Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she has no plans to ever run for president

LANSING - Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is not interested in running for president – ever – she said Tuesday.

National media have repeatedly mentioned Whitmer as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2024, should President Joe Biden not seek a second term. That talk intensified after the Nov. 8 midterm elections, in which Whitmer won reelection by double digits and led a Democratic ticket that also swept the other two top statewide offices and flipped both chambers of the Legislature from red to blue.

Whitmer has repeatedly said her focus is on serving Michigan as governor for the next four years.

But in a Tuesday interview with the Free Press in her Lansing office in the Romney Building, she went further than that. Asked to look beyond 2024, and whether she could ever see herself running for president, she replied: "I don't foresee that."

"I intend to serve four more years as governor and do the best job I can and hand the state over to whoever succeeds me," Whitmer said.

"The lure of Washington, D.C. has not been something that has ever drawn my interest or attention. What I love about state government is that you can do things right now and see the impact that it has on people's lives."

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Whitmer said that's why she loves writing an annual education budget, recent versions of which have included record funding levels and eliminated a longstanding funding gap between wealthier and less-wealthy school districts.

The governor first rose to national prominence early in the COVID-19 pandemic as a critic of former President Donald Trump's management of the crisis and as a frequent target of Trump's Twitter attacks. Whitmer emerged this year as a national advocate for reproductive rights, filing suit against a 1931 Michigan law that would criminalize most abortions, and championing Proposal 3, approved by voters Nov. 8, to enshrine those rights in the state constitution.

"I have always been drawn to state government work," she said. "It's closer to people. You can see results, and you can get things done."

In a Sunday article, the publication The Hill ranked Whitmer fourth as a potential 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, behind Biden himself, Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is also a Michigan resident.

In a Saturday column, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post pointed to Whitmer and Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania as two Democrats shaping the party's future. But unlike Shapiro, who he said is not ready, Dionne called Whitmer "a plausible presidential candidate."

In a Thursday column in the New York Times, contributing Opinion writer Frank Bruni identified Whitmer, along with Harris and Buttigieg, as the potential Democratic contenders for president who should be getting the most attention.

Whitmer, who was on the short list of potential 2020 Biden running mates before he selected Harris, said Tuesday she isn't swayed by such talk in those and other national media outlets.

"I don't even know what to make of it when people want to have that conversation — the national conversation," she said. "That's not one that I'm driving; I can tell you that."

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: I have no plans to run for president