Michigan Democrat Who Wanted Utilities Out Of Politics Picks Power Company Director For Transition

Democratic Michigan Gov.-elect Jocelyn Benson ran on curbing utilities’ political spending but picked an energy company director to help lead her transition.

Benson named Huntington Bank chairman Gary Torgow on Nov. 4 as one of four chairs of her transition leadership council, the Detroit News reported. He also sits on the board of DTE Energy, an October Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows.

At an April news conference in Saginaw, Benson called for barring state-regulated utilities from political spending meant to “influence or elect politicians,” Bridge Michigan reported.

“We’re going to end the conflict of interest so that companies seeking to raise rates cannot influence making those rules and decisions that are meant to regulate them,” Benson said at the event, according to Bridge.

David Stevenson, director of energy and environmental policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Benson “really needs some advice from somebody with experience in the industry.”

“I don’t really have a problem with her working with DTE,” he said.

Asked whether naming Torgow clashes with her push to get utilities out of politics, Stevenson said, “Certainly, I think she will have an argument with him over that issue.”

“It could not be clearer that Michiganders want a different kind of politics that puts regular people above corporate utility interests,” Karlee Weinmann of the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog group, said in a statement to the DCNF.

Benson’s transition team did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment, and DTE and Consumers Energy did not immediately respond. A Huntington Bank spokesperson said questions about Torgow’s political decisions and affiliations “are best directed to him.”

DTE and Consumers Energy went to federal court Nov. 5 to stop Proposal 2, which passed with 81 percent of the vote two days before in unofficial results, Michigan Public reported.

Proposal 2 would cut off donations from utilities’ top officers, board members and their relatives to Michigan’s governor, attorney general and state lawmakers, and to anyone running for those seats, Bridge reported.

Benson is one of the people being sued. The utilities named her in her job as secretary of state, along with state elections director Jonathan Brater and Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel, Michigan Public reported.

Her campaign for governor had taken no energy company money, Benson said in April. A DTE political action committee did give $6,000 to her secretary of state campaigns in 2010 and 2018, and an employee PAC at Consumers Energy gave her $7,000 from 2018 to 2021, Bridge reported in April.

The Mackinac Center has its own lawsuit against Proposal 2, which Stevenson said would force nonprofits that weighed in on the campaign to disclose their donors.

“There shouldn’t be any nonprofit that has to be forced to give out their donors’ names,” he said.

A state elections board meets Nov. 23 to certify the results. Barring a court delay, the measure could take effect in early December at the earliest, Michigan Public reported.

“We can’t allow endless increases to our energy bills while public utilities deliver unreliable, unaffordable service,” her campaign’s energy affordability plan states.

In August, the average price of electricity for Michigan households was 22.99 cents per kilowatt-hour, which was about 11 percent higher than the year before, Energy Information Administration data shows.

State regulators approved rate hikes for both utilities in 2026. A typical DTE customer’s monthly bill went up 4.6 percent in March, and a typical Consumers Energy customer’s monthly bill went up 6.1 percent in May, the Michigan Public Service Commission said in its rate orders.

Stevenson said that the costs on customers’ bills include wind and solar projects, which regulators approve in advance as part of the utilities’ long-range plans.

“So it just gets added to the electric bills, and nobody ever sees it until their electric bills go up,” he said.

Under Michigan’s clean energy law, which passed in 2023, utilities have to get 60 percent of their sales from renewable sources starting in 2035, state law shows. Nuclear power can count toward a different standard, which requires 80 percent clean power by 2035 and 100 percent by 2040.

“We suggest Michigan slows the wind and solar mandates while allowing new nuclear power to meet the clean energy goals,” Stevenson said in a statement to the DCNF.

Holtec, which is working to restart the Palisades nuclear plant, also wants to put two small modular reactors at the site. They are expected to start running in the early 2030s, a federal securities filing shows.

Stevenson also wrote an October report for the Mackinac Center on Michigan’s Electric Choice program, which lets customers buy their power from competing suppliers. Customers in the program paid more than $185 million less for generation in 2024, the report found. State law has limited the program to 10 percent of utility sales since 2008.

If participation went up to 30 percent, utilities could need $7 billion to $8 billion less in new infrastructure spending, the report estimated.

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