automatic criminal record expungement program, clean slate.

That's something tha Lansing told me wasn't possible.

They said, we can't connect those data systems.

It's the fact that seven out of 100 people get their records cleared who are eligible for it, which means that 93 out of 100 people can't participate in this economy, have full access to civic and economic life, can't be reunited with their children, can't go to school.

That's a failed system that I fixed.

And now we have the the most effective system of its kind in the country that that's, you know, cleared 3 million plus records that is that has positioned people to get jobs and housing like that kind of work is something that I've been asked to lead on in partnership and have gotten things done for people that are sit they're changing lives.

I talk to people every week who will send me a picture o them at their first day at work or send me a new family photo that they haven' been able to take in seven years because they weren't able to be reunited with their children.

Peopl who showed me when they set foot at their trade school for the first time at places like the Detroit Training Center, because they got their records cleared.

Like, that's the kind of work that I've done as far as administration.

But that's the kind of foundation we're going to lay is going to.

Be a.

Speaking of sort of the work to be done.

Let's say you become governor, there will likely be two more years of a Trump presidency.

There's a real conversation within the Democratic Party righ now, and Governor Whitmer's name constantly comes up as one end of working with Donald Trump.

She says she will work with anyone to bring things to her state.

And then you've got the Gavin Newsom's who say you don't fight like hell.

Well, no, that's what Whitmer's not against Trump, though, but he says, you know, we need to fight back.

Tell me, if you were governor, what your relationship with Donald Trump would look like.

Is it more Whitmer?

Is it more Newsom?

You know, like I said before, the role of the governor is to protect and advance the interests of the people of Michigan.

So if I did have a conversation with somebody, I have a conversation with them about making sure that we can you know, get jobs, that people can have a more life.

And what I've seen, frankly, in this administration, they've done a hell of a lot of things that are going to make Michigan less affordable, less stable.

We are so hard, we are harmed by these tariffs when any other state that cuts to Medicaid, I mean, I think about, you know, hospitals closing.

I got like one of my grandmother's like had a cardiac incident and she had chest pain.

And if she lived in a rural Michigan community where you already got to driv for 45 minutes to be a hospital, and if that hospital closes, you got to drive 3 hours, She would die in the car.

She's still her because the hospitals were open.

And so to me, it's is that we have to go and I'll have a conversation or a confrontatio about when something is hurting the people of Michigan when they it.

But they're attacking our universities, gutting our health care system.

And I'm going to confront about that.

One last question.

How many days have you been the acting governor this year?

I don't actually know.

You know, I think and the reason the reason the reason I answer it like that is because, you know, I'm doing my work every single day and in tha my job is to show up for people.

And I show u all over the state of Michigan.

And I'm do that whether I'm acting governor or whether I am solely lieutenant governor of the state of Michigan.

So I'm not there counting it.

I'm not ther counting my paycheck like that.

You know, the governor has to do it responsibly to protect and promote our interests, like I said.

And sometimes that takes her out of state.

And regardless of whether she's in state or out of state, I'm going to do my job.

So would you go in the Oval Office with the president?

Pardon me?

Would you go in the Oval Office with the president?

If we need to have confrontation or a conversation.

I'll go do that.

So you meet.

Him.

I mean, I'll meet whoever I need to meet to be able to take it to them on behalf of the people of Michigan.

So you wouldn't shut him out?

I wouldn't.

Look, I will have a conversation or conversation wherever I need to have.

If that's in Michigan, if that's Washington, if that's someplace else, not somebody else's, or whether it's a home game or a away game I'm going to win for Michigan.

Thanks for talking to us.