Savit speaks to Ingham County Democrats. Less well known than the the other contenders for the party’s nomination, he’s crisscrossing the state to make his case. | Courtesy Eli for Michigan
As a lawyer for the City of Detroit in the 2010s, Savit says, “I saw the ways in which President Trump’s policies had harmed communities—and I also saw the ways in which state attorney generals were uniquely equipped to fight back.” People had been asking him if he planned to run for higher office ever since he was first elected in 2020, and Trump’s return was the tipping point.
An Ann Arbor native and U-M law grad, Savit, forty-two, is one of a generation of “reform prosecutors” around the country, many of them elected in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. In Michigan, he was the first prosecutor to stop seeking cash bail, except, he says, when “we believe it’s the only way to ensure public safety.” Citing data from the sheriff’s community corrections unit, he says only 4 percent of defendants fail to appear for pretrial hearings, compared to 9 percent statewide.
Savit also created an economic justice unit to pursue “corporate actors [who] are taking advantage of workers and consumers.” A complaint his unit forwarded to current attorney general Dana Nessel just led to a lawsuit against a construction company accused of “accepting deposits for construction projects never started and then failing to return the funds,” according to a press release.
Some progressive prosecutors around the country have turned into political targets: Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner survived an impeachment attempt, while San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin was recalled. Yet Savit was reelected last year without opposition.
What was different here? “What you didn’t hear in Washtenaw County was the police complaining about the impact of those policies,” says recently retired sheriff Jerry Clayton. “I just didn’t see any value [in going public].
“We had quiet conversations. And over time, he did adjust some of his approach to some of these things.”
“Our office’s policies were the product of working groups that included community, law-enforcement, and other stakeholder representation,” Savit emails. “And the feedback from law enforcement absolutely affected our policies.”
Savit has endorsements from many local Democrats, including mayor Christopher Taylor and longtime county clerk Larry Kestenbaum, who calls Savit “brilliant” and a “visionary.” Clayton, however, is backing Mark Totten of Kalamazoo, a former U.S. attorney who ran unsuccessfully for attorney general in 2014.
“Eli never asked me to endorse him, and that’s fine,” Clayton says. “I would not have endorsed him anyway.”
Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald also wants the Democratic nomination, and she has name recognition after prosecuting the parents of the Oxford school shooter.
In Michigan, both Democrats and Republicans choose their attorney general candidates at conventions. The three-way nomination will be “competitive,” says former Michigan Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer. (So far, the only declared Republican is Trumpian attorney Kevin Kijewski.)
MSU political analyst Arnold Weinfeld observes that both Tottten and McDonald are better-known than Savit. He “is going to need to work hard, go around the state, get introductions from local state officials,” Weinfeld says.
Savit’s been making some of those introductions himself, through the political action committee he runs with his chief assistant prosecutor, Victoria Burton-Harris. “We’ve helped candidates across the state,” Savit says. And with no need to campaign locally last fall, he worked instead for “state house candidates in competitive seats where I really felt like they could make a difference.”
Since he announced his run in May, “I’ve been to Detroit, I’ve been to multiple places in Macomb County … I was in South Haven yesterday,” he said in a June interview, with Marquette, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo on the calendar. Burton-Harris is the go-to person when he’s away, and they stay in frequent touch when he’s on the road.
What he’s hearing in his travels, Savit says, is a lot of angst and fear over Trump-related actions, including abortion rights and “attempts to dismantle the Department of Education, and in particular what that will mean for students with special needs.” He’s also heard from anguished federal employees who’ve lost their jobs.
Of his party’s losses in last year’s national election, he says, “People have been feeling a tremendous amount of economic pain, and that’s come from rising housing prices, it’s come from rising consumer prices. And I think we missed the mark, in terms of addressing that and putting out a real plan to alleviate that pain.”
Savit, who once captained Pioneer High’s basketball team, recently made a campaign video on the court in Burns Park. Sinking every basket, he declares that he’s ready to take on “a scammer or a polluter or Donald Trump himself.”