Provided photo. Karen McDonald, Democratic candidate for attorney General, visited the Keweenaw last week.

LANSING — With election of a new state Attorney General coming up in 2026, candidates are out spreading the word of their intentions and what they can offer voters if elected into office. Running for the Democrat nomination for Attorney General is Oakland County Prosecuting Attorney, Karen McDonald. McDonald announced her campaign in June with a focus on addressing gun violence, protecting workers, affordability for Michiganders and protecting the state from Federal overreach.

During a visit to the Keweenaw, McDonald spoke to reporters at the Prickly Pine Cafe in Houghton last week. She said she grew up in Portland, MI with a father who worked in construction and a stay at home mother. She said money was often an issue growing up, and she was only able to go to undergrad and law school through student loans and grants. McDonald bought her first home with a Federal Housing Administration loan, and says it those experiences which made finances a priority. “All of those things are being threatened right now, and I wouldn’t be sitting here without them,” McDonald said.

She is a former public school teacher in Midland and Williamston and member of the Michigan Education Association. McDonald explained being a member of the teacher’s union helped her understand and see firsthand the importance of having a strong labor union. She would later serve as an attorney and judge and is now the Oakland County Prosector. One of McDonald’s most prominent cases was prosecuting the Oxford High school shooter and his parents. Now she eyes the position of Attorney General as the way to serve her community.

“It’s the most important position that’s on the ballot right now in 2026,” McDonald said. “It’s the top law enforcement official in the state, and the Attorney General represents the people, which means being the firewall against anyone, whether it be our current administration, any entity, business or corporation that is seeking to infringe upon the rights of the people.”

McDonald is concerned with overreach of the current administration in Washington. “The United States Supreme Court has said that the only individual that can file lawsuits against the Trump administration for some of the outright, blatantly unconstitutional acts is the Attorney General of each state,” she said. “And so the Democrats across the country that hold the attorney general position have joined in almost between 40 and 50 lawsuits now, and they have been successful in over 85 percent in getting those blatantly unconstitutional acts overturned.”

Her concerns do not only lie with outside threats to the state, but also on its streets. McDonald believes gun violence within Michigan needs to be handled like a public health crisis. She explained that up until 2019, the number one cause of death for children was automobile accidents. “Through that public health approach, we have lowered automobile accidents deaths, and when you look at something like gun violence, which is now the number one cause of death, the government’s done nothing. The state’s done nothing. We we don’t even talk to kids about guns,” she said.

McDonald believes that, just like automobile accident prevention, the issue is best confronted with education. She also believes in the right to bear arms and grew up in a household with firearms and a father who was into hunting. She explained however it has nothing to do with high powered rifles which are not secured and in the hands of people in crisis.

“We have to stop just arguing about guns and talk about what the data shows really prevents gun violence for our kids, and we can do so much way upstream and give people tools to navigate through periods of crisis, adopting behavioral threat assessment models that are evidence based,” she explained.

McDonald feels legislation and safe gun storage are important, but feels the state is not going to prosecute its way out of gun violence. “We’re not going to legislate our way out of it. We have to teach people and our children, just like we do with cars, that a weapon is an inherently dangerous thing and we have to teach people how to navigate through what we know they will experience, which is adversity, instead of waiting until someone is in a major point of crisis and trying to bring in an army of therapists,” she said.

McDonald sees a majority of those who commit violence with a weapon are not exclusively in mental health crises, but rather individuals in any crisis. She said when it comes to children, there is impulsivity at play and the frontal lobe of the brain is not fully developed.

“People who are in the middle of a crisis shouldn’t have access to weapons. They just shouldn’t. No one disagrees with that, but we need measures within our our public health system to address that and educate people, and then we need to give people tools, behavioral threat assessment models, matching resources to the to the individuals that we know are in crisis,” she said.

Another area McDonald wants to focus on is drugs. She said she believes substance abuse and mental health issues should have opportunities to be provided with resources and treatment in opposition to detention and incarceration as long as the offenses are low level and nonviolent.

“We shouldn’t allow a substance abuse issue to ruin someone’s life, and if we can stop it and provide resources, we should,” McDonald said. She added community resources need to be available to those who have substance abuse issues, and the U.P. does not have the resources necessary to address them. “There’s not nearly enough and that has to change,” she said.

However when it comes to those who distribute drugs, McDonald said she does not have a lot of compassion and believes they should be dealt with in the most appropriate way possible. She also sees trafficking as a large problem which can often be a mix of humans, drugs and firearms.

“One of the biggest public safety challenges I hear about in rural areas is drug and human trafficking. Trafficking is unfortunately a serious problem in Michigan that needs more attention. That’s why as a prosecutor I sponsored and coordinated a statewide Human Trafficking Training for nearly 300 law enforcement officials and medical professionals. As attorney general, I would bring an all-of-the-above approach that can bring all the tools we have together to tackle this problem,” McDonald said.

Another prominent offense in the area are scams, and McDonald thinks the best way to address them is to promote more education to help citizens protect themselves. She said she will vigorously prosecute those who are responsible for scams.

McDonald also commented on issues facing Houghton County including the County Jail. The jail has been an issue for many years, being out of date and failing to convince voters to raise the millage to build a new one.

“The Houghton County jail sounds like it needs a champion in Lansing to advocate for the state to pitch in and help bring this facility up to modern standards,” she said. “As attorney general, I’d be happy to lend my voice to ask for state support for this facility, because the people who go to work every day in that building to keep the community safe also deserve a safe, modern workplace.”

McDonald sees herself as someone Democrats, Republicans and Independents can trust. Just as the state is purple, so is Oakland County, and I am the top vote getter in the county, and I outperformed everyone even at the top of the ticket, Slotkin included. And the reason I mentioned that is I have a wide range of supporters, many independent voters, many Republican voters, and I believe that’s because I am known to be a strong and reasonable voice and a trusted voice. Not everybody that supports me agrees with everything that that I do or say, but they know that I’m always going to do what I think is right and that I believe I have a duty to explain why I’m doing what I’m doing and give people the respect that they deserve,” she said.

The Democrat nominee for Attorney General will be selected at a convention in Detroit on April 19. Those wishing to vote for the nominee must register 30 days in advance and must vote at the convention.