‘Purposeful Warrior' Jocelyn Benson releases memoir as she sets sight on governor's mansion
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson at a news conference, Dec. 12, 2023 | Jon King
It was a year ago that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced she was writing a book, 'The Purposeful Warrior: Standing Up For What's Right When the Stakes are High,' set for release on Tuesday.
But much has changed since then: not least is her official entry into the race for the Democratic nomination for Michigan governor in 2026.
Michigan Advance Editor Jon King spoke with Benson about the memoir, how her experiences – including writing 'the book on secretaries of state' and becoming the youngest woman ever to lead a U.S. law school – led her to become Michigan's top elections officer, as well as her campaign to become governor.
What follows is a conversation that has been edited for length and clarity. Advance questions are in bold, and Benson's responses are in regular type.
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Until now, the book you're most associated with is 2010's 'State Secretaries of State,' a literal textbook on administering elections. Your latest is a memoir centered on your time as Michigan's secretary of state. After more than six years in that role, what would you change in how you approached that first book?
That's a great question. I think I certainly have found one of the key components of that first book, which was about the importance of being a professional, transparent secretary of state regardless of your party affiliation, regardless of whether you're appointed or elected. That was really the essence to me of the book, that the person can lead. That still holds true today and a lot of what I experienced has just reinforced how important it is for the chief election officers in states like ours to be secretaries of state first before anything else. Meaning they're professional, bipartisan, making sure government works for everyone, regardless of how someone votes or who they vote for.
In the 'Purposeful Warrior' you talk about some of your personal heroes like Viola Liuzzo or Robert F. Kennedy, but you also mention [former Florida Secretary of State] Katherine Harris and [former Ohio Secretary of State] Kenneth Blackwell…
Not as heroes though (laughing). To me there are people who personified the stories of challenges, of turbulence, of things gone wrong. It's a part of the book talking about finding inspiration as we define who we are and finding power in the stories of others to figure out what we want to do to respond to uncertain moments and build a better world. But the second component of the book is seeing every challenge, every missed opportunity, every bad example of leadership, as an opportunity for growth, or to get better. A big theme of of me bringing up someone like Katherine Harris was her, in my view, misuse of her office. And interference in a presidential election is what spurred me to want to be better and to do better and to be a secretary of state who would instead work to instill faith and security in the elections process. So, we can take positive examples through history or life to embolden us on our path, but negative examples of what not to do can also provide us with an opportunity to do better and to also build resilience, and I try to take something that was broken and fix it and put it back better.
There was a passage in your book where you talk about channeling rage into purpose, using the lemons into lemonade metaphor. How important of a philosophy is that for you?
It is three steps of allowing yourself to be upset and angry, not trying to dismiss it or get past it, but staying in that state for as long as you need to and then finding eventually more of an objective take on a situation that enables you to make lemonade. Respond in such a way that is not just more powerful than otherwise might've been had that rage not initiated, but also something that is more effective in furthering your own hopes or vision for the world. We can use these moments that enrage us to inspire us to do more than otherwise might've been.
You start 'The Purposeful Warrior' recounting the night in December 2020 that armed protesters supporting President Trump's attempts to subvert the election results, showed up at your home in Detroit. You're there alone with your young son. You describe obviously any parent's fear and anxiety in that moment, and then finding a way forward.
It was very similar to that three step process we were talking about. As it was happening it was scary. It was terrifying. I didn't know what was going to happen next. The uncertainty of that moment was really unnerving. The second step was to step back and say 'Wait. They're actually not protesting me. They're protesting the voice of the people, the will of the people, the results of this election.' As soon as I made that connection, I found the strength to say, 'Not on my watch.'
You write about becoming the dean of the Wayne State University Law School, and your experience there, and then later when you became the Michigan secretary of state. Were they similar experiences in the sense of coming into a hidebound institution not necessarily welcome to change? And yet you brought change to both.
When I became secretary of state I had two goals: to increase voter turnout in our state across the board and to reduce wait times in our office. Everything we do is aligned with that and it means also being willing to take things apart and build them back again in a better or different way, which we did with our branch offices to achieve those goals. Similarly, when I became the dean at Wayne State Law School, we were in the bottom tier among law schools. The goal was to get into that top 50 and to build a plan to do that based on metrics and data and best practice. Ultimately it got to 55 in recent years, which was a great success. It starts with clear goals of where we're headed, and those goals need to be bold and crystal clear.
You came into the secretary of state position with a vision for how things could be done. What's your vision for being Michigan's governor? Why do you want to be governor?
I'm a mom who has an 8-year-old kid, who in 10 years is going to be making decisions about whether or not he wants to stay in Michigan and whether or not we've given him, as a state, a good childhood with quality education where he wants to put down his roots. I want him to see Michigan is the best place to build his future, and I want the same for every family in the state, and that means ensuring that government works well. It means investing in public education and ensuring needed funding and support actually reaches the teachers and students who need it. So, whether it's driving down costs on things like housing and food and childcare, whether it's investing in our education system to, in my view, make us in the top 10 instead of the bottom 10 of public school systems nationwide, or simply just making government work better and more efficiently, I've done all of those things in other realms, and now I'm ready to put that skill set and that track record to work for the people in Michigan
In the book you talk about the lead up to the 2018 election. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan drafted a memo basically seeking to find somebody other than Gretchen Whitmer to run for governor, specifically a male Democrat like U.S. Sen. Gary Peters. Is that something you planned to include in the book before Duggan announced an independent bid for governor?
Yes. I began writing this book in 2021 in the wake of everything we experienced in 2020, really with a goal of telling that story and telling the story of what it was like both to stand up to powerful people like the president of the United States and protect the vote of Michiganders in 2020, and a part of telling that story also involved telling about how the women of Michigan provided support for each other and got to those positions in 2020. That 2018 election was such a fascinating story about three women [Whitmer, Benson and Dana Nessel] running for office with very different paths and the headwinds we encountered in those respective paths and how we dealt with it. So, those efforts to recruit other candidates to run against Governor Whitmer were well documented efforts and I felt talking about them was really important to building the context of what we as individual candidates went through and women went through in 2018 on the path to becoming the sort of nationally recognized women of Michigan in 2020 and beyond.
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