Whatever the result of this year’s election, it will most likely be the end of an era. Because of their ages — not to mention the law for whoever wins — it’s hard to imagine President Biden or former President Donald Trump running again in 2028, opening the door to a new generation of political leaders. And for Democrats, there are few politicians talked about more than Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
After serving more than a decade in the Michigan Legislature, Whitmer was elected to the governorship in 2018. She became a national figure during the pandemic, when right-wing media and Republican officials, including Trump, railed against her lockdown measures as extreme government overreach. (Whitmer blames Trump’s rhetoric for inspiring a 2020 kidnapping and assassination plot against her.)
But it was what Whitmer did in 2022 that really cemented her as a political force: With the help of legislative redistricting and a reproductive-rights ballot initiative, she gave Democrats a trifecta, winning re-election and flipping control of both the State House and Senate to her party for the first time in nearly 40 years. She has leveraged that majority to enact a progressive wish list of policies, including basic but meaningful gun-control legislation and a new clean-energy plan, and she’s pushing for universal pre-K and free community college.
Whitmer is term-limited though — her governorship will end in 2026. And given that she is a popular governor in a battleground state, there is a lot of speculation about what’s next, which is why I was eager to talk to her. Like many politicians with national ambitions, she has written a book about her life and her vision for the country. It’s called “True Gretch” (she told me that’s a play on the 1969 John Wayne classic “True Grit”). The book is coming out just as the presidential election is heating up, and she’s also raising her profile as a co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign. Over the course of two conversations, we talked about Biden’s challenges, whether she can deliver the must-win state of Michigan and her own political ambitions.
I want to get the elephant out of the room: You’re releasing this memoir in the middle of the 2024 election cycle. Why now? It’s less of a memoir and more of a handbook. This is going to be another heavy year. It’s going to feel very dark at times, with the political rhetoric and this important election coming up. If I can put some light into the world right now, maybe you can laugh at my expense, or maybe there’s a little inspiration here that’ll help you get through whatever you’re navigating.
Were you worried, though, about how it was going to be perceived, putting it out there at this moment? Because you can put light into the dark at any time. I can’t worry about how everything’s going to be perceived. That’s one lesson I certainly have learned in the last six years.
This book did help me understand you as a person. You write about how you partied in high school and college and that you didn’t really become ambitious until you got into law school. You talk about how you threw up on your principal, who found you passed out in the parking lot from drinking. First of all: mortifying. But you didn’t include this in your book for no reason. What were you hoping to show? Well, every one of us has our flaws, right? That was a period of time when I was not particularly disciplined and was focused more on having fun, and that’s OK too. I learned a lot. My mom and I — we had a very tough relationship during that period of time, as I would have had with my daughters if they’d been as wild as I was at that age. But it also was the moment where I really learned who I was, and when I went to law school, it all started to click for me. Fortunately, when I was a teenager, we didn’t all have phones where we could film one another making, you know, not the greatest judgments.
I want to talk a little bit about you as a political leader. In 2022, you got a trifecta for the Democrats. There are two ways that you can move when something like that happens, especially in a state that is so closely divided. You can decide to do what some governors in red states and purple states have done, which is to say: I’m going to be a centrist. I’m going to move more incrementally. Or you can enact a very partisan agenda. You took that second route. What was the calculation there? Well, we ran on an agenda, and people elected us on that agenda. And so my philosophy is if people have elected you to do something, do it. Lot of folks were writing my political obituary going into the re-elect in 2022. I ended up winning by almost 11 points, and that made me feel very confident that people expected me to lead on the issues on which I was running. I also, though, want to make sure to recognize that you can’t win an election in Michigan by double digits if you’re not drawing over people who are not traditional Democrats, and I’m proud of that. One of the stories in the book I tell is about my friend Randy Richardville. We had a lot of knockdown dragouts when I was the Democratic leader in the Senate. He was the Republican leader. He was in the majority. We did battle. We also, though, often ended the day going and grabbing a beer together, because I think that it’s important to not take things personally but to stay focused on doing the job and also trying to continue to build relationships with diverse sets of interests and people. That’s what our system’s supposed to be about.
It’s supposed to be about that, but one of the things that I know other Democrats have pointed to is that the Republican Party under Donald Trump has gone in a particular direction that makes that, they feel, very, very difficult. So that sounds great to sit and have a beer with your political adversary, but at the same time, there are huge chasms at the moment. It’s challenging. I don’t ever want to imply that it’s easy. It takes thick skin and a short memory. During the pandemic, when things were really at their hottest, when the former president singled me out and called me “that woman from Michigan” and I was getting a lot of threats, my Republican-led Legislature, who had worked with me pretty well up until that moment, really turned on me. That was the moment when everything kind of changed. I share a picture in the book from the window that I took on my phone when they had a demonstration. People showed up in their cars and shut down the capital city, and they were holding up signs calling me a Nazi. We saw Confederate flags. We saw a Barbie that was dressed like me and hanging from a noose. And it was shocking. I also had a Republican leader who took to calling me names and shared a stage with some of the folks who ultimately were tried for the plot to kidnap and kill me. And yet I had to keep negotiating with that guy, because I had to get a budget done.
Let’s talk about that era, because it was the period when you became a national figure. Very early on, you and then-President Trump were at odds, to put it mildly, and you became a symbol of what Republicans saw as draconian pandemic restrictions. You faced protests, death threats. In October 2020, 14 men ended up being arrested for plotting to kidnap you and overthrow the Michigan government. You write in the book that this was referred to in the press as a kidnapping plot, but you say that’s not accurate. Can you tell me why not? Not long ago, there was a single person that showed up on Justice Kavanaugh’s lawn, and it’s been covered as an assassination attempt. It was one person. He was apprehended well before any threat really became real to Justice Kavanaugh, and I’m grateful for that. I recognize a threat against anyone, no matter who they are, what their political views are, undermines our system of democracy, and I think that it’s really important that we all call it out when it happens. The way that was covered versus how 12 to 14 people who are plotting over a series of months, who were doing exercises — they had what they called a kill house, running through scenarios about how to kidnap me and kill me. And let’s be clear, they weren’t going to keep me for ransom. Their intention was to, like a terrorist organization, have a sham trial and then execute me. It was very clear in a lot of their communications that was the plan, and it was over the series of months they staked out a vacation property that my husband and I have, on more than one occasion. They had plots to blow up bridges and kill police officers as well, to even burn down the capital locking the Legislature inside. All of that has been labeled a kidnapping plot, and it does feel like it is to discount the seriousness.
You write in the book that you want to meet with one of the plotters who pleaded guilty who is in prison now. What do you want to know? I’d like to understand what drove this group of people to take this extreme position. I want to understand it.
You think there’s something to understand? Maybe. Maybe there’s not. But I’d like to see. I’d like to know. Is it because there wasn’t, for that person, economic opportunity? Was it because they got laid off during the pandemic and they were really worried about how they were going to make their house payment? What was it that set them off?
Separate from what happened to you during this period of the pandemic, I do want to ask you about some of the lessons that you may have learned. Michigan’s stay-at-home order did last longer than other states’. You closed all the schools in March 2020, and you didn’t urge them to be reopened until a year later. Now that we have the fullness of hindsight, do you think schools should have reopened earlier? I have said many times that if I could go back in time with the knowledge we’ve accumulated now, there certainly are things that I would have done differently. I also want to remind everyone that during that period of time, Michigan was so hot compared to the rest of the country. It was New York, Detroit, it was Chicago and it was New Orleans that were having a massive impact from Covid. Our hospitals were at a real brink.
No one really knew how to deal with this. It’s less about what you were facing but more specifically about schools. You’re seeing in Michigan chronic absenteeism, students performing below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math. I think we have to remember that we were looking at lessons from the Spanish flu, and that particular virus absolutely was devastating to younger people. And as a person taking in as much information as I could from our epidemiologists and our public-health experts, the thought was that we might have a lot of school-age kids that were going to die from this virus. That’s really what motivated our actions and the actions of lots of governors when we stopped kids going to school. It has carried a long, hard price tag with it. We’ve made massive investments in early childhood and in free breakfast and lunch for all 1.4 million Michigan kids, and literacy coaches. So we’re working to help get our kids back on track. But absolutely, if I could go back in time with the knowledge we have now and knowing this virus didn’t disproportionately kill children, would I have done some things differently? Yes.
Staying in Michigan, one of the more recent issues that it’s fair to say you’ve struggled with is the conflict in Gaza. Michigan has the second-largest population of Arab Americans in the country. There was a huge movement to vote uncommitted [in the Democratic presidential primary] to protest the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict. Do you worry that the protest vote will translate into meaningful erosion of Biden’s support? It was important for people who disagree with the policy to be able to make an outward statement of that through that vote. I also think it’s important to recognize we’ve got a high-stakes election coming up. We know that this is a very stark choice in front of us, and there are going to be generational impacts from the outcome of this election, and so I’m doing everything I can to make sure that Michiganders in all of these communities feel seen, heard, respected and reflected in the policies of President Biden.
What does that look like? Because recent polling has shown that among Muslim and Arab American voters, Trump is leading Biden by 32 points. That’s a huge defection from 2020. So how are you addressing that? What we have seen, at least in so many of the conversations that I’ve had on the ground in Michigan, is this is a community that takes umbrage, to put it lightly, with the president’s policies. That being said, I hear routinely that they also recognize that a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for someone who pushed a Muslim ban, who talks about countries with people of color in incredibly harsh and cruel terms. I think that making sure that people come out and vote is going to be the important focus of our work going into the fall election, and I don’t take any vote for granted. And I don’t think that the Biden administration does either.
You’re a co-chair of President Biden’s campaign. Obviously the president’s age has been an issue for voters. There have been a lot of questions about his mental fitness. He’s 81 years old. Pretending that this isn’t an issue hasn’t really been working for Democrats. It’s an issue for voters. Do you see it as a legitimate concern? And how should Democrats be talking about it? Well, one of the things I know is you can’t tell people how to feel, and you can’t tell people to ignore something they are questioning or they’re interested in. I think it’s important to recognize, yes, the two leading standard bearers for the two big political parties in this country are both 80-ish, right? It’s an inescapable fact. One has got a record of delivering incredibly for the people of our country. The CHIPS Act, the I.R.A., the investment that’s happening onshoring supply chains and the investment on bridges and roads all across this country. On the contrary, the other 80-ish-year-old is someone who has not articulated any sort of vision for our country, someone who has been more about dividing us, someone who, when they don’t like someone, will attack them and mobilize their supporters to threaten them. Someone who has only talked about grievance and vengeance.
So I’m hearing the message there. And something you write a lot about in the book is the power of messaging. In 2017 and 2018, your slogan was “Fix the damn roads.” I learned a lot about Michigan roads reading your book. [Laughs.] But my editor had to Google to find out what Biden’s slogan is, and it’s “Finish the job,” which I have to say is not much of a humdinger. I’m curious if you have sharper ideas, because you seem to be good at this. And right now Democrats nationally are really struggling with messaging about where the party stands. National message is always a challenge. Washington, D.C., is so far away from the average person’s life that to conceptualize what a $3 trillion investment in onshoring supply chains means to your everyday life is darn near impossible to discern. That’s why I’ve always learned, when you show up and ask people, they’re going to tell you what they want. “Fix the damn roads” was not something that we poll-tested or focus-grouped. It was just conversation after conversation. What do you need me to do if I’m elected? Fix the damn roads.
It’s ironic because President Biden passed an infrastructure bill. He is fixing the damn roads. And bridges! And internet!
Right, but he’s not getting credit for it. Why do you think that is? For that same reason. I think the pandemic’s taken a toll. People are stressed out. They’re just trying to pay the grocery bill, get the kids off to school, show up at their job and maybe get a little bit of sleep at night. They’re not consuming everything. They can’t discern what the CHIPS Act has meant. And so we’ve got to tell that story better.
But in many ways, this is a kind of vibes election. When you poll people, and you ask them, What is the economy doing? They think it’s in recession. How is the stock market doing? They think it’s down. There isn’t a real understanding of even where the country is at. So then how do you reach those people? An interesting thing, too, is that in some of the most recent research, individuals feel like their situation is pretty good but the rest of the economy’s not good, and that’s the absolute inverse of what, generally, you see. It’s a strange phenomenon. I don’t know how to explain it, but I do know we’ve got to make sure that people appreciate all the different things that are happening in their communities because of the work that President Biden has done.
As we record this, the polls are pretty tight in Michigan. It’s a must-win state. Do you feel pressure to deliver the state? Can you? I do always know that there is a path to victory through Michigan. It’s going to be a little more challenging this cycle. We don’t celebrate small leads in polls. We don’t fall apart when there’s a small lead on the other side in a poll. It’s Michigan. It’s going to be tight all the way through the election. We’re going to do the work, and I feel confident we’re going to be able to win this race.
Two days later, I called Whitmer back.
So I’m guessing you’re not going to tell me if you’re running for president in 2028, right? I don’t know what the heck I’m going to do in 2028. So you can ask, but that’s the honest answer.
That’s fair. But you’re clearly preparing for a bigger role on the national stage. So I do want to understand how you think about some key issues. After our last conversation, I was thinking about how we really didn’t get to dig into reproductive rights. Roe isn’t coming back. Congress has been unable to pass legislation protecting contraception, much less abortion. Do you see any way to protect abortion at the national level? Ultimately that’s got to be the goal right now. You know, we’ve seen it all across the country when people get an opportunity to weigh in — they overwhelmingly vote to enshrine abortion rights. We saw it in Ohio. We saw it in Wisconsin with their Supreme Court election. We saw it in Michigan — a 10-year quest to undo legislation that made it more difficult for women to access abortion and health care. These are overarching issues. We don’t solve them overnight, but the fight is worth having.
What I’m hearing you say is that the only way to really resolve this now is going state by state. And as you know, that’s going to lead to a patchwork situation where some women will be able to have the right to reproductive freedom and some women won’t. This is where we can make progress in this moment, by enshrining it where we have those tools. But at the end of the day, every American woman and her family and health care providers deserve to know that this fundamental question around health care is vested solely in the individual, and that’s going to have to happen at the federal level. That’s why this upcoming election has such high stakes, not just for abortion rights, but certainly abortion rights are at the heart of a lot of what we’re talking about.
Speaking of that, the Supreme Court has been mired in controversy, especially around Justices Alito and Thomas. Do you think they need to recuse themselves from ruling on anything to do with the 2020 election and President Trump? As a lawyer, my understanding is that that would be appropriate. The Supreme Court operates under their own rules. It’s really something that gives me great anxiety, this distrust in institutions that have sustained this democracy for so long. And we sadly have seen so many Americans get persuaded by false information that undermines our institutions. And then when you see justices that appear to have a real conflict not recuse themselves, that further erodes our confidence in these institutions that sustain this democracy. It’s very concerning.
Do you think the court needs to be expanded? Because it’s a 6-3 majority, and if things like abortion rights, for example, are ever going to be reconsidered, the current makeup of the court isn’t one that is favorable to Democrats. We’re stepping way outside of my expertise as a legal mind, but I would just say this: Whether or not the court gets expanded or whether or not we just ensure that President Biden is the one in that office who makes the next handful of appointments, all of these things work toward the same end of restoring some integrity into our government, which is desperately needed.
Moving to another subject, it does seem that 2028 is going to necessarily see a changing of the guard. What do you hope your generation of politicians can do for the country? So I’m 52, almost 53. And as I talk to my fellow Gen Xers —
Best generation! [Laughs.] We recognize that our parents’ generation has had a lot of excess. So I’m hopeful that we can really move the needle, whether it’s bringing down our nation’s debt or ensuring that we are active when it comes to climate and solidifying and protecting individual rights. These are really the existential issues that my kids’ generation is worried about, gun violence, etc. And so I’m hopeful that in 2028, we see Gen Xers running for the White House and that someone from my generation is ready to take the mantle.
Even if Trump doesn’t win the election, Trumpism as a political movement seems like it’s here to stay. Do you agree? I don’t know. I’m not sure. I think there are still a lot of Republicans out there who would not identify as Trump supporters but are not willing to relinquish their party. They’re fighting to bring back some common sense and more traditional viewpoints and values to the party, and I’m hopeful that they’re successful. Because I do think it’s important for our system of governance to have robust debates with people of different perspectives. I miss having pro-choice Republicans in Michigan in government. I miss being able to have thoughtful debates and then ultimately find common ground. I think the average person in this country expects that of us. And so I’m hopeful that this is a chapter but not a trajectory.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations. Listen to and follow “The Interview” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music or the New York Times Audio app.
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