Did the defeat revive Gretchen Whitmer’s Future?
DETROIT – Michigan Democrats were as stunned by the unexpected Republican tidal wave that engulfed the nation Tuesday night, giving the state to President-elect Donald Trump.
The margin wasn’t as wide or the Republican sweep as extensive as in many other states, but it was an unmistakable and significant shift that few saw coming.
Eight years ago, when Trump also won the state in an upset, it was more easily explained away. Turnout was abysmal; his margin was only 10,704 votes, and the Green Party candidate won more than enough votes to make a difference.
But this election was, while close, considerably more decisive. Votes were still being counted Wednesday, and most of the remaining ballots were in Democratic strongholds like Detroit and Kalamazoo. However, the final Trump margin seemed likely to be around 90,000 votes, just under two percent of the total.
The Democratic vote declined across the board. In now safely-Democratic Monroe County, just across the border from Toledo, Trump won by a little less than 20,000 votes four years ago, and upped that to almost 25,000 this time. Affluent, suburban Oakland County gave President Biden a margin of 118,000 votes in 2020; Kamala Harris won it this week by only 81,000.
The list goes on; Donald Trump owed his victory in 2016 to blue-collar Macomb County, home of the famous Reagan Democrats, which he won by 39,000; he won it by almost twice as much this time
Republicans also managed to win back control of the Michigan House of Representatives, 58-52, by defeating four Democratic incumbents in different parts of the state.
While Democrats will still control the state senate, this probably spells an end to any ambitious legislative agenda Gov. Gretchen Whitmer might have for her final two years in office.
Yet there were a few silver linings for Michigan Democrats Tuesday. Democrats actually managed to gain a seat on the Michigan Supreme Court, which they will now control 7-2, including one Republican justice, Elizabeth Clement, who often votes with Democrats. And after trailing in the race for an open U.S. Senate seat on election night, Elissa Slotkin moved out to a narrow, 10,000 vote lead over Republican Mike Rogers by mid-morning Wednesday.
While the race may remain too close to call for days, much of the remaining vote seems to be in heavily Democratic Wayne and Kalamazoo counties. Slotkin, a three-term member of Congress from a Republican-leaning seat in the Lansing area, has demonstrated bipartisan appeal in the past.
And while Republican Tom Barrett did manage to take back her Congressional seat Tuesday, the GOP was disappointed when Democrat Kristin McDonald Rivet won the Flint-area seat that had been held by the retiring Dan Kildee. McDonald Rivet, a freshman state senator and the twin sister of Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, is widely viewed by Democrats as a coming leader.
But Trump’s crushing victory in Macomb County doomed Democrat Carl Marlinga’s attempt to flip the congressional seat he lost to John James by barely 1,600 votes two years ago.
Though Democrats spent millions this time, Marlinga lost more decisively, 51 to 45 percent. This will probably be the last hurrah for the former prosecutor and judge, who is 77, as well as for Paul Junge, the Republican millionaire who spent heavily from his own fortune but lost to McDonald Rivet; it was his third straight defeat for a Congressional seat.
Here’s something that may be worth keeping an eye on: While voters have now twice rejected women nominees for President, both of whom were Democrats, Michigan has become a state whose political standouts are almost all Democratic women. Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Attorney General Dana Nessel have led the state for six years.
Democrat Debbie Stabenow is retiring in January after 24 years in the U.S. Senate, but may be replaced by the energetic 48-year-old Elissa Slotkin, who some think eventually could be a national star.
And ironically, while the national election was devastating for Democrats, they may have revived the presidential hopes of Governor Whitmer, who because of term limits has to leave office in January 2027. Before President Biden decided not to run again in July, there were indications Whitmer, now 53, might run in 2028.
She wrote what looked like a campaign autobiography (True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership and Everything In Between) and was a frequent guest on national TV shows. But her presidential chances would likely have vanished had Vice-President Harris won.
A President Harris would have been the presumptive nominee in 2028, and by 2032, Whitmer would have been long out of office and perhaps forgotten. But everything is different now.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
