Jocelyn Benson

Biography & Campaign Analysis

Background

Jocelyn Michelle Benson was born on October 22, 1977, and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She earned a bachelor's degree at Wellesley College in 1999 and, as a Marshall Scholar, a master's in sociology at Magdalen College, Oxford.

She joined the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, investigating hate groups, and worked at National Public Radio as Nina Totenberg's legal assistant.

At Harvard Law School, where she received her Juris Doctor, she served on the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review as a general editor, and from 2002 to 2004 she coordinated voting rights policy for the Civil Rights Project.

Career

After finishing law school she relocated to Detroit to clerk for Judge Damon Keith of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in 2005 she joined the faculty of Wayne State University Law School. She ran for Michigan secretary of state in 2010 and lost to Republican Ruth Johnson.

In 2012, at age 36, she became dean of the Wayne State law school, the youngest woman to lead an accredited law school, and she held the post until 2016, when she became chief executive of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality, serving until 2018.

She won the 2018 election for secretary of state over Republican Mary Treder Lang by 8.9 percentage points, the first Democrat in the office since 1995, and was reelected in 2022 over Kristina Karamo with 56% of the vote.

She received a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2022 and the Presidential Citizens Medal in January 2023.

2026 race

Benson announced her campaign for governor of Michigan in January 2025 to succeed Gretchen Whitmer, the term-limited Democratic incumbent. The United Auto Workers endorsed her in June 2026. She won the Democratic primary on August 4, 2026, taking 83.2% against Chris Swanson, the Genesee County sheriff. In the November 3 general election she faces Republican U.S. representative John James, who won his primary with 50.1% over businessman Perry Johnson.