The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Governor: Democrats want to help struggling workers
LANSING, MICH. — Democrats are focusing on making health care more affordable and other pocket-book issues, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Tuesday as she used her party’s response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address to appeal to working-class voters.
“It’s pretty simple. Democrats are trying to make your health care better. Republicans in Washington are trying to take it away,” said Whitmer, whose state Trump captured narrowly in 2016 by appealing to lower-earning workers.
“It doesn’t matter what the president says about the stock market,” she said. “What matters is that millions of people struggle to get by or don’t have enough money at the end of the month after paying for transportation, student loans, or prescrip
tion drugs.”
Michigan hadn’t voted for the GOP presidential candidate since 1988. Trump used narrow victories there and in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to unexpectedly win the 2016 election, and Democrats are determined to shore up their support in the Midwest.
“American workers are hurting,” Whitmer said, listing those states. “All over the country. Wages have stagnated, while CEO pay has skyrocketed.”
Democrats’ selection of Whitmer, 48, underscored their desire to bolster their appeal in those regions while reaching out to women. Recent polling and elections have shown that Trump is particularly unpopular with
women, and their votes will be crucial if the party is to perform strongly in moderate suburban areas.
Whitmer, who rarely mentions Trump, has advised Democratic presidential candidates that Michigan voters are less focused on his Twitter feed than on the “fundamentals,” such as fixing deteriorating roads and helping train people for better-paying jobs. She returned to that theme in her 10-minute response to Trump’s
State of the Union address, which she delivered at East Lansing High School — where her two daughters are enrolled.
“These are the fundamentals that people in America are concerned about,” Whitmer told The Associated Press, adding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “thought I would have a message that would resonate.”
Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod, a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said “it’s hard to imagine a better person” to counter Trump.
“Not only did she win the governorship by a wide margin in a key battleground state we lost in 2016 and need to win in 2020, but she is a strong moderate female voice — the perfect contrast to President Trump,” she said.
In high school, Whitmer wanted to be an ESPN broadcaster but switched course after an internship
‘All over the country. Wages have stagnated, while CEO pay has skyrocketed.’ Gretchen Whitmer
Governor of Michigan
at the state Capitol while attending nearby Michigan State University. She went to law school and, after working as an attorney, won a state House seat in East Lansing.
Whitmer said she will talk about that “incredibly hard time” because it shaped her more than any other. She was caring for her mom, who died months after Whitmer gave birth to the first of two daughters. She also was serving as a freshman lawmaker and battling a health insurer over covering her mother’s chemotherapy.
She later became the first woman to lead a state Senate caucus and was an outspoken advocate for women before the 2017 Women’s Marches and #MeToo era, publicly disclosing during a 2013 legislative debate on health insurance coverage for abortions that she had been raped in college.
In Democrats’ Spanish-language response, freshman Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar also spoke of health care and workers’ struggles to get by.
But in English language excerpts provided ahead of the speech, she also described August’s mass killing in her hometown of El Paso, Texas, by a shooter who she said “used hateful language like the very words used by President Trump to describe immigrants and Latinos.”
Escobar also touched on Trump’s impeachment, saying that he’d jeopardized the next election and threatened national security with his efforts to pressure Ukraine, an ally fighting Russian-backed insurgents, to produce damaging information on political rival Joe Biden.
“We Democrats will continue to fight for truth and for what is right. No one is above the law,” Escobar said.