Comment As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer waited to speak at a campaign event Saturday night in Detroit, the 51-year-old mother of two joined her junior staffers for a spin behind the scenes. “Like physically doing cartwheels,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a fellow Michigan Democrat who also spoke at the event. “They were good! I was impressed.” Just three days later, Whitmer stunned the political establishment as well, thrusting himself into the national spotlight with a double-digit re-election Tuesday night. The Michigan governor soundly defeated her opponent, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, while helping Democrats control both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years. “It was a great night for Governor Whitmer,” Stabenow said, “and he’s definitely part of our next generation of leaders, not only in the state but across the country.” Whitmer already had a profile that extended beyond Michigan: She sparred with then-President Trump over the federal government’s handling of the pandemic and won a spot on Joe Biden’s short list of vice presidential picks. Now she is among a handful of fellow Democrats who, after the midterms, are being touted as potential stars of the national party, including Maura Healey, who is set to become Massachusetts’ first female governor and the nation’s first openly lesbian governor. Wes Moore, an Army veteran and Rhodes scholar who will be Maryland’s first black governor. and Pennsylvania governor-elect Josh Shapiro, who defeated an election naysayer in a swing state. But the specifics of Whitmer’s victory — she’s a woman who triumphed over a Make America Great Again candidate in a Midwestern battleground state, all while sweeping Democratic candidates on the ballot — especially help boost her profile as one of the future party leadership positions. “It absolutely catapults her to the top,” said Alexis Wiley, a Detroit-based Democratic strategist and former chief of staff to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. “Then again, what Democrat right now has run for re-election and then helped everyone take every chamber of the legislature and every key office? It cannot be overstated that everyone rode on her coattails. He pulled everyone to victory last night.” In a sign of her strength, Whitmer widened her margin of victory in Macomb County — a battleground county in the eastern part of the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 — by 5 percent Tuesday night, in compared to 3.5 percent in 2018. “There’s no question that her name will be very much in the mix when people talk about national leaders going forward,” said David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “It was an impressive victory in difficult terrain, but it has proven to be smart and resilient and has a kind of non-coastal appeal.” Axelrod, who lives in Michigan part of the year, said she has seen firsthand how well her political brand translates, both in general and in more intimate groups. He described her as “very unvarnished” and “someone who doesn’t present herself as a garden variety politician spitting out of the computer”. In the early days of the pandemic, Detroit residents affectionately nicknamed Whitmer “Big Gretch,” photoshopping memes of her sporting “Buffs” — Cartier’s expensive buffalo horn sunglasses — and spreading them online. Detroit rapper Gmac Cash even posted a song about her, “Big Gretch,” praising her handling of the pandemic. In some ways, Whitmer presents herself as a suburban mom from the 1990s: tough but optimistic. Unadorned and authentic, with a collection of leather jackets and bright monochrome blazers. Her re-election fight came after she led a public charge to protect abortion rights in Michigan. In April, even before the Supreme Court formally ruled on the reversal Roe v. WadeWhitmer filed a lawsuit in the Michigan Supreme Court challenging the 1931 abortion ban, which criminalized abortions except to save the woman’s life—one of more than a dozen steps Whitmer took to help protect reproductive rights in her state. Proposition 3, a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, passed with 56.7 percent support and appears to have helped propel Whitmer to her landslide victory. Forty-five percent of Michigan voters cited abortion as the issue they were most concerned about, with inflation coming in second, with 28 percent support. Whitmer won overwhelmingly those voters who said abortion was a top concern, with 77 percent support, according to exit polls. The percentage of Michigan voters who cited abortion as the top issue on their ballot was also much higher than the 27 percent in national exit polls. In a late June interview with the Washington Post, Whitmer’s oldest daughter Sherry, 20, said she appreciated her mother’s focus on women’s health and reproductive rights. “She uses all her tools,” Sherry said. “If he wasn’t on every Sunday show, I’d be mad. I would say, “You have this power and you must use it. You have to get out there. You have to use your voice.” Gretchen Whitmer’s abortion fight — from her porch with her daughters Whitmer also delivered an economic message of achievement, citing General Motors’ announcement of a $7 billion investment in four facilities in the state to produce electric vehicles and batteries. And after winning the governor’s office in 2018, in part on her promise to “fix the damn roads,” Michigan is on track to have more than 16,000 lane miles repaired and 1,200 bridges, according to her office. “When you’re running around saying you’re going to fix the damn roads, then you better fix the roads,” Stabenow said. “And we have more orange cones than any other state.” GOP critics take a different view of her tenure. Jason Roe, former executive director of the state Republican Party, said Whitmer’s image among Democrats doesn’t match the reality of her record in Michigan. “Through the rose-tinted prism of democratic sunglasses is seen the part” of an integrated and capable national leader, he said. “But in terms of actual achievements, her record is thin,” Roe said, adding that she “emerged because of the draconian ways in which she implemented stay-at-home orders” during the pandemic, earning her the high rank among Democrats because Trump specifically targeted her as “that woman from Michigan.” Implementing those orders, however, has created real hardships in Michigan, Roe said, citing “the amount of time our kids have been out of school, the number of businesses that have closed.” But, he added, to activist Democrats “these may be seen as virtues, not vices.” Republicans attacked the claim Whitmer made during a debate with her Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon, when she said “kids were out for three months” during the pandemic. Although Whitmer’s team later said it was only referring to closures required by her management — that lasted for three months—subsequent closing decisions were left up to school districts, many of which kept students out of school much longer. Republicans were quick to point to her remark as a major talking point during the campaign’s final stretch — and a key data point for part of a broader “parental rights” movement in the state. During the pandemic, Whitmer emerged as a figurehead on the right — receiving hundreds of threats and being the target of a kidnapping attempt by three members of a right-wing paramilitary group. “It was an assassination plot, but nobody talks about it that way,” Whitmer told The Post this year. “She’s endured a lot in her four years as governor,” Axelrod said. “She just ran a really tough race in a really tough year and she’s relentless. And it’s hard for a woman to be strong and yet widely accepted. And she seems to have mastered that, so I think she’s got a lot going for her.” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) said Whitmer’s aggressive stance in countering attacks from the right motivated her and other female lawmakers. “If Michigan shows anything, we’re the touchstone for the rest of the country,” McMorrow said. “There was a conspiracy to kill the governor,” McMorrow said. “The state is now expected to be run by three women and both chambers may also be majority women.” McMorrow added that this election cycle, Republicans seemed intent on stoking fear, with Whitmer leading the ticket in the state, “This felt a lot like the ‘You don’t mess with these Michigan women. ». “We need to become the model for other states to follow if they hope to rebuild Democratic state power,” McMorrow said. “Especially in the Midwest, it’s starting to rewrite the narrative, because for a while Democrats were seen as coastal elites.” Speaking at her victory party Wednesday morning, Whitmer called on Michigan residents to believe in her and themselves. “This is our spirit – ordinary people who have achieved extraordinary things while facing seemingly impossible odds,” she said, according to her prepared remarks. Now that she’ll have a Democratic legislature to work with, Whitmer’s fans are optimistic that her rise will only accelerate. “The position he’s in right now is pretty remarkable,” Wiley said. “Considering that for the first time he’s not only governor, but he has a House and a Senate that are Democratic, imagine what he’s going to be able to do in the next four years.” Scott Clement, Ruby Cramer, Tom Hamburger, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Tyler Pager contributed to this report.
