Welcome to the 2026 voter guide for Michigan's Aug. 4 primary election. The voter guide ‒ separate from the Detroit Free Press' news coverage and the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board's endorsements ‒ offers candidates the chance to communicate with voters in their own words. We remove entries that include false or unverifiable statements, personal attacks on other candidates or foul language, but responses are otherwise unedited.
Find Republican AG candidate Doug Lloyd's questionnaire responses here, or visit our Voter Guide.
Eli Savit
Candidate for Michigan Attorney General, Democrat
Age: 43
What is your current occupation? Please share any other work experience relevant to the role you are seeking.
I am currently the Washtenaw County Prosecutor. Prior to taking office, I served as Senior Legal Counsel for the City of Detroit. I led the City’s lawsuit against the opioid industry, netting nearly $50 million to remediate
the opioid epidemic. I also led the City’s landmark "right to literacy" lawsuit on behalf of Detroit schoolchildren, resulting in a settlement of nearly $100 million for Detroit Public Schools. I also served as lead attorney in the negotiations to construct the Gordie Howe International Bridge, securing a community benefits deal valued at nearly $60 million for Southwest Detroit residents. My legal career began with clerkships for two federal judges and for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor (ret.) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I have also worked as an environmental attorney representing states against major polluters. I started my career as a public school teacher in NYC, and currently serve as a Lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School.
Do you have previous political experience? If yes, please describe.
Yes. I am currently serving in my second term as the elected Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney (elected in 2020 and reelected in 2024).
What do you believe are the three most important responsibilities of Michigan’s attorney general, and how would you prioritize them?
- Safeguarding Constitutional & Voting Rights: Protecting fundamental rights—including reproductive freedom, equal protection, and due process—and ensuring every Michigander can vote safely and freely.
- Fighting Corporate Misdeeds & Protecting Workers/Consumers: Holding abusive corporate actors, wage thieves, price-gougers, and bad actors accountable using the full legal authority of the state.
- Protecting the Environment & Public Health: Holding corporate polluters accountable for damaging Michigan's air, drinking water, and Great Lakes, and ensuring clean, safe communities across the state.
What is one thing the current attorney general's office does well that you would continue, and one thing you would change?
The AG’s Office has done excellent work combatting and prosecuting sexual violence. I would continue and expand successful programs like the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (investigating and prosecuting cold-case rape cases), and the Survivor Justice Initiative (which returns accused fugitives to justice).
In terms of changes, I plan to build a standalone worker-protection unit in the Department of AG, focused on combatting wage theft, payroll fraud, labor trafficking, workplace safety abuses, and worker misclassification. Enforcement in this area is sorely needed, as wage theft remains the most common form of theft in the U.S. Further, this is work I have experience with. As Washtenaw County Prosecutor, I established the only Economic Justice Unit in the state, focused specifically on consumer and worker protection. At a time when families are struggling to afford basic necessities, I believe it is incumbent on the AG to ensure that every worker is paid what they are owed.
In 2022, Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment protecting reproductive rights. Will you enforce and defend those rights?
Yes. I will unequivocally enforce and defend the constitutional right to reproductive freedom approved by Michigan voters. I already have an extensive record of fighting for reproductive rights. In the summer of 2022, I personally argued in court to strike down Michigan’s archaic abortion ban.
What is more, I have filed or joined 16 briefs since 2021 in support of reproductive freedom, including leading a national coalition of prosecutors and police leaders on a United States Supreme Court brief seeking to preserve access to emergency-room abortion care. And with threats to reproductive freedom ongoing at the federal level (including challenges to mifepristone and the potential invocation of the Comstock Act), I am committed to using every power of the Attorney General to protect Michiganders’ rights to choose.
The federal government has weakened the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Protection Bureau. As Michigan's top consumer advocate, what will you do to protect Michigan consumers who are scammed, price gouged or otherwise taken advantage of? Do you support strengthening Michigan’s consumer protection laws? If so, what changes would you seek?
I have extensively litigated consumer protection cases. I started the only consumer protection unit in a prosecutor’s office in the state, and I was honored to receive the Michigan Bar’s 2025 Frank Kelley Consumer Advocacy Award.
Recently, in Nessel v. Eli Lilly, the Michigan Supreme Court revitalized Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act (CPA) by overturning several precedents that had exempted whole categories of businesses from the Act. I was proud to lead a bipartisan coalition of 17 elected prosecutors in support of the Act’s restoration–and I will use the revitalized Act to its fullest extent as AG.
Importantly, the AG has rule-making authority under the CPA. During my first 100 days in office, I plan to take explicit administrative action to address fast-moving consumer threats, such as those posed by AI. I will issue rules under the Act restricting algorithmic price-gouging, surveillance pricing, and AI-based deceptive marketing.
What role should the attorney general play in protecting the Great Lakes, drinking water and Michigan's environment?
Both legally and morally, the Attorney General is charged with protection of our natural resources. The “public trust” doctrine provides that the State (as represented by the Attorney General) has an obligation to preserve our natural resources for future generations. As Attorney General–and as an attorney with an environmental-law background–I will wield that authority to protect our air, water, and natural resources.
This includes preserving our Great Lakes, holding corporate polluters accountable for PFAS contamination, and ensuring that large-scale developments do not deplete our drinking water supplies. I will also continue AG Nessel’s litigation challenging the Trump Administration’s efforts to keep open the dirty, expensive, and inefficient JH Campbell coal plant in western Michigan. Fundamentally, the Attorney General is the lawyer charged with protecting our natural resources and our environment. I will zealously fulfill that duty.
What should the attorney general do to address voter intimidation, election-related misinformation and attempts to interfere with the administration of elections?
Our elections must be free, fair and final. Since 2016, I have supported voter-protection efforts, helping to organize the MDP’s statewide “boiler room” and working on voting rights cases for the MI ACLU and others. As AG, I will hold regular meetings with the Sec. of State, local clerks, law-enforcement, and voter-protection groups to prepare for 2028 election scenarios including: 1) ICE at polling locations; 2) attempts to throw out ballots in cities like Detroit (as in 2020); 3) attempts to enforce unconstitutional voting requirements; 4) intentional spread of disinformation; 5) intimidation of poll-workers; 6) attempts to close polling locations while voters are in line; 7) racist challenges to voters’ eligibility, and 8) federal attempts to access private voter information. I will draft criminal and civil filings before ballots fly, so that precious time is not wasted while voting is ongoing. I’m ready to protect 2028’s election, and I will ensure that the Department of AG is too.
Michigan utility companies have some of the highest rates and lowest performance metrics of any energy providers in the country. Many people are making sacrifices on medication or other essential goods and services just to pay their gas or electric bills. How will you evaluate and, if merited, oppose the utility companies' rate increase requests?
I will aggressively challenge unjust utility rate increases before the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC). My office will scrutinize rate hikes and block utility companies from passing improper expenses—such as executive bonuses and corporate lobbying—onto Michigan ratepayers. To maintain complete independence, I have pledged to refuse corporate PAC contributions and I have also proudly taken the League of Conservation Voters’ “No Utility Money” challenge, under which I refuse all contributions from utility PACs, lobbyists, and executives.
The Trump administration has undertaken dozens of actions, either via the president's executive orders or federal agency policies, that the courts have ruled infringe on the rights of Michigan residents. What do you plan to do, or not do, to protect Michiganders?
The AG is often the only actor that can sue the federal government. I will litigate against any administration that violates the law and harms the people of Michigan. I will build on AG Nessel’s participation in federal lawsuits, which have recovered $3.5 billion in federal funds for Michigan that would have otherwise been cut. Trump’s agencies continue to issue rules that could upend decades of precedent on which Michiganders have relied. These include the rescission of the Endangerment Finding for greenhouse gases and the potential reconsideration of FDA approval of mifepristone. No matter the administration–Democratic or Republican–I consider it the duty of the AG to litigate for the people when federal action violates the law and harms Michiganders. I will fulfill that duty. I will also enforce backstop state laws (e.g., the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act) where federal abdication undermines civil or voting rights, environmental standards, labor protections, or healthcare access.
A measure to call a state Constitutional Convention is on this year's ballot. Do you plan to vote in favor of a con-con?
No
How to vote
Local clerks mailed absentee ballots to Michigan voters Sept. 24. Registered voters may cast ballots early, in person, across the state from Oct. 24 to Nov. 1 ‒ check with your local clerk for your city's early voting start date, location of early voting sites and absentee ballot dropboxes. And, of course, you can vote ‒ and register to vote ‒ in person on Nov. 3, Election Day.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Where MI AG candidate Eli Savit stands on abortion rights, utility rates, more
