Who is Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer?

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the Executive Office | Andrew Roth

She’s been on the short list of vice presidential contenders in 2020, an in-demand surrogate for Democrats in 2024, and now she’s once again a top VP contender.

Such has been the political journey for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the last four years, who, in between all that, overwhelmingly won her own reelection in 2022 and presided over a wave of progressive legislation.

But with President Joe Biden’s decision last week to withdraw from his reelection bid, Whitmer is once again in the center of speculation about her political future. She quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, shutting down talk that perhaps Whitmer herself would vie to be the nominee. But almost as quickly, the question has become who will Harris choose as her VP pick?

Whitmer has been discussed as a potential running mate, alongside several Democrats including North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Notably, Whitmer — Michigan’s second female governor in history — has appeared to be the only woman in serious contention. An all-female ticket would be historic and would come just four years after Harris became the nation’s first female (and Black and Asian American) vice president.

But Whitmer, who’s been doing the national media rounds for her book, “True Gretch,” has repeatedly swatted VP speculation away, saying in an interview Monday morning that she has “not a part of the vetting” process.

“I have communicated with everyone, including the people of Michigan, that I’m going to stay as governor until the end of my term at the end of 2026,” Whitmer said on CBS.

That dovetails with what Whitmer told Michigan reporters on Tuesday at a budget bill signing, when she said she had “not been asked for anything” by the Harris campaign.

“I am not interested in doing anything other than this job for the next two and a half years. I’ve not sent any documentation to anyone,” Whitmer said in Flint.

Prior to Biden announcing in April 2023 he would seek reelection, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Hill published articles or opinion pieces naming Whitmer as a top White House contender in 2024. 

They noted her two gubernatorial election wins by about 10 points in a swing state, her prolific fundraising ability, and her coattails in bringing a Democratic majority to Lansing for the first time “since the era of ‘Thriller.’”

The whispers about Whitmer’s future had begun years earlier when she won good reviews when she delivered the Democratic Party’s response to former President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February 2020 at East Lansing High School, where her daughters were students. 

Within a month, the governor was engaged in a high-profile battle with Trump over his COVID pandemic response. Michigan also was home to several heavily armed, right-wing protests over her pandemic health policies that spring, with a group of extremists eventually arrested that fall for a kidnapping and assassination plot against her.

During that tumultuous time, she was a finalist on Biden’s vice presidential list.

“I’ll be very clear. It was never something that I was auditioning for, as I was and continue to be very happy to be governor of Michigan,” Whitmer told the Advance in a May interview on Mackinac Island. “And I can tell you, my whole family was very relieved that he didn’t ask me to be his running mate.”

When Biden ended up tapping Harris, Whitmer moved easily into the role of campaign surrogate, helping to deliver Michigan in 2020 — after Trump had won the state four years earlier — which was a key part of Biden’s overall victory.

Some political observers have questioned if it would even make sense for Whitmer to be on the ticket with Harris.

“They’ve a very similar skill set and profile, so the question would be, ‘Is it in Whitmer’s best interest to join a ticket like this?’ Because let’s be honest, this is a Hail Mary by the Democratic Party right now,” said Mike Radtke, a Sterling Heights councilman and Democratic consultant from Macomb County.

Radtke said that he doesn’t see a downside if Whitmer were picked, however.

“The consensus wisdom is probably Kamala Harris and whoever will lose. Now I hope they don’t. I’m a Democrat. I want them to win very badly. I’m going to vote and support this ticket with all my might. But I don’t think a loss here would harm Whitmer in the future,” said Radtke. “Because I think that oftentimes people who were vice presidential nominees in previous races, they go on to run for president. Some of them become the nominee. Some of them, like [GOP former Vice President] Dan Quayle, fade away. But it’s not going to hurt Whitmer’s future.”

Family ties for a political rise

While the 52-year-old mother of two daughters is a nationally-known Democrat, Whitmer comes from strong bipartisan stock. 

Her father Richard Whitmer is a (former) Republican who served as the Commerce Department director under GOP Gov. William Milliken before later becoming the president and chief executive officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Her late mother, Sherry Whitmer, was a Democrat and assistant attorney general under Michigan’s “Eternal General,” AG Frank Kelley.

As she relates in “True Gretch”, Gretchen Whitmer’s original ambition to become a TV sports anchor eventually gave way to the pull of her family’s history. After working in the Legislature and as an attorney, she ran for, and won, a special election for a seat representing the Lansing area in the Michigan House in 2000 when she was 29. 

“In my first term, I became a member of the sandwich generation,” Whitmer recently told the Texas Democratic Party Convention about that time in her life. “I was sandwiched between two generations of my own family for whom I was the primary caregiver. You know they say the five most stressful life events are getting married, having a child, losing a loved one, moving your home and starting a new job. I did them all that first term. I took care of my newborn daughter and my mom who was dying of brain cancer. And that period of my life forged me into the person I am today.”

Then in 2006, she won a special election for the Michigan Senate, eventually rising to the rank of minority leader. 

It was in that role when Whitmer first made national headlines. As also related in her memoir, in 2013 Whitmer shared with her colleagues that she had been sexually assaulted while in college in an effort to convince Senate Republicans not to pass restrictions on health insurance coverage under which individuals would have to purchase a separate insurance rider that Whitmer and other critics slammed as “rape insurance.” 

While the GOP-led chamber passed the legislation anyway, Whitmer recalled the flood of emails and faxes (it was 2013) the next day thanking her for sharing her story. She also got the last word on that, signing the bill that repealed the law on the 10-year anniversary of that speech.

After being term-limited from the Senate in 2015, Whitmer didn’t stay out of public office for long, and was appointed in July 2016 to be the interim Ingham County prosecutor, when her predecessor resigned after being charged with prostitution-related crimes. In her brief six months in that role, Whitmer created a domestic violence unit with a dedicated assistant prosecutor. 

Shortly after completing her term, Whitmer threw her hat into the ring for Michigan governor, and ran what The Washington Post called a “disciplined and focused campaign,” in which she pitched herself as a more moderate candidate than her two Democratic opponents, eschewing Medicare for All proposals popular with progressives. 

Instead, she dug in on meat-and-potato issues like infrastructure, using the now oft-repeated “Fix the damn roads”  slogan to win an outright majority in the primary and walk away with a nearly 10-point victory in 2018 over Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette.

The ‘woman in Michigan’

While Whitmer’s first term started with lackluster track record in getting her signature proposals like a 45-cent gas tax to “fix the damn roads” through the Republican-dominated Legislature, her job quickly became dominated by handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

And the rest, as they say, is history. States of emergency, school closings and “stay home” orders became the norm as she and other governors across the country tried to contend with a public health crisis that was taking people’s lives while the federal government lacked a coordinated response plan.

After Whitmer had to drag the Trump administration to secure a federal disaster declaration, Trump bragged at a press conference that he told then-Vice President Mike Pence not to take Whitmer’s calls.

“Don’t call the woman in Michigan. It doesn’t make any difference what happens,” Trump declared. “… You know what I say? If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”

It was just a month after that public rebuke of Whitmer, and encouraged by a Trump tweet which said, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!,” that an armed protest against her policies took place at the state Capitol, including physical threats of violence, followed later that year by an assassination plot against her that eventually resulted in the conviction of nine right-wing militia members.

One of the first people to call Whitmer after the plot’s discovery was Joe Biden, then in the final weeks of his successful 2020 campaign to beat Donald Trump. Once he took office, Whitmer says she finally had a partner in the White House to help get Michigan out of its COVID funk. 

Starting with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, followed by the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and then finally the $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act, federal funds poured into Michigan and other states to restart the economy and make far-reaching infrastructure investments. 

Whitmer’s double-digit win in her 2022 reelection bid over GOP gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon was largely built around her refusal to step down against her opponent’s assault on LGBTQ+ individuals, as well as her fierce support of abortion rights in the fallout of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. When she articulated that support at the Mackinac Policy Conference that year, she was met with cheers. 

“Toward the end of the campaign, I kept getting the question, ‘Are you talking too much about abortion? Shouldn’t we be talking about the economy?’” Whitmer recalled last month at an economic summit in Detroit. 

“I’m a pretty disciplined messenger. I’m not going to get angry. I’ve got a long fuse. I take a lot of crap before I give it back, but it was about the thousandth time I got that question, and I responded ‘If you don’t think abortion is about the economy, you probably don’t have a uterus.’ And one of my people on my campaign seemed like their eyes got large. ‘We didn’t practice that. What happened?’ The most profound economic decision a woman and her partner or family will make over the course of her lifetime is whether and when to bear a child. And so it is about the economy.”

Whitmer was able to tap into a vein of voter anger that many pundits and pollsters alike were seemingly blinded to, helped lead a historic sweep of state government that placed Democrats in control of the Legislature for the first time in nearly 40 years.

Since then, Whitmer has signed Democratic-passed legislation that repealed Michigan’s Right to Work laws, removed from the books a 1931 law banning abortions, expanded the state’s civil rights law to include sexual orientation and gender identity, instituted gun reforms including background checks for gun purchases, while also requiring gun owners to safely store their weapons and created “red flag laws” to allow judges to remove weapons from those determined to be a danger to themselves or others.

That success was quickly absorbed by the Biden-Harris campaign, making Whitmer one of its national co-chairs, and placing her out front as a top surrogate for the campaign, a role that she dutifully played even after Biden’s poor debate performance started the media speculation and insider second-guessing that resulted in Biden’s historic withdrawal last week.

Through it all, Whitmer has said she would finish her final term as governor, a pledge she made during the 2022 campaign, and one she reiterated several times last week. 

“I’m not leaving Michigan,” she told reporters after an event in Lansing on July 22.

A political crossroads

Prior to Biden’s withdrawal, all signs pointed to Whitmer finishing out her second term in 2026, and then having two years to prepare for a White House run of her own in 2028. If Harris manages to win this November, that path is much more complicated.

For that reason, GOP consultant Andrea Bitely, who was Schuette’s spokesperson during his 2018 campaign, says Whitmer’s clearest path to the White House is for another four years of Trump.

“This is not going to be a popular thing with the governor’s office, but the best bet for her is that Trump wins. And she could then spend two years as governor railing against him, and then another two years out of office as a declared presidential candidate running against the MAGA brand,” said Bitely. “That’s the best outcome for Gretchen Whitmer in this case if she wants to be president. I’m not saying it’s what’s best for the country, not saying it’s what she fundamentally wants, but her ability to become president is easier if Trump wins.”

But Radtke says that calculation, while it may be correct from a political standpoint, misses the point of what this election is about from the Democratic perspective.

“I’ve heard that before, too, and I think it’s extremely cynical,” he said. “The idea that if Trump wins reelection, that we’re going to even have another election in 2028 — this man has already tried to steal one election. What’s to stop him from trying to steal another election?”

Instead, Radtke says should Harris pull out a win in November, Whitmer would again have a progressive partner in the White House, much like she did with Biden.

“Harris, if she wins the presidency, will have her own cabinet, and I think that Whitmer, if she’s not the VP, will really have a place in a future administration,” said Radtke.

In the end, Radtke believes Whitmer’s political future will best be served by her setting aside any White House ambitions and focusing on the task at hand; defeating Trump and making sure right-wing plans like Project 2025 aren’t implemented.

“I think this has been a trying time for Democrats, and I honestly believe that we are uniting to try to save this country from the threat that is Donald Trump, someone who claims he’s going to deport 15 million immigrants in his first year, who wants to be a dictator on day one, who wants to fire the civil service [and install] Trump loyalists,” said Radtke. “We’ve already seen what four Trump judges have gotten him, where it just seems to me the law applies to everyone but Donald Trump. So I think this is, to borrow a phrase from President Biden, a ‘race for the soul of our nation.’”