Mark Brewer: Michigan's Very Own Marc Elias
By Kristine Christlieb, Director, MFEI/PIME News Division
September 16, 2026
Every state’s got one: the lawyer whose name shows up on nearly all high-stakes election-law legal filings, battling for his side of the aisle year after year. In Michigan, on the Democrat side, that lawyer is Mark Brewer.
That’s who Promote the Vote hired to take down Americans for Citizen Voting - Michigan's (ACVM) ballot initiative and who Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has hired to be her gubernatorial campaign counsel.
For nearly three decades, whether the fight was over straight-ticket ballots, a disputed six-vote margin in Hamtramck, or the state's ban on fusion voting, Brewer has been in the room . . . or on the filing. And Vegas would bet the house on him being in the Democrat corner.
Whether it’s the ACLU of Michigan, the League of Women Voters, organized labor — that’s been Brewer’s lane.
For this down-the-line Democrat lawyer, the closest thing to cross-ideological work is his current project, a fusion-voting case, where his client is a new party founded by former Republican Jeff Timmer, the one-time executive director of the MIGOP who is now a senior advisor with the never-Trump Lincoln Project.
The Elias Comparison
The Mark Brewer equivalent writ large on the national legal stage is Marc Elias, a name his critics would say is the dictionary definition of lawfare. He’s the D.C. attorney who has become the most recognizable name in Democrat election litigation. By his own count, Elias has run point on well over a hundred election-law cases since 2019.
He also publishes Democracy Docket, a media operation with 400,000-plus newsletter subscribers tracking election litigation nationally.
No other lawyer has done more than Elias to turn "election law attorney" into a household role in Democrat politics over the past two cycles.
The comparison to Brewer isn't perfect — more on that below. But the through line holds: two careers built not on winning elected office but on winning the rules deciding who else does.
The Institutional Base
Brewer never ran for office so he’s not a politician but that doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in power. His weight is inside the party machine instead.
A Michigan native, Brewer’s Harvard undergrad work and Stanford Law School credentials make him a formidable opponent.
In 1995, he was elected chair of the Michigan Democrat Party — a post he held until 2013, nearly twenty years, the longest tenure in the party's history. He was also a member of the Democratic National Committee, a five-time DNC convention delegate chairing Michigan's delegation each time, and president of the Association of State Democratic Chairs from 2005 to 2009, where he worked with then-DNC chair Howard Dean on the "50-state strategy" credited with helping elect Barack Obama in 2008.
After losing a MI DNC leadership fight to Lon Johnson in 2013, Brewer joined Goodman Acker P.C., a mid-tier personal injury and medical malpractice shop in Southfield. The firm had zero election-law experience, but Barry Goodman and Gerald Acker had plenty of DNC experience. That was the connection. To his credit, Brewer walked in and built up that area of practice leveraging the firm's DNC network.
A Friendly Face on the Board of State Canvassers
One relationship worth mentioning . . . Mary Ellen Gurewitz, vice-chair of the Board of State Canvassers, was Brewer's colleague at Sachs Waldman, the Detroit union-side firm where he worked from 1983 to 1995. In 2016, Gurewitz and Brewer were co-counsel on the straight-ticket voting suit and won a permanent injunction in August 2018.
Today Gurewitz is one of two Democrats on the four-member board that deadlocked 2-2 on the ACVM's ballot proposal. Board deadlocks split by party as a matter of routine, no matter who's arguing.
But the history between Brewer and one of the four people voting on his cases is on the record and is a relevant fact. More than one ACVM supporter pegged Brewer and Gurewitz as operating like pitcher and catcher during the Board of State Canvassers proceedings on August 24.
Where the Elias Comparison Breaks Down
With regard to scale, there is no comparison between Brewer and Elias. Elias Law Group is a multi-attorney national firm, and Democracy Docket is a substantial media operation; Brewer has no comparable infrastructure. Furthermore, Elias's docket is national, Brewer's is almost entirely Michigan-specific.
Brewer is a diminutive, Michigan-specific version of Elias; both using the law for partisan purposes. They are operatives not officeholders, who built power through party-adjacent litigation. Both are frequent targets of "lawfare" framing from their opponents.
Another difference: you might have known Elias' name but not Brewer's. Now you do.
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