Democrats in one of the most important battleground states in the nation are rallying their forces in a comparatively small race — but one the party’s leaders fear could have big implications for the 2026 midterms and ‘28 presidential elections.
The unusual scene is playing out around a city clerk election in Southfield, Michigan, where Democrats entered the spring faced with the real possibility of a MAGA Republican who helped lead an effort to toss more than a million votes in the 2020 election becoming the local elections chief, virtually without a challenge.
Gavriel “Gabi” Grossbard is running for city clerk in Southfield, Michigan, where voting is taking place in just two months. Off-year elections like Grossbard’s have leapt in significance since 2020, when Donald Trump leaned on local officials in an attempt to overturn the presidential election. In some states, slates of “alternative” electors clashed with officials and even police officers.
But Grossbard, to Democrats in Michigan, represents everything MAGA wanted to achieve after its failure in 2020 and the subsequent return to power of Trump four years later. Once part of a legal bid to disqualify votes in three Michigan counties including Wayne, home to Detroit, Grossbard is alleged by Democrats to be a dyed-in-the-wool believer of conspiracy theories about America’s election systems.
And now Grossbard’s will be the only name on November’s ballot — as his Democratic opponent is stuck running a write-in campaign, and struggling to win a race that should have been a lay-up for the party, given the deep-blue tint of Southfield.
The incumbent, Janet Jackson, learned she was ineligible to run due to lingering issues related to her successful 2023 bid against him, when she beat Grossbard by roughly 50 percentage points. She never released a statement explaining her withdrawal.
Michigan Democratic Party officials faced the reality that Jackson’s ineligibility would have left the door wide open for the seat to be won by a MAGA Republican who signed on to a lawsuit that sought to invalidate the votes of more than one million Michiganders in 2020. Grossbard is also a former Republican congressional candidate who also ran for city clerk unsuccessfully in 2023.
In response, the party is throwing its weight behind the write-in campaign of Wynett Guy, an employee of Jackson’s office. Jackson’s ineligibility was the wrench in the works; in April of this year, Guy says that she reached out to offer her support for Jackson’s re-election bid, only to learn that the incumbent wasn’t eligible to run again. A spokesperson for Grossbard contended it was due to unpaid financial liabilities stemming from her 2023 campaign.
Guy has attacked Grossbard in an ad for his participation in the lawsuit as well as a challenge filed against her own ballot eligibility. The state party chair, Curtis Hertel, is meanwhile blasting Grossbard as an “extremist conspiracy theorist” as organizers pour into the city to reverse Guy’s fortunes.
There’s reason to believe that Grossbard would be on the far right fringe of his party’s elected officials in Michigan were he to win. In Facebook comments reviewed by The Independent, Grossbard defended protesters who participated in the attack on the Capitol, writing in one: “contrary to reports, no capital police death that day was caused by violence of any of the rioters.”
Other Facebook statuses posted by Grossbard and comments made by his wife Milaine and others strongly imply that the candidate himself was in Washington, D.C. during the attack on the Capitol, where dozens of police officers were injured as they clashed for hours with violent rioters. Several responding officers died after the attack.
“Im [sic] ok. Driving back to Detroit,” he wrote on the evening of January 6, 2021, in a status after the attack concluded. Comments following the post are entirely focused on the riot.
“So proud of my husband Gabi Grossbard,” wrote his wife in a Facebook status the same day. Another commenter replied: “We are behind you Gabi! Thank you for going! You are there for all of us!”
“Stay safe, please!” another Facebook user wrote in response to a now-hidden or deleted update posted by Grossbard on the morning of January 6. Grossbard liked the reply, but didn’t respond.
There is no indication Grossbard directly took part in storming the Capitol or any of the rioting.
The Independent reached out to Grossbard for clarification regarding where he was on Jan. 6, 2021, and whether he participated in demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol. A spokesperson for Grossbard’s campaign responded in an email, detailing a range of issues with the Southfield city clerk’s office which Grossbard has highlighted during his campaign, including a backlog of minutes from city council meetings: “a vote for Mr. Gabi Grossbard, would be a vote for much needed upgrades to the clerk’s office. The clerk’s office would be in compliance with all mandated laws [under Grossbard’s management].”
On a phone call, Grossbard’s volunteer campaign manager contended that the state party was attempting to smear the candidate and said that she did not know whether Grossbard had gone to the Capitol during the January 6 riots. The volunteer also claimed that Democrats and potentially the media were framing the race unfairly as an issue of race by pitting Black and Jewish candidates against one another.
Hertel, the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, fired back in a text message: “That is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. This is about Grossbard’s history of denying fair elections and his lack of qualifications for the job.”
With the November election now just two months away, Democrats are hoping an unconventional campaign to support Guy — who is one of two write-in candidates — will prevent a takeover of Southfield’s election office by a conservative who’d be a rare red dot in the city’s all-blue Democratic leadership.
The root of the problem for Democrats appears to be Jackson, who defeated Grossbard in his first run for clerk and then promptly faced a wave of issues leading to her own ineligibility two years later. According to Guy, she learned her boss was ineligible to run again just two days before a deadline to gather the 200 signatures requied for appearance on the ballot. Though Guy rallied to collect signatures, her petition and signatures were challenged by Grossbard in front of the state elections board — and she lost.
Grossbard’s spokesperson contended that the issues Jackson faced on her own campaign were endemic of a dysfunctional city clerk’s office that was more than a year behind in reporting city council minutes and was in violation of state open records laws. She also scorched state party officials who she argued were uninterested in the race and those longstanding issues before Grossbard’s victory looked like a real possibility. Guy, she argued, worked in the clerk’s office for months while those issues worsened.
Guy is now running to win a race where she won’t even be on the ballot, with the backing of state party organizers who’ve stepped into the race as triage. The Michigan Democratic Party chair told The Independent on Wednesday that volunteers were knocking on “thousands” of doors on Guy’s behalf.
“Right now, in Southfield, Michiganders are facing a choice between extremist, conspiracy theorist Gabi Grossbard and dedicated public servant, and write-in candidate Wynette Guy for Southfield Clerk,” said Hertel.
“Michigan Democrats are knocking thousands of doors and making thousands of calls to ensure that we elect someone that cares about the fairness, safety, and security of our election process.”
