What's a 'purposeful warrior' anyway? Takeaways from Jocelyn Benson's new book
- Michigan Secretary Jocelyn Benson says her new book is ‘call to action,’ composed of life experiences and anecdotes
- Now running for governor in 2026, Benson offers a handful of new insights about her time as Michigan’s top elections official
- The Detroit Democrat shares a personal miscarriage story, takes a jab at a political rival and says she went undercover to investigate hate groups
Part memoir, part self-help book and part how-to guide, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s new book “The Purposeful Warrior” combines vignettes from her life with her lessons in public service and leadership.
“Every potentially rigorous challenge or swing that seems impossible can be possible on the other side, if we decide to respond from a place of strength and courage,” the Detroit Democrat told Bridge Michigan in an interview ahead of the book’s release.
The book comes a few months after Benson launched her 2026 campaign for governor and joins a growing list of published works by Michiganders seeking public office or a potential promotion.
Benson said the lessons in her book tie into her impetus to run for the state’s highest office.
“The personal journey of being a mom and the sense of urgency that I feel to fix things, combined with my track record (on solving problems) … led me to feel that I wanted to do more for the state,” Benson said.
She looks to running marathons — of which she’s completed more than 30, including finishing the Boston marathon eight months pregnant — as a “physical manifestation” of overcoming challenges.
“Even in challenging, uncertain moments, we always have the power to decide how we're going to respond to uncertain moments and what we're going to do to further our hope, our vision for a better world,” she said.
About that book title…
“I started writing this book right after the 2020 election, and it started as my take on what it was like to go through that tumultuous and historic year,” Benson told Bridge, referencing an election she oversaw in Michigan that was marked by President Donald Trump’s false claims the election was rigged against him.
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As she wrote, the book evolved into a broader message “about the power we all have to respond to challenges like that,” Benson said.
She distilled that message into a character called a “purposeful warrior,” which she says in the book that she embodies — and invokes dozens of times.
Toward the end of the book, Benson provides an explicit “nine-step path” to becoming what she calls a purposeful warrior:
- Show solidarity.
- Call out bullies.
- Speak your truth.
- Embrace challenges with grit and grace.
- Commit to innovation and continuous improvement.
- Channel anger into action.
- Be mission driven.
- Build your own board of directors.
- Never give up.
Benson spends the lion’s share of the book offering illustrations, both personal and historical, as examples of individuals embodying those values, from civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
A jab at a political rival
Benson will compete next year in a Democratic gubernatorial primary that also includes Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson.
If she wins that, she’d face the Republican nominee and likely Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who left the Democratic Party and is now seeking to win office as an independent candidate.
She has some sharp words for Duggan in the book, saying he circulated a memo in 2018 that urged Democrats not to back Whitmer as a gubernatorial candidate. At the time, he sought to recruit US Sen. Gary Peters into the race.
“I will never forget the message those efforts sent to women across our state,” Benson wrote. “So many powerful and influential men were trying to stand in (Whitmer’s) way.”
Benson, Whitmer and Nessel ultimately formed an all-female ticket for the state’s top offices and rode to office in 2018 on a blue wave.
She said Duggan’s memo was a reminder to female leaders “that we’d always need to work a hundred times harder than our male counterparts if we wanted them to see us as leaders and winning candidates for office.”
Undercover with white supremacists
Shortly after college, Benson volunteered with the Southern Poverty Law Center to investigate white supremacist groups.
In the book, she said she posed as a freelance journalist “meeting with leaders and members of hate groups to gather information on their activities and plans.”
She said she interviewed a would-be neo-Nazi and “ended up halting a lot of his plans to commit crimes” with an article that “ultimately brought about the demise of the group.”
“I developed a deep understanding of the ways that extremist rhetoric and ideology lead to actual violence directed at individuals, communities, and, sometimes, entire nations,” Benson writes.
“That understanding prepared me for what I would later face overseeing the 2020 presidential election — that there is a direct link from the violent rhetoric of leaders to the hateful acts of their followers.”
A miscarriage
In her book, Benson publicly discloses for the first time that she had a miscarriage eight years ago — shortly before she launched her bid for Secretary of State in 2017.
Benson told The Associated Press that the miscarriage made her value easy access to reproductive health care in an emotional and difficult situation, something she wants to deliver for the state if elected.
“It opened my eyes to the need to not just protect reproductive freedom and rights, but actually make sure they’re real,” Benson said.
Kidnapping plot
Before announcing October 2020 charges against militia members that conspired to kidnap Whitmer, Benson says Attorney General Dana Nessel told her they had both been early targets, too.
Benson said Nessel told her the would-be kidnappers “also allegedly discussed plans for a military-style assault on the Michigan state Capitol and attacks against the Michigan State Police,” which were later detailed in court documents.
“It was a terrifying moment during a year full of them—recognizing our vulnerability as public officials in a moment where some individuals sought to harm us and our families,” Benson wrote.
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