Whitmer could be Michigan’s next governor

If you had to place a bet right now on who will be the next governor of Michigan, the odds would favour Gretchen Whitmer, the former senate minority leader.

Trim and charismatic, she is currently the only woman running in either party, a political plus.

There’s no doubt she wants the job; she’s been vigorously campaigning across the state since last December.

“Why do I want to be governor?” she asked during a recent interview. “Because I love Michigan. But this is no longer the state I grew up in,” a state that had high per capita incomes, bipartisan co-operation, and a great belief in education, despite a heavy reliance on brawndriven automotive jobs.

She thinks her considerable government experience, energy and passion can give her an edge. She has also already raised more than US$1 million for a campaign that she and her rivals agree could cost $8-$10 million by the August 2018 primary.

Four years ago, there was only one Democrat — former congressman Mark Schauer — willing to run. Whitmer likely could have had her party’s nomination for either governor or attorney general that year, but declined, saying she needed to spend time with her daughters, then 11 and 9. (She was then a divorced single parent. She is now remarried to a Lansing-area dentist.)

Some suspected she also didn’t think she could win in what turned out to be a big Republican year. But things are different now.

The odds favour any Democrat next year. Traditionally, voters want a change after one party has been in power for two terms.

Add the fact that Gov. Rick Snyder has been deeply unpopular since the water-poisoning scandal in Flint, and the Democratic nomination seems a worthy prize.

But she’s not the only person who wants it. Whitmer got a boost when Flint-area Congressman Dan Kildee decided to stay in Congress. But in addition to a flock of unknowns and Abdul El-Sayed, the former head of the Detroit Health Department, Mark Bernstein, a wealthy lawyer and University of Michigan regent, is expected to run.

His family business, the Sam Bernstein law firm, has flooded the airwaves with TV commercials for years. Whitmer acknowledges he might be able to outspend her. But she thinks nobody has a better grasp of the issues.

“Why should I be governor? Well, partly because I have something no one else has — legislative experience,” she said.

Indeed, Michigan’s two most recent governors, Jennifer Granholm, and Rick Snyder, a Republican, were elected without any legislative experience, and both stumbled badly.

Whitmer, who turns 46 in August, spent nearly six years in the house and eight in the senate, almost all of those in the minority. However, she was able to work with Republicans to forge compromises on a number of key issues, including the “Grand Bargain” that successfully guided Detroit through bankruptcy.

Unlike many Democrats, she doesn’t talk much about jobs, saying, “I prefer to think in terms of careers.”

But she’s strong on education. “My daughter told me the other night she wanted to be a teacher, and that filled me with a mixture of pride and concern,” she said. Teacher salaries have been shrinking, and a GOP-led legislature that has feuded for years with teachers’ unions has stripped Michigan teachers of many benefits.

Education is, Whitmer believes, the key to the state’s future. She thinks Michigan needs to invest heavily in early childhood education, almost from birth. She thinks the way to reach inner-city children may be to turn schools into full-service community centres.

Those are intriguing ideas, though how much a Governor Whitmer could do is debatable. Even she acknowledges there is no way Democrats can win back the state senate next year.

But she grew up in a bipartisan family. Both her parents were lawyers, as is she. Her father Richard Whitmer, a Republican, was in GOP governor William Milliken’s cabinet before going on to head Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Sherry, her mother, was a Democrat who was an assistant state attorney general.

“I think I can bring people together,” Whitmer told me. For the next 12 months, she plans to fight for the chance to try.