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LANSING, MI -- Detroit civil rights attorney Godfrey Dillard is running for Michigan Attorney General.

Dillard announced his candidacy Thursday afternoon, setting up a showdown with fellow Democrat Mark Totten at the party's nominating convention in August.

The nominee would take on Republican incumbent Attorney General Bill Schuette in November.

Totten announced his candidacy back in June of 2013 and has spent nearly a year on the campaign trail, but Dillard's experience and name recognition in Southeast Michigan make him an instant contender for the nomination.

Dillard, speaking with MLive on Thursday, said he was inspired to enter the race because of Schuette's positions on various cultural and social issues. The attorney general should have fought parts of the state's emergency manager law, Dillard argued, but not challenged federal rulings striking down same-sex marriage and juvenile lifer laws.

"We need a check and balance on a Republican-dominated Legislature, governor and even the state Supreme Court," Dillard said. "We need an attorney general that's going to argue the law without partisanship."

Dillard, 65, is a Detroit native with a law degree from the University of Michigan, which he later represented in a high-profile affirmative action admission case. He worked for the Foreign Service during the Carter and Reagan administrations, tried to run for Congress in 2012 and currently teaches law at Wayne State University.

Totten is a law professor at Michigan State University who previously served as a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office in West Michigan, a clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thomas Griffith and as a staff attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Appellate Staff.

"Dillard has some very good name recognition in a a critical base for Dems, which gives him a built in advantage, but Mark Totten has been working hard and doing the rubber chicken circuit for the past year," said Lansing-based political consultant TJ Bucholz.

"Either one of them is going to have an uphill battle against Schuette. Within the Republican Party, he's one of the few elected officials who has some successful crossover with the establishment and tea party figures."

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Democrat Godfrey Dillard announces run for Michigan Attorney General