Tudor Dixon pitches vision for state near Detroit

Tudor Dixon and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are both women with daughters, but if you ask the governor, their similarities end there.

State of play: The gubernatorial candidates are campaigning on two distinct visions for the state. Dixon doesn't have the political experience that Whitmer carried into the governor's office as a former state legislator, or even close to the amount of fundraising money and advertising.

• However, she is channeling the frustrations of parents angry about LGBTQ+ affirming books in schools and what's happening in classrooms following a learning gap caused by school closures during the pandemic.
• She's banking on harnessing that momentum at the polls on Nov. 8.

Driving the news: Dixon made one of her first appeals to Metro Detroiters over the weekend at an event in Rochester Hills.

• She took questions from the public, including what she's doing to connect with minority communities.
• Dixon said she recently spoke to a Macomb County Commissioner "to try to get us a meeting with the Black community in Wayne County."

The intrigue: Dixon told the crowd of mostly supporters that over-regulation is hurting business and said her administration would cut red tape to secure large development projects.

• But Dixon hasn't secured endorsements from prominent business groups like the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association or the Michigan Chamber of Commerce — which hasn't missed a general election endorsement in two decades, according to Bridge Michigan.

Of note: While Whitmer has called Dixon a conspiracy theorist, her stance on the 2020 election is blurry. She's shown enough skepticism to earn the endorsement of former president Donald Trump — who has fought against any Republican who accepts the result of the latest presidential election — but hasn't made investigating the results a priority of her campaign.

• Fivethirtyeight reports Dixon has "fully denied" President Joe Biden's election victory, but it's not that simple.
• MLive says Dixon's shifting stance has gone from certainty that there was fraud, to "it's impossible to know."