Is Grethen Whitmer headed for the White House?

The Democratic Governor of Michigan suddenly finds herself being talked about as a potential presidential candidate.

Michigan State Governor Gretchen Whitmer on election night. Picture: AFP

She is brave, astute and charismatic, and has spent four years, as she put it, fixing “the damn roads” in her home state. Is Gretchen Whitmer now about to get a chance to fix America?

The Democratic Governor of Michigan suddenly finds herself being talked about as a potential presidential candidate after being re-elected by a striking double-digit margin this month. She was in the frame for a top national job before, having been on Joe Biden’s shortlist for running mate in 2020, but her firm handling of the pandemic and proven appeal in a swing state has elevated her to the elite group of contenders from her party whenever the President ­decides to call it a day.

Part of her appeal is her chutzpah – turning cartwheels backstage with young staffers before a recent campaign speech and psyching herself up by repeating her motivational mantra: “It’s Shark Week, motherf..ker!”

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer campaigning at Michigan State University on the last night before the midtearm election. Picture: AFP

Whitmer, 51, has her detractors in Michigan, where she is loathed by many Republicans for allowing long closures of schools, colleges and businesses and for not lifting a public masking order until June 2021. Of the other 49 states, only Nevada had a higher peak of jobs lost to Covid measures.

She was helped to re-election by her forceful defence of abortion rights, having stunned colleagues as a state senator by revealing that she was raped as an undergraduate. She spoke out several years before the #MeToo movement encouraged other women to do the same. She showed her mettle again during her first term as Governor by shrugging off intimidation from armed anti-lockdown protesters egged on by president Donald Trump, who called her “that woman from Michigan”. She was then the target of a kidnap plot that led to several militiamen being jailed.

“Gretchen Whitmer comes to mind as being one of the more ­serious and formidable of the candidates to replace Joe Biden if he chooses not to run,” said David Jesuit, professor of political ­science at Central Michigan University.

Since her resounding victory in the midterms earlier this month, Whitmer has tried in vain to quash talk of becoming the nation’s first female commander-in-chief.

She was already fourth in The Washington Post’s ranking of the Democrats’ 2024 White House prospects, behind Biden, Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Vice-President Kamala Harris,

“There’s no doubt that her name is going to be very much in the mix when people are talking about national leaders,” David Axelrod, a former adviser to president Barack Obama, told the paper.

There is a growing feeling that she could be the best equipped to stand up to Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor seen by many Republicans as their own best hope for the presidency in 2024.

As a Democrat from the Midwest, she is believed by analysts to have more national appeal than another rising star governor, Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, who also won re-election this month.

“California versus Michigan – to me, it’s a no-brainer,” said Jesuit. when asked about Newsom or Harris, a former California senator, as rivals to Whitmer. “I don’t see a coastal Democrat as being a big attraction for the national Democratic Party. They’re going to want to go after a purple-state governor like Whitmer.”

Coastal Democrats are generally seen as too left wing for the ­national electorate. Partly thanks to Whitmer, Michigan is now a little less purple, a description of politically divided states where Democrats (blue) and Republicans (red) routinely win big elections.

Whitmer ran in 2018 on the pragmatic slogan “fix the damn roads”, succeeding a moderate ­Republican governor. She believes her re-election, defeating a candidate backed by Trump, was a ­repudiation of the atmosphere of political violence in the US.

“Good people need to call this out and say we will not tolerate this in this country, and perhaps part of that message was sent this election,” she said. “My opponent was a conspiracy theorist and she would regularly stoke politically violent rhetoric, undermine institutions.”

Whitmer, who has a law ­degree, is married to dentist Marc Mallory and has two daughters from her first marriage, is “a very, very shrewd politician”, said Simon Schuster, senior political reporter at MLive, a media group in Michigan.

Whitmer’s close association with abortion rights in the year the Supreme Court overturned Americans’ national right to terminate unwanted pregnancies partly helps to explain her election success. People in Michigan were also asked to vote this month on a proposal to amend the state constitution to include the right to an abortion. It passed by an even greater amount than her victory margin.

Schuster said another reason for Whitmer’s popularity was the way she navigated the Republican-controlled legislature to pass budgets that reflected her own priorities. When she could not persuade Republicans to support a 45-cent petrol surcharge to fix the roads, she raised $US3.5bn for it in public bonds.

“I think the biggest political gift that she received in her first term was having to preside over divided government where Republicans had majorities in our (state) Senate,” Schuster said. “The twist that she’s put on the failure of her 45-cent road tax was that she fixed the damn roads without raising taxes a single cent.”

The Sunday Times