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Why doesn’t Gretchen Whitmer just run for president? Or at least humor the suggestion?
Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, sat cross-legged on the couch of a darkened TV studio in East Lansing, where a local PBS program called Off the Record is taped—a weird name for an interview show watched by 100,000 people.
“I know!” agreed Whitmer, who wore a camouflage sweatshirt with Michigangster scripted across the front. We met here on a recent evening for an interview in which I would ask her—on the record—several variants of the above “running for president” question.
No, of course she is not running for president, Whitmer told me. She 100 percent supports Joe Biden, who is great and vigorous and all of that—and not too old, definitely not too old. She just wants to help him win. Kamala Harris too. Love her!
Clearly, though, Whitmer was happy to go through the Kabuki of being interrogated over whether she might change her mind. She didn’t bother with the annoyance that many ambitious pols feel compelled to feign—it’s such a hassle—when asked whether they might give the ol’ presidency a look. She giggled at many of my questions. Whitmer seems to genuinely enjoy being a politician, even the ridiculous and absurd parts of it, such as this.
“So, you’re not running for president,” I said.
“Correct,” she affirmed.
“Why not?”
“Because I just got reelected governor,” she replied, half-smirking. “And I made a commitment to the people of Michigan that I’m gonna fulfill it.” This has been Whitmer’s stock answer since she trounced the Republican Tudor Dixon by 11 points to win reelection last November.
[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]
Okay, sure. But a few days earlier, Whitmer had announced plans for a new political-action committee, the Fight Like Hell PAC, named for her oft-stated vow to preserve abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. The PAC will allow the governor to raise money for Democrats across the country ahead of 2024—just the kind of thing restless and term-limited statewide leaders do when they are trying to take themselves national.
And surely Whitmer noticed that, in early June, Biden had taken an unfortunate plunge while onstage during the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation. He was fine, but the viral episode underscored how nerve-racking it can be to watch an octogenarian run for reelection. Presumably Whitmer had also seen that 67 percent of respondents to a recent CBS News poll said they don’t think Biden should seek another term, a figure that includes 75 percent of independents and 42 percent of Democrats.
No shortage of Democratic colleagues, operatives, and donors has encouraged Whitmer to seek the presidency—and not necessarily to wait until her second term ends. She is one of the top Democrats on the “If Biden backs out” index, and has even been offered up—including by me—as someone who might consider primarying him. Polls show a bipartisan yearning to avoid a Biden-Trump rematch that is not exactly shaping up to be a rolling pageant of joy.
I followed Whitmer on a series of high-energy events across Michigan last week. She visited a dance studio in Detroit and a sporting-goods store in Lansing, where she signed a bill—the Crown Act—that will make it illegal to discriminate against citizens based on their hair style. “For far too long, we’ve known that hair-based discrimination has been used to deny equal opportunity for Black men and women,” Whitmer said to applause from a heavily Black audience.
She is deft at pivoting from specific issues to the broader theme of personal freedom, particularly relating to her signature cause, abortion access. “Michigan is a state where we stand up for fundamental rights,” she continued. “Whether it’s the right to make your own decisions about your health and your body, the freedom to feel safe in your community.” Her list also included the freedom to move around. “Fix the damn roads” was Whitmer’s slogan when she first ran for governor, in 2018. After considerable gridlock over how to fund the work, the state’s roads are now plugged with orange construction barrels. “Our new state flower,” she calls them.
Whitmer’s governing course has been bumpy at times, especially in her first term, when she confronted Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. To pay for the road repairs, she proposed a 45-cent-per-gallon gas-tax increase—a deeply unpopular idea that quickly crashed. Whitmer would eventually bypass the legislature and pay for the road repairs through several billion dollars in bonds approved by the State Transportation Commission.
[Read: Why Biden shouldn’t run in 2024]
A hyperlocal message like “Fix the damn roads” is good for a cheerleader governor but not always a vehicle that travels well. Whitmer is, for better or worse, extremely Michigan—possessed of one of the thickest native accents I’ve heard, a pronounced northern twang that evokes the Upper Peninsula more than Detroit. She’s lived in the state for all of her 51 years: childhood in Lansing and Grand Rapids, college and law school at Michigan State, stints in the state House and Senate, a vacation cottage up north. Her foul-mouthed irreverence, goofy humor, and ability to pound beers and disarm adversaries make her a formidable operator in Lansing.
“You could drop Gretchen Whitmer anywhere, and she can connect immediately,” Mike Duggan, the longtime mayor of Detroit, told me. “You could be sitting here in Detroit, up in Marquette talking about mining. She listens intently. People feel, like, a bond with her.”
Across the state, Whitmer is known affectionately as “Big Gretch.” It’s not clear where the moniker started, and Whitmer didn’t love it at first. “There aren’t many women who want ‘Big’ on the front of her nickname,” she told me. But she went with it, in keeping with the ethos of her favorite movie, The Big Lebowski. The governor has embraced the film’s walk-off line—“The Dude abides”—as a personal credo of acceptance and willingness to roll with imperfect circumstances.
Whitmer achieved national prominence during the pandemic, and it was not all pleasant—including a kidnapping plot against her for which the FBI arrested a motley but heavily armed band of self-styled militia men. Her lockdown policies faced fierce and at times unruly opposition. She was also a target of President Donald Trump, who dismissed her as “that woman from Michigan.” Whitmer took pride in the brush-off, put the quote on a T-shirt, and wore it on TV. Biden’s campaign team vetted her as a possible running mate in 2020. Whitmer said at the time that she was happy in her “dream job,” which is what politicians tend to say while they’re contemplating another one.
[Gretchen Whitmer: The plot to kidnap me]
Whitmer has two daughters in college and lives in the governor’s mansion with her second husband, Marc Mallory, a dentist, and their two dogs, a labradoodle (Kevin) and Aussiedoodle (Doug). As a matter of personal bias, I told Whitmer I am supportive of people giving human names to their pets. Or maybe I was just trying to flatter her into answering the question about running for president—crack the door open just a little and spare us this recurrent parade of elderlies.
Whitmer, obviously, took none of my bait. She kept laughing, though—abided, even. “You know, it’s funny; ‘The Dude abides’—it’s a really wise philosophy,” she observed during our brief detour into film study. “There are just things you can’t control.”
I took this to mean that Whitmer is ruling nothing out and is willing to adapt to the unforeseen. I pointed out that Americans were starved for new national leaders. Whitmer did not dispute this. Nor have Democrats nominated a fresh face since Barack Obama—and he had to jump the line for that to happen, in 2008, when it was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s turn. Is Whitmer willing to “fight like hell” to upset the entrenched political order, or is that just a slogan?
I also mentioned that if the anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can poll as high as 20 percent in the Democratic primary field, then many Democratic voters are clearly open to—even desperate for—someone not named Biden on the ballot. Why not give them a serious alternative?
[Read: Joe Biden isn’t popular. That might not matter in 2024.]
“You know, there are a lot of really talented Democratic leaders all across the country,” Whitmer told me. She would be proud to be considered among them.
What if Biden changes his mind?
“He’s running!”
“Okay, but you saw him fall the other day,” I said. “Did your thinking, in that split second before Biden got up, change at all?”
“No!”
Whitmer was still laughing at this point, but I might have been pushing things—approaching dark and disrespectful. I had a flight to catch in Detroit, and a long drive from Lansing, with construction to contend with. “We’ll keep talkin’. How’s that?” Whitmer said. “And one of these days, we’ll have a beer. Or three.”
We left things there, and the Michigangster governor returned to her lane, for now.
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Mark Leibovich
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