Michigan Gubernatorial Frontrunner’s Deep Ties To Corrupt Southern Poverty Law Center Demand Scrutiny
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the frontrunner in the 2026 governor’s race, has both personal and institutional ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The far-left organization announced in a video statement Tuesday that it is the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigation that centers on its use of informants who infiltrate extremist groups.
Interim President and CEO Bryan Fair acknowledged, “The focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” adding that the program was kept quiet to protect informant safety.
Later on Tuesday, the DOJ revealed that a federal grand jury had indicted the organization on 11 counts, including wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. In addition, the department alleged that the SPLC “secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and National Socialist Party of America.”
By Benson’s own account, she worked at the organization as an undercover operative in the late 1990s, going so far as to pretend to be a freelance journalist to gain access to neo-Nazi leaders and white supremacist groups. In her 2025 memoir, The Purposeful Warrior, Benson describes the work: “just shy of twenty years old, posing as a freelance journalist, meeting with leaders and members of hate groups to gather information on their activities and plans.”
It was at the Southern Poverty Law Center where Benson found the “purpose” invoked in the title of her book. Michigan Fair Elections Institute News & Commentary’s review of the memoir pinpoints Benson’s Damascus Road moment.
Benson and a girlfriend were making their pilgrimage to Montgomery [during spring break]. On that trip, Benson met with SPLC staff and attorneys ‘to hear about how they were working on the front lines to address racially biased hate crimes and teach the next generation of children to stand up to hate in all its forms.’
During that spring break in 1998, Benson found her purpose. She says, ‘I prayed to be someone who would choose to stand at the foot of the Edmund Petrus Bridge and march forward to further a cause that I believed in.’
The SPLC internship Benson later accepted was unpaid. It’s not clear whether that would absolve her of the kinds of potentially illegal activities the DOJ and FBI have been investigating.
Benson later joined the SPLC’s board of directors, a role she held for several years. When questioned about the board membership in March 2019 — shortly after taking office as Michigan’s secretary of state — her office stated she had “informed SPLC leadership she would be stepping down.” Tyler O’Neil, then with PJ Media, documented that Benson remained listed on the SPLC board after that announcement, and challenged her office to produce a resignation letter. The request went unanswered.
Throughout her political career, Benson has worn her SPLC history as a badge of honor. As recently as 2020, she posted to X: “I started my career tracking white supremacist & neo-Nazi orgs [at the SPLC].”
Poll Shows Benson Leading the Pack
The timing of the investigation and indictment is significant. A new poll, also published this week, shows Benson as the frontrunner for Michigan governor, a race expected to be among the most competitive in the nation in 2026. The investigation and indictment of the SPLC put a sitting statewide official and gubernatorial candidate in the awkward position of having her signature career credential now attached to an organization under federal criminal scrutiny.
The following are pressing questions: What was the precise nature and scope of Benson’s undercover work at the SPLC, who directed it, and did the activities she participated in overlap with those that are now the subject of a federal investigation and indictment?
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