Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan speaks to the Lansing Economic Club during an event in East Lansing, Mich., on Feb. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)

DETROIT — At the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Detroit Policy Conference last week, former Detroit mayor and independent gubernatorial candidate Mike Duggan ripped into Democrats for what he called infighting and inaction during the two-year Democratic trifecta in the state government, including claiming that education funding was held up by lawmakers seeking to pass legislation to allow transgender students to play on girls’ sports teams.

Democrats in the state Legislature are saying that never happened.

“I went up there when we were saying, ‘Put the money back in the schools.’ And we had people saying in the Democratic caucus, ‘Well, I’m not going to put more money back into schools unless you pass my bill to guarantee that transgender athletes can play in girls’ sports’,” Duggan said in his speech. “The leadership said, ‘Wait, those are two different issues. Let’s take them up separately.’ And the moderate Democrats said, ‘I can’t vote for that bill.’ And you had people on the left saying, ‘Well, then I’m not voting for your bill.’ And they did nothing in two years to fix the reading levels.”

But Democrats were quick to combat Duggan’s statement on social media. State Rep. Phil Skaggs (D-East Grand Rapids) wrote on X, “This NEVER HAPPENED. In the majority, Democrats passed all school funding bills on time.”

Rep. Kelly Breen (D-Novi) called his claims “categorically false,” while Rep. Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia) wrote, “This is bullsh*t. Not technically, or sort of. It flat out never happened,” and Sen. Sue Shink (D-Northfield Township) called Duggan “full of sh*t on this one” in a reply from her personal X account.

State Sen. Jeremy Moss (D-Bloomfield Township) similarly said, “This literally never happened. Unless Mike Duggan is saying he opposed our expansion to the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act?? Which would be a helluva position to reveal,” referencing a 2023 expansion to the state’s civil rights law to include LGBTQ+ identities as being protected.

When asked for details about which legislation and which legislators specifically held up this issue, a spokesperson for the Duggan campaign referred to a statement from Duggan’s office on Thursday and did not provide further information.

“I witnessed in Lansing first-hand the constant turmoil between the Far Left and moderate Democrats on a range of priorities–on rent control, on affordable housing, and yes, on transgender athletes. Some of those priorities were written into draft bills and some proposed bills were just discussed,” Duggan’s statement said. “But while the Democrats still may not be willing to admit it, the all-or-nothing, my-way-or-the-highway approach that some Far Left legislators took paralyzed the caucus and made it impossible to move forward on issues like education.”

His statements came amid a long tirade into what he portrayed as similar disputes within the Democratic caucus stalling legislation on affordable housing and violence intervention, and his speech centered on his intentions for running as an independent — saying that Democrats are only unified in hating Republicans, Donald Trump and now Duggan himself.

Democrats also took Duggan’s statements as a chance to criticize his independent run for the governor’s seat as cozying up to Republican talking points on issues like transgender rights.

“It looks more and more like Duggan was always a Republican and just hid it to be mayor of Detroit,” Skaggs added in his post.

Pohutsky wrote, “If you need to punch down on trans kids in order to appeal to whoever you think your base is now, you don’t belong in the governor’s race.”

And Curtis Hertel Jr., chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, wrote on X, “It was bad enough when Republicans were willing to bully a handful of kids for political points. This ‘independent’ campaign is the same old bull sh*t of right wing tropes/division.”

Duggan’s statements mirrored those from state legislative Republicans, who in May 2025 passed a set of bills to ban transgender athletes from playing on girls’ sports teams and who have repeatedly pushed for the Michigan High School Athletic Association to change its policy that currently allows transgender students to compete on a case by case basis with a waiver — a process that the association has said was only used by one student in the fall 2025-26 season.