LANSING – Is Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gearing up to run for President? If she does and if she were to win, she would be believe it or not, the first President to have been born in Michigan.
Michigan is, bafflingly, the only large industrial state never to have one of its sons (or daughters) elected President of the United States. That’s in stark contrast to Ohio, which for many years could brag that it was the “mother of presidents.” Indeed, seven were born in the Buckeye State, while an eighth, William Henry Harrison, lived near Cincinnati when he was elected.
True, there hasn’t been an Ohioan in the White House since Warren Harding died a century ago this week, and he wasn’t someone anyone brags about these days. But when it comes to producing leaders of the nation, Ohio has far outstripped Michigan.
In fact, the number of elected Presidents of the United States who even lived in Michigan is also exactly . . . zero. President Gerald Ford was a longtime Michigan congressman, but was actually born in Nebraska. And while he became President, and did an honorable job, he never was elected President, or, for that matter, vice-president. He was appointed VP when Spiro Agnew resigned, and got the top job a few months later when Richard Nixon quit. When he tried to get elected on his own, he was defeated.
Apart from that, Michigan presidential contenders have notched a long record of futility. Lewis Cass, the state’s political godfather, was nominated by the Democrats in 1848, and lost. Thomas Dewey and Mitt Romney were both born in Michigan, moved to other states, were nominated by the Republicans and also lost.
Gretchen Whitmer, however, is beginning to be talked about nationally as the next Democratic nominee after Joe Biden, regardless of whether or not the President is reelected next year.
In a long profile in the New Yorker last month, the governor told an interviewer “I am not sitting in any room thinking about running for President,” and added that any talk of that was “a distraction.” That, naturally, is what she almost has to say.
Whitmer knows that challenging President Biden for next year’s nomination would be politically suicidal, and she has a close and warm relationship with the President. In fact, she first gained national notice when he came close to picking her as his running mate three years ago, finally opting for Kamala Harris instead.
She was a first-term governor in 2020, in office for barely a year and had gotten little of her program enacted. However, she has gone from triumph to triumph since.
Three years ago, she helped Biden flip Michigan back into the blue column; last year, she won a smashing reelection victory by nearly half a million votes. Not only that, her Democrats won every major statewide office and control of both houses of the legislature for the first time since 1982. Granted, a new law ending gerrymandering had something to do with that, but so did the governor.
Not only that, since her second term began in January she has led Democrats to dizzying legislative successes. Ten-year-old legislation making Michigan a right-to-work state was repealed. So was a hated tax on pensions enacted under her predecessor, Republican Rick Snyder. Civil rights protections were extended to transgender Michiganders. Old laws outlawing abortion were repealed, even though they had been negated by a pro-choice state constitutional amendment Whitmer had campaigned for.
The state poured vast new sums into its wretched highways; the governor’s campaign slogan had been “Fix the damn roads.” Against Republican opposition, a raft of new measures was passed to make voting and registering to vote much easier.
That doesn’t mean the governor’s record is flawless. She made the wrong kind of headlines in 2021 when she secretly flew to Florida to see her ill father during the pandemic, and worse, got a private chemical company to pick up the tab. (After this came to light, her campaign funds reimbursed the company.)
Whitmer also angered many progressives by endorsing an auto insurance “reform” package backed by the insurance companies that took complete catastrophic coverage away from citizens in exchange for a small rate reduction.
She endured criticism for what many saw were excessive anti-Covid measures, closing schools, limiting travel and imposing masks during the worst of the pandemic. But she gained sympathy when a right-wing militia plot to kidnap and kill her was foiled.
But could she be President? She does have some things going for her. She is hugely popular among the well-educated and affluent suburbanites who used to vote Republican, even though places like Monroe County, once Democratic, voted against her last year.
Whitmer, who turns 52 this month, will be 57 in 2028, normally prime presidential age.
Her final gubernatorial term will end Jan. 1, 2027, which would give her time to raise money and become better known nationally more than a year before the first primary and caucus elections.
Nobody, however, knows what the political landscape will be four years from now. Whitmer, a lawyer who had a career in the legislature, has essentially spent her entire life in East Lansing, which led one observer to sneer that her international experience “consists of visits to the campus IHOP.”
However, a former Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter followed a similar path to the presidency almost half a century ago. Five years ago, some of the state’s top Democratic leaders worried Whitmer wouldn’t be a strong enough candidate for governor.
None of them are saying the White House is impossible now.
(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
