The SPLC’s Star Operative Wants To Run Michigan — The State That Decides Presidential Elections

America is watching Michigan.

Extreme far-Left organizations are embracing and influencing Democrat candidates across our ticket. U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is attending rallies with Hasan Piker. Current secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson is the star operative of a group indicted by the Department of Justice for funding extreme, neo-Nazi organizations.

I’m running for governor of Michigan because the state that has decided the last four presidential elections is about to face the most consequential gubernatorial race in the country.

Jocelyn Benson has already manipulated Michigan’s elections twice. At 19 years old, she interned for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Intelligence Project, supposedly learning how to infiltrate neo-Nazi organizations. Yesterday, that organization was indicted.

In 2020, Benson mailed absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Michigan, not every active voter, but every registered voter, whether or not they still lived there. She instructed election clerks statewide to presume the validity of every mail-in ballot without verifying signatures. A nonprofit she founded received a $12 million Zuckerbucks grant on the eve of that election and funneled it to Democrat-aligned political operatives whose sole job was turning out Democrat voters. Her order instructing clerks to stop verifying signatures was found illegal in 2021. Rather than face consequences, she was rewarded with a Presidential Citizens Medal from President Joe Biden.

She issued the same order in 2024. Federal courts struck it down again. She then deliberately kept Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the Michigan ballot after he had formally withdrawn and endorsed President Trump, a calculated attempt to split the conservative vote and hand Michigan to Kamala Harris. Judge David McKeague of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals did not mince words: “In defiance of the U.S. Constitution and state election law, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson manipulated the presidential ballot in Michigan.” A second Sixth Circuit judge agreed her actions had already cast doubt over the integrity of Michigan’s electoral process.

Millions of patriots in Michigan turned out to vote and made the 2026 too big to rig, and President Trump went on to carry Michigan. Now, Benson wants a promotion. And she is still serving as secretary of state, overseeing the very election in which she is running. That alone should disqualify her.

To understand Jocelyn Benson, you have to understand the organization that built her.

The SPLC is not a civil rights organization. It was a machine built to manufacture division, fundraise off fear, and deploy operatives to use racial chaos as a path to institutional power. Its co-founder admitted that the organization’s overriding purpose was making money. The DOJ just confirmed the method: manufacture the hatred, point at it publicly, collect the donations, and cut checks to the people doing the hating.

Benson started with SPLC at 19 and became a board member in 2014. She did not stumble into this organization; she was built by it. And she carried everything it taught her directly into Michigan’s secretary of state office.

Just this week, the DOJ indicted the SPLC on 11 federal counts for secretly paying at least $3 million to members of the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Party of America, the United Klans of America, and the Aryan Nations — some payments which began the same year Benson joined their board. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was direct: “The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

Not fighting it. Manufacturing it.

They labeled Moms for Liberty an extremist group. They put the Family Research Council, a mainstream Christian policy organization, on their hate map. They designated Turning Point USA alongside the KKK in their public database before Charlie Kirk was shot and killed.

That is the machine that built Jocelyn Benson.

The Trump DOJ has sued Benson for refusing to hand over voter registration records required by federal law, including those for over 17,000 registered voters age 100 or older. Michigan has registered 105 percent of its adult population to vote. She was held in contempt by the Michigan House for refusing to turn over basic election training manuals that would reveal how clerks were instructed to process ballots.

The state that decides presidential elections cannot have its ballots managed by someone federal judges have already called a manipulator. We cannot let her Spanberger our Michigan. We have too much at stake from the top to the bottom of the ticket

Jocelyn Benson is not an outlier. She is the next generation of Democrat operatives, trained to divide, manufacture threats, suppress opposition, and acquire power.

Michigan gave my family a shot at the American dream. By the grace of God, I am running for governor to make sure that promise is real again for every family in this state, not just the ones with the right political connections. My purpose has always been to use my blessings to be a blessing to others. That is what took me to Baghdad. That is what brought me home to build. That is what sent me to Congress. And that is what is calling me to Lansing.

Jocelyn Benson was built by a machine that profits from division. I was built by Michigan and called by God to serve it. My loyalty is to my Creator, my country, and the families of this great state. Not to a machine. Not to a party. To the people.

Michigan, America is watching.

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John James is a West Point graduate, Ranger qualified Apache combat pilot, Iraq War veteran, Michigan job creator, and U.S. Congressman from Michigan’s 10th District. He is a candidate for governor of Michigan.