As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wraps up two terms in office, Michigan voters will elect a new governor this fall. As part of our election coverage, Michigan Public is bringing you interviews with the candidates for Michigan’s top office.
Anthony Hudson is on the ballot representing the Libertarian Party. He lives in Grand Blanc and works in the trucking industry. Hudson sat down with Stateside host April Baer to discuss his plans for the state if elected.
April Baer: Will you tell us a little bit about what motivated you to run this year? As I mentioned, you've been on the ballot as a congressional candidate before.
Anthony Hudson: What got me started in politics was when Gretchen Whitmer shut down my trucking company during Covid. I was under the belief that we are free citizens, and a free society, and a free nation. I believe that we're capable of making our own decisions and living our lives without the government's control or influence. And she put me out of business. It was out of my hands. And I wanted to, in that moment, push back against what I call a tyrannical two-party system, and actually fight for the people, and encourage people to live their own lives with absolute freedom.
I don't think anybody in this country knows what absolute freedom is, because none of us have ever had it. When we have a governmental system that, you know, monitors us with flock cameras, tells us we have to pay property taxes, we have to register our cars. All these things that we have to do goes against the definition of freedom itself. So I wanted to get in this race to reach out to mass numbers of people all across the state to educate them as to what our government's doing, and how they're overreaching their boundaries, and how it doesn't benefit us as a free society to have such a, a big, bloated government controlling what it is we do.
AB: What is one thing that you would do as governor to insulate or relieve Michigan from the rising costs that we're experiencing nationally and internationally?
AH: Well, I'll give you the one thing, and then I'll give you a bonus of three more, because one is never enough. Property taxes is one of the biggest concerns in the state of Michigan. Why do we have them? Are they constitutional? Are they not constitutional? Is it the only way to pay for select services that we use? Why do we put up collateral in our homes when renters don't have that responsibility?
I did a survey before I got in this race, and I asked over 100,000 people across the state, “What are the top three issues for them?” And property tax was No. 1. No. 2 was the state income tax. No. 3 was, believe it or not, no-fault car insurance. We pay into that scam every single month. We get into an accident, and someone's always at fault in an accident. And here in Michigan, it doesn't matter. You fix your car, I'll fix my car. Both of our insurance rates go up. The insurance is not on our side. They're not here to help us in any way. You have to go through all these obstacles to even get your claim filed.
So our platform is built around what the people told me were their biggest issues, which is property tax, state income tax, getting rid of no-fault car insurance. And just because we can and we want to help people as much as possible, we want to put permanent plates on our vehicles so that we don't have to reregister them every year on our birthday just to give the Secretary of State more money than they need.
AB: A lot of your campaign has been focused on the elimination of property taxes, and you've proposed some other different kinds of tax relief as part of your campaign as well. Can you talk a little bit about how you think you would fund state government with those pillars out of the way?
AH: The biggest thing we have to look at right now is our actual budget itself. Under Governor Snyder, I believe it was $56 billion. And under Whitmer, it's gone all the way up to as much as $88 billion. Government has grown. They've increased our taxes. They've taken more money from us. We, the people, are struggling to make ends meet. We're struggling to take care of our families.
Michigan doesn't have a revenue problem. We have a spending addiction problem. And I think getting rid of some of the repugnant taxes and some of the agencies that aren't living up to their existence helps us maintain that balance. I mean, you get rid of property taxes, you're looking at $21 billion worth of revenue for the counties and the state. But if you turn around and eliminate agencies like MEDC, SOAR, EGLE, NEC, and MDOT, you're finding a lot of that money back. And you're reallocating it to necessary governmental needs, not necessarily governmental wants. We have a problem just spending, and spending, and spending in the state of Michigan, but the revenue is really there.
AB: A lot of Michigan communities have also been activated this year pushing back on the development of data centers. How should the next governor of Michigan address the backlash?
AH: Any governor, any representative of government that truly stands for the people, should want to push local control back to the people. Government is stated in the Bill of Rights. It's to be by, for, and from the people. Therefore, the people have a voice. And I feel like Public Act 233 and the Whitmer administration has taken that voice away from the people, and has pushed more of a dictatorship onto us. Whitmer even said it on a, on a hot mic, “Hey, they voted no on this, but we're going to do it anyway.” That is not a representative government. A representative government is one where the people have a say, and the government listens, and hears, and puts into motion what the people want.
So I actually have plans to put in a two-year moratorium so that we can allow the legislature plenty of time to come up with the proper regulations for data centers. I will repeal PA 233, bring back local control, put these issues on your local ballot so that you can vote for it. And since the government likes to use the word “democracy” versus “constitutional republic” – in a democracy, the majority wins. So if the people of Livingston County go and vote no on a data center, that's the end of the conversation. It's over. The people spoke. It's the government's responsibility to enforce what was ruled in the election.
AB: Just for context, Public Act 233 was a bill that passed in the Legislature in 2023 that offered some workarounds for renewable energy projects and other kinds of builds when in cases where there has been a lot of pushback locally.
Anthony, in your view, what do you see as the greatest threat to democracy in this moment, and how would you, if elected, respond to that?
AH: Government. Ronald Reagan said it best. He said government is not the answer. Government is the problem. And as long as government grows, and expands, and bloats itself, and raises the budgets and the taxes, it puts a strap on the people, causing us to suffer, while elected officials and the government personnel are living a better quality of life than we the people live.
From my understanding, the government works for the people. We pay their check. There is no way that they should be living a life of luxury while we're struggling to keep the electric bill on, or to put gas in our vehicle, or to maintain the ability to go to work because gas is so expensive. I think government needs a slap in the face, and brought back to reality as to what their job really is, what they're supposed to be doing, and how they're supposed to be doing it.
We've never had a governor in the state of Michigan ever, that has stood up to the legislators and the system and said, “You're not representing the people, and if you're not going to do your job, then we're going to shut the government down.” And I'm fully prepared to issue a shutdown until the legislators and those that we've elected decide to fulfill their oath of office, and do their job to represent the people, and make sure that we're taken care of, and make sure that our constitutional rights are not just defended and protected, but enforced without the political law that seems to go against our Constitution.
AB: Folks have seen your name on the ballot before in past elections for Congress, and you have appeared in the past as a Republican. You are on the ballot as a libertarian candidate this year. Do you mind telling us a little bit about why you're comfortable running as a Libertarian, even though after winning the party's endorsement, the Libertarian Party did post a statement disavowing your candidacy?
AH: That's a misconception of the truth. The body of delegates nominated me at the convention back in June. The body, the majority of the delegates, nominated me to be their candidate. The six people that sit on the board for the state, six of the nine did not support me at the convention. They were not going to vote for me, and they made it clear at convention they were going to do everything they could to get me off the ballot. They failed. Their only other option was to try and censure me. Well, that didn't work out very well for them either. And then they said they were going to disavow me because I'm not 100% Libertarian.
And that's just ignorance because there's a lot of people out there that are not 100% Republican. They're not 100% Democrat. They're not even 100% independent. People tend to sway with policies that they believe in that they know are going to help them. And it doesn't matter what side of the aisle it comes from. That makes it so that no one is truly 100% of their party.
Donald Trump is not 100% Republican. If you remember, he was a lifelong Democrat living in New York City, and he wanted to maintain the support of the Democrats in New York. So everyone flip-flops one way or the other, depending on who's running and what policies they have. The party's responsibility, and only responsibility, is to support the candidates that get nominated. They have their agenda. They have their platform, they have their core belief. But at the end of the day, candidates are running on their platform. And once that candidate is nominated, the party should be simply supporting that candidate.
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Editor's note: Quotes in this article have been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can play the full audio of this interview near the top of this page.
