Gretchen Whitmer would like to be America’s first woman president
Summary
- Could abortion rights and “fixing the damn roads” take Michigan’s governor to the White House?
IN DECEMBER 2013 Gretchen Whitmer was the minority leader in the Michigan state senate when she made the move that catapulted her to national attention. An anti-abortion group had collected some 300,000 signatures backing a law intended to make women buy a separate “rider", or policy, if they wanted their health insurance to cover abortion. The signatures were enough to force a statewide referendum—but the Republican Party, which then held the state governorship and both houses of the legislature, saw no need for that. They chose instead just to pass it into law.
During the debate on the state senate floor, Ms Whitmer, then 42 and 12 years into her political career, argued the measure would be tantamount to forcing women to buy “rape insurance". She pointed out that in a referendum it would surely be rejected, and so its passage was undemocratic. Then she paused. “I am about to tell you something that I have not shared with many people in my life. But over 20 years ago I was a victim of rape," she said, her voice cracking. “I thought this was all behind me. You know how tough I can be. The thought and the memory of that still haunts me." She demanded that Republicans “at least let the people of this state have a vote on this. Let the people of Michigan decide."
Ms Whitmer’s speech did not change a single Republican vote. But she would in the end get her way. A decade later, to the day, Ms Whitmer, by then governor, appeared again on the senate floor, to announce a package of laws she had signed expanding abortion rights, including one which repealed the insurance-rider requirement. In a new book, “True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership and Everything In Between", Ms Whitmer writes that for years she had “wanted to ignore the terrible event that happened to me in college. But now I recognise that it also helped to make me who I am: a woman who’s willing to fight, and not inclined to give up."
The memoir’s publication was announced several months ago, but its timing could hardly be handier. With President Joe Biden’s campaign faltering, and a growing number of Democrats calling for the 81-year-old to step aside before the party’s national convention in Chicago in August, Ms Whitmer, now 52, is seen as one of the best alternative candidates to take on Donald Trump in November. Her relentless advocacy of abortion rights—part of her agenda since her first state house campaign in 2000—is part of the reason why. Her electoral success and progressive record in one of the most crucial swing states of this cycle are others. But is the governor ready to try to win over a much bigger electorate?
For now, she is not having it. On July 10th she told CNN, “We have a president who’s gotten a nomination, who’s earned it," and she accused people suggesting alternatives to Mr Biden of “playing fantasy football". But she also suggested it “wouldn’t hurt" for the president to take a cognitive test (something he has refused to do) and admitted that he could, if he wanted to, make “an alternative decision".
Whatever happens, Ms Whitmer’s ambitions are clear. Last year she launched her own national political-action committee, named “Fight Like Hell", which has so far supported ten House campaigns, predominantly aimed at moderate women in suburban districts. It has almost $2m in hand. And her new book is as clear a signal of intent as any. It is a breezy read, which paints a picture of an ambitious, confident and overwhelmingly Gen X politician. She has two adult daughters, one of whom is gay; keeps a lifesize cut out of herself in a closet; and her taste in music consists largely of 1980s and 1990s power ballads.
Ms Whitmer is in fact a career politician, from a political family. Her father, a Republican, served as the head of Michigan’s department of commerce in the 1970s, and went on to be head of a health insurer. Her mother was the state’s assistant attorney-general. Her motto, she says in the book, is “get shit done". As governor she has expunged cannabis convictions, overturned the state’s anti-union right-to-work law and tightened gun controls, to the delight of progressives. But these victories have been built on her relentless targeting of suburban swing voters with simple messages: abortion rights, jobs and infrastructure. She is no radical: in a state with one of America’s largest Arab-American populations she has stayed “unequivocally" on the side of Israel.
A big part of her appeal is that she has no trouble picking fights with Mr Trump. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, she accused the then president of withholding aid to Michigan. He refused to speak to her, or even name her, referring to her only as “that woman from Michigan". She embraced the label, and in television interviews wore a T-shirt bearing it to goad him. That April, nine months before the January 6th riot, hundreds of his fans, many of them toting rifles and body armour, stormed the state capitol in protest at her lockdown policy. Mr Trump tweeted, in all caps, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN" in support. Nine men were later separately convicted of plotting to kidnap her. Her husband, a dentist, was forced to retire because of the threats.
Some Michiganders suspect their governor wants to stick to her long-established plan to run for president—in four years, not now. But her relative youth, energy and love of fuschia power-suits all contrast powerfully with Mr Biden’s doddering. Could this be enough to win over delegates in Chicago in August? If so, Ms Whitmer will make history.
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