Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), who has been widely viewed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate, said Thursday that she won’t be seeking her party’s nomination in 2028.
Hours later, she said otherwise.
Whitmer is term-limited next year after winning two gubernatorial elections in her key battleground state, and pundits have regularly identified her as part of Democrats’ crowded potential presidential field.
In an interview with Fox 2 Detroit on Thursday morning, she said: “There will be a robust group of people running for president. … I will not be one of them in 2028. I can tell you that.”
But later in the day, at an annual gathering of Michigan’s top civic and business leaders, she said she had spoken too soon.
“I never thought I would run for governor, so I guess I should know better,” she said during a panel discussion, later adding: “Never say never.”
Whitmer rose to the national spotlight during the coronavirus pandemic, when she pushed back on President Donald Trump’s efforts to antagonize her as “that woman from Michigan.”
She led a push to codify abortion rights in the state constitution in 2022, when Michigan Democrats won control of all three branches of state government and then used that “trifecta” to repeal a law that makes it harder for workers to unionize.
Whitmer drew some criticism for a 2025 speech in which she found some common ground with Trump but continued to stoke speculation that she could be preparing a run.
This year, she was one of several potential candidates who traveled to the Munich Security Conference, which does not typically attract U.S. governors, to lay out alternatives to Trump’s foreign policy.
In the Fox interview, she mentioned seeking advice from other potential candidates, current and former.
“I’ve gotten counsel from people who’ve made the transition, whether it was my friend Gina Raimondo, who I sat with last night for a little bit; Pete Buttigieg; or Paul Ryan, who I have chatted with a fair amount,” she said. “That’s the advice everyone says: Take a little bit of time, and so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Later in the day, in a panel discussion at the Mackinac Policy Conference, she said that she didn’t want to create any distractions while still serving as governor and made her earlier remarks offhandedly in response to the “100th question of the morning.”
“I said I’m not making plans, and I saw all the headlines, you know?” Whitmer told a Michigan health-care CEO who asked about the topic onstage.
Other Democratic governors, including Gavin Newsom in California, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear in Kentucky and JB Pritzker in Illinois, are considered leading candidates for the party’s 2028 primary.
Speculation also exists around Buttigieg, former vice president Kamala Harris, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).
Other past presidential candidates have at times made similar comments before later jumping into the race, including Barack Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).
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