I first met James Craig seven years ago when he was riding high as Detroit’s popular chief of police. Reporting a profile, I watched him interact with cops, citizens, and the media. You couldn’t help but notice his people skills and self-confidence.
“I’ve always been one who gravitates to leadership positions,” Craig told me.
Strangers greeted him in his favorite restaurant, hugging him and thanking him for his work. “Deputy mayor” already graced his official title. It seemed as if Craig could be Detroit’s next mayor.
That hunch may yet prove true. Craig announced last week he will run for mayor in the August 5 primary. He spoke at an East Side barber shop while displaying a trim beard like that of Vice President JD Vance.
But Craig’s beard is gray. At age 69, he is one of nine candidates — so far. At his age and this stage of his political career, one wonders whether Craig has maybe missed his moment. Oh, no, not so, he says. His grateful citizens remember him.
“Ask the average Joe who lives out here in Detroit and they’ll tell you ‘I appreciate what he did,’” Craig said of his eight years as top cop from 2013 to 2021. He said if Detroiters liked his work then, his election to mayor would mean: “More to come.”
Ideally for Craig, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan would have left the job after two terms in 2021 instead of after three terms in 2025. Duggan is running for governor not as a Democrat but as an independent.
When Duggan stayed on for a third term, Craig left his police position and ran unsuccessfully — as a Republican — for governor of Michigan in 2022 and for Michigan’s vacant U.S. Senate seat in 2024.
Both tries fizzled, for different reasons. In both cases, it seemed as if Craig’s reach had exceeded his grasp. But Craig also gradually presented himself as a Republican conservative who briefly caught the eye of President Donald Trump and may do so again. Are they allies?
“If you look across the country, I don’t know how many mayors will have the ability to touch this administration,” Craig said. A frequent guest on Fox News Channel, Craig has defended his department’s harsh treatment of Black Lives Matter demonstrators in 2020.
He often stresses that Detroit didn’t suffer riots as some cities did after the police murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd, although the Motor City had to pay out $1 million in 2022 to a group called “Detroit Will Breathe” which sued for mistreatment during the demonstrations.
Since then, culture wars have grown harsher. Despite Trump’s promise to deport only “the worst of the worst” in his purge of undocumented immigrants, his enforcers in Trenton this month snatched Jose Guadalupe Jaimes, a Mexican-born father of five who has lived here for 30 years.
Despite a work permit and no criminal record, he was captured after dropping off a child for school. Amidst this spirit of crackdown, how might a Mayor Craig and his cops cooperate with the harsh demands of ICE and Homeland Security?
Detroit, after all, includes immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East. Here’s what Craig told me in 2018.
“We are not a sanctuary city,” Craig said then. “We will cooperate with Homeland Security or ICE if we’re talking about someone who is a felon.”
At that time, Craig seemed to suggest Detroit authorities practiced discretion and restraint. “We don’t make traffic stops and initiate a conversation about your immigration status,” he said.
He took that same tone last Thursday, in a radio conversation on WJR (760-AM) with host Kevin Dietz on All Talk. Craig proclaimed himself a “servant leader” who came from a Democratic family and understands both sides of the divide.
“I was a long-time Democrat, a conservative Democrat, a JFK Democrat,” Craig said in the radio interview. “My parents were Democrats, my whole family, but we were conservative . . . The Democrat party left me and, frankly, a lot of long-time Democrats are feeling the same way.”
Reflecting on Trump winning the state in two of the last three presidential elections, Craig told Dietz, “It’s not an accident that the state turned red.” While that is true on the presidential level, top statewide offices remain Democratic blue.
Perhaps Craig’s mayoral try will predict Michigan’s 2026 mid-terms, when voters in the Great Lakes State will fill positions vacated by Democrats like Governor Gretchen Whitmer and U.S. Senator Gary Peters. For the moment, Craig prefers to keep it local and non-partisan.
“I’m not running as a Republican, I’m running as a Detroiter,” he said in the radio interview. “Detroiters come up to me on a regular basis and say, ‘I miss you, Chief, I appreciate you and, oh, by the way, if you run for mayor, I’m supporting you.’”
Yes, but — in this fraught moment — how will a city with a vastly Democratic majority react to Trump’s gleeful attacks on immigrants and his spasmodic tariff wars that endanger the economy of the Motor City?
On the campaign trail, will Craig back Trump and risk the wrath of disaffected Detroit Democrats? Or does he criticize Trump and risk the wrath of a vengeful Republican chief executive?
Because he matured in police work in Los Angeles and because he loves publicity, Craig enjoys his nickname “Hollywood” Craig.
Should he finish in the top two in the August primary, he’ll get plenty of camera and microphone minutes to explain himself further before the election on November 4. Think of it as a screen test for “Hollywood” Craig.
Is he ready for his close-up or, like Norma Desmond, past his prime?
