Democratic Macomb County Prosecutor candidate Christina Hines while guest lecturing at Wayne State University Law School. Courtesy photo.
It’s a hotly contested race featuring a former female prosecutor and a man credibly accused of sexual harassment, with the future of law and order on the ballot.
No, it’s not the presidential race.
But that description fits the contest for Macomb County prosecutor that pits incumbent Republican Pete Lucido, a former state senator, against Democratic challenger Christina Hines, a former prosecutor in both Wayne and Washtenaw counties, who now serves as an adjunct law professor at Wayne State University.
“A lot of people have kind of commented on the fact that I have a very similar race that Kamala Harris does,“ Hines told the Michigan Advance. “It’s a younger prosecutor who actually has this experience, who’s running against a MAGA Republican that shouldn’t have been in office in the first place.”
Lucido won election to the post in 2020, with former President Donald Trump scoring big at the top of the ticket in Macomb County. Although Lucido was weighed down by considerable controversy coming into the office — and has courted it since — he’s still considered the favorite in a county that’s grown redder and Trump will, once again, be on the ballot.
Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido talks at a JD Vance campaign event in Shelby Twp. on Aug. 7, 2024. | Lucy Valeski
A track record of ‘credible’ accusations
In January 2020, while Lucido served as a Republican state senator, multiple allegations of sexual harassment came to light, beginning with an inappropriate exchange involving a former Michigan Advance reporter. Lucido apologized in a tweet the following day for the “misunderstanding” and for “offending” the reporter, but he went on to change his story several times in media interviews, including in March 2020, when he claimed that he hadn’t “sexually harassed anyone.”
That incident prompted state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak), to file a formal sexual harassment complaint about Lucido with the Senate Business Office concerning an encounter in November 2018 during a new senator orientation event in Lansing. Melissa Osborn, a regulatory and legislative affairs specialist for the Michigan Credit Union League, said that Lucido harassed her during a conference in Lansing in 2019.
A Senate Business Office investigation in March 2020 concluded that all three women were “credible” in their accusations and that the incidents “more likely than not” occurred as reported by each accuser. As a result, then-Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake) removed Lucido from his position as chair of the influential Senate Advice and Consent Committee and required him to participate in additional training. Despite that, Lucido falsely claimed he’d been exonerated.
The Advance made multiple requests for comment to Lucido for this story, but he did not respond.
Hines argues that Lucido’s history is relevant to the election.
“A person with a record of sexual harassment should not be prosecutor,” said Hines, who grew up in Warren and lives there now with her husband and three kids.
As a resident, she said she has watched the prosecutor’s office descend ever deeper into dysfunction, beginning with former Prosecutor Eric Smith, a Democrat, who resigned in 2020 after being charged with embezzlement, ended up serving seven months in prison, before pleading guilty last year to state counts including misconduct in office, for which he was sentenced to four years of probation.
With Smith’s resignation opening the door for Lucido, he successfully won election to the post in November 2020, but quickly ran into similar issues that had created headlines for him as a state senator.
A 2022 report commissioned by Macomb County found that as prosecutor, Lucido acted offensively toward female employees, with his behavior described as “rude,” “curt,” “unprofessional” and “brutal.”
The report recommended that Lucido, who refused to cooperate with the investigation, be provided with training concerning the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act and related Macomb County policies.
“Pete Lucido failed his first attempt at the Macomb County Harassment and Anti-Discrimination training, scoring only 64.7%. Months later, Pete Lucido finally passed the training, scoring 82.35% – passing by only 2.35%,” said Hines in a press release.
Lucido is also fighting an ethics complaint filed earlier this year by elections attorney Mark Brewer, former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, alleging he allowed county property to be used for political campaign purposes.
Lucido later filed a lawsuit against Macomb County’s corporation counsel and ethics board, claiming they violated state law by meeting in closed session. The matter remains pending.
Then-Sen. Peter Lucido at a Washington Township coffee hour, Jan. 17, 2020 | Ken Coleman
Lucido’s path to prosecutor
According to his campaign website, Lucido, also a lifelong Macomb County resident, graduated in 1988 from Detroit College of Law, now known as Michigan State University College of Law.
Lucido founded his own law firm, Lucido and Manzella, where he practiced until politics called to him. In 2014, he was elected as a state representative for the 36th District, serving two terms, until he moved up to the state Senate in 2018, representing the 8th District. He resigned from that position after just two years following his election as Macomb County prosecutor in November 2020.
Lucido says that since then, he has “cleaned up the Prosecutor’s Office, made it more efficient, brought complete transparency and fairness, and continues to protect those throughout Macomb County.”
In a January interview with the Oakland Post, the student newspaper of his undergraduate alma mater, Oakland University, Lucido was asked about his favorite aspects of the job.
“I get to meet people, not so much in the best situations and scenarios, and I help them to progress and get closure in their life from things that have happened,” Lucido said. “No one ever stood up and said they wanted to be a victim. So when I meet the victims for the first time, I have to be sympathetic to the fact that they didn’t want this to happen. They’re going through a difficult time, and also that we get them on the road to recovery the best we can.”
Lucido told the Oakland Post that he was proud of his record as prosecutor.
“I’ve started new units and created new methods of handling criminal justice. I’ve been around criminal justice literally all my life. That’s the only job I ever really had,” he said.
According to Lucido’s campaign mailers, he wants to “enhance and expand our specialty courts for non-violent offenders,” create a “Public Corruption And Integrity Unit,” and remain tough on crime, saying “offenders will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There will be No Hugs For Thugs.”
Former Sen. Peter Lucido at a Washington Township coffee hour, Jan. 17, 2020 | Ken Coleman
A ‘light bulb moment’
Hines said she was initially reluctant when approached to take on Lucido.
“Like a lot of women, I kind of had to be talked into actually making this run because I’ve got three little kids and thought that I would be a better mom if I was taking care of my kids more and not running this crazy campaign,” said Hines.
However, an incident in January 2023 forced her to rethink the idea.
“It was actually when Pete Lucido made that Facebook post about celebrating Confederate General [Robert E.] Lee,” said Hines. “My husband is Black. I have three little Black kids at home. And so it was just that really light bulb moment of realizing that if I did actually want to protect my kids, if I did want to really protect our community, I needed to run.”
Hines says she’s knocked on over 5,000 doors so far in the campaign, while raising more than $200,000.
“I’ve united the Macomb County Democratic Party. I’ve got [Macomb County Executive] Mark Hackel supporting me.”
Hackel’s endorsement is notable in that while he’s a Democrat, his support for other Democrats is not something offered reflexively, having previously endorsed Republicans including Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller, and Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini.
“I am proud to endorse Christina Hines for Macomb County Prosecutor,” said Hackel. “Not only because she is the only candidate with prosecutorial experience, but because she has consistently demonstrated the ability to hold offenders accountable while effectively working with law enforcement and community partners.”
It’s also no secret that Hackel has not been a fan of Lucido, as witnessed earlier this year when he said Lucido had tried to deflect blame after the prosecutor’s office failed to publicize high-profile charges that had been brought against two Warren police officers.
Hines went a step further and accused Lucido of not being truthful about the incident.
“When prosecutors lie and hide information in the name of politics, it causes speculation and uninformed commentary that undermines the trust our community has in law enforcement, prosecutors, and our broader justice system.”
Democratic Macomb County Prosecutor candidate Christina Hines with her family. Courtesy photo.
Getting in trouble
Hines earned her law degree from Wayne State University in 2014 after interning in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, where she said it became clear she wanted to not only be a prosecutor, but prosecute sexual assault cases.
“After I graduated, I started working at the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, but I got in trouble on my third day in the office,” said Hines, laughing. “I was sort of sneaking over to the sexual assault unit because I wanted to help those prosecutors even though I was in general crimes; robberies and guns and drugs and stuff like that. I say I got in trouble, but they offered me the full-time union position, not a contract position. And I think a lot of that was because of initiative and work ethic and my passion for it.”
That passion was obvious to Hines’ boss, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.
“She’s a very talented and very passionate prosecutor,” Worthy told the Advance. “She was especially talented when it came to issues of children and women and SVU, special victims. That is what I would learn to be her specialty …. She was very, very good.”
Worthy said that Hines quickly had some ideas of changes she wanted to make when it came to sexual assault prosecution, which her office eventually implemented.
“She was very concerned about the wellness and the mental health of people who did that work every day,” said Worthy. “She was interested in being proactive and having things for the staff to do to help them with what we now know as secondary trauma. But it was because of her…that I started taking the office in that direction. And so we do a lot of wellness and preventative things now for our staff.”
Following her six years with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, Hines went to Washtenaw County to work under Prosecutor Eli Savit, after he won election there in 2020. Hines became chief of both the Special Victims Unit and the Appellate, Training and Forfeiture Units.
Savit was elected as part of a wave of so-called progressive prosecutors championing policies that included eliminating the use of cash bail, making Washtenaw County the first jurisdiction in Michigan to do so.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy speaks alongside Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Rep. Noah Arbit (D-West Bloomfield) at a House Criminal Justice Committee meeting on June 6, 2023. | Photo by Anna Liz Nichols
However, Hines says it’s not something that she sees as practical.
“Savit is great, and he was doing the things that I think the community wanted and trying to move in that direction,” she said. “What I saw personally is that it didn’t work. Judges were not on board. And one thing about any type of new idea is that you need community support and you need stakeholder buy-in, and the fact that the judges are not necessarily on board for it really messed up the plan.”
Hines says a prosecutor’s prime motivation must be public safety, and in cases of bail, the question has to be whether or not that person will show up for court again.
“My opinion is that if someone is dangerous, I don’t care who they are, and I don’t care how much money they make. They should be in jail pending trial. If someone is not a danger, then we should be able to figure out other conditions that will make them stay,” she said.
Hines said she doesn’t consider herself a progressive prosecutor, and wants to put data before politics.
“So, the progressive, the Democratic, Republican side of this stuff, when we’re talking about public safety, I think that it’s beyond party,” she said. “It’s beyond those types of ideologies. It’s about what does data say? What does common sense say? What does our community need?”
That distinction, however, didn’t deter the far-right Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) from running an advertisement targeting Hines, alleging she is funded by “left-wing billionaire George Soros” who has spent “tens of millions to elect soft on crime prosecutors” including in Ann Arbor.
Hines believes the ad says far more about her opponent than it does her.
“There are only a few seriously contested large DA/Prosecutor races in the country, let alone in a swing state. Ours is one of them,” she said “Either way, I think it shows the right is worried that Lucido is going to lose.”
The No. 1 job of a prosecutor
Hines says her motivation to replace Lucido is about more than just his personality, although she says his character ties directly to a “culture and integrity problem” in the office.
At the top of the list of concerns is the lack of trials in a county the size of Macomb. Although it is the third largest in Michigan, she says there have been less jury trials there than Kent County, which has 200,000 fewer residents.
“First of all, our prosecutor’s office has become just a plea deal capital of Michigan. We have less jury trials than the number of assistant prosecutors in our office,” said Hines, who believes Lucido’s overreliance on plea deals is a problem that can actually make a community less safe in the long run.
Lucido, however, has said the issue is not so simple. During a candidates’ forum hosted in July by the Macomb County NAACP, he said there simply isn’t the structural ability to try every case.
Democratic Macomb County Prosecutor candidate Christina Hines while campaigning. Courtesy photo.
“You have reasons and causes why certain of the victims do not want to go to court, do not want to go to trial, and you try to go ahead and make sure the system is equally fair too because you have to balance what the victim wants, what the officers want in accord with what it is that you’re going to meet the ends of justice,” he said. “I know that there’s plea bargains out there, but don’t take it out on the prosecutor. Take it out on just the way the system is overloaded and burdened.”
Hines says another issue is high turnover of staff within the prosecutor’s office under Lucido.
“Almost half the office has left — investigators, victim advocates, [assistant prosecuting attorneys], everybody,” she said, also noting that Lucido blamed understaffing for a delayed warrant request in 2022 that left a suspect on the streets who authorities say later shot and killed a Detroit Police officer.
“I think it’s just kind of a stunning example of: This man does not know how to do this job, and he doesn’t really want to do this work,” she said.
Hines says she asks voters to consider who will be a better prosecutor for them — someone like herself with years of trial experience or Lucido, who she claims has never tried a case as a prosecutor.
“My background is so great for the type of voter that really does care about public safety, because I’ve been a child abuse and sexual assault prosecutor. I’ve handled human trafficking cases. I worked on programming to keep kids safe online with the Michigan State Police. These are the issues that people really care about right now in Macomb County.”
Hines left her job as First Assistant Washtenaw County Prosecutor in January to focus on the Macomb County race, saying she needed to devote “100% on the campaign.”
That focus is something Worthy thinks says a lot about why Hines would make a good prosecutor.
“I think what she did was a bold move, putting it all on the line for something that she thinks is the right thing to do and that she’s better suited for, and that means a lot to me,” said Worthy. “Christina doesn’t have an agenda. She wants to do this work.”
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