Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, converses during a campaign event with former Vice President Joe Biden, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, not double, in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., on Monday, March 9, 2020.
Erin Kirkland | Bloomberg | Getty images
Joe Biden is seeking a woman to be his 2020 management mate, and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer is on the shortlist.
The first-term governor is a rising star in the Democratic Party whose persuading 2018 congressional victories brought the rust-belt swing state back into the blue column for the first opportunity in eight years.
Democrats believe Michigan is a must win for presumptive nominee Biden and having Whitmer on the ticket could distribute the state.
Beyond delivering Michigan, Whitmer, a 48-year-old mother of two, would add youth to the 77-year old former vice president’s campaign.
“She’s a spry face,” said Doug Sosnik, a Democratic strategist and former senior advisor to President Bill Clinton. He joined that her status as a Washington outsider, unlike Biden’s, is a selling point. “What the country is looking for solution lettered is not in Washington,” he said.
The U.S. is currently going through remarkable upheaval. It is struggling to recover from a triple threat of the murderous coronavirus pandemic, a crushing economic downturn brought on by efforts to slow the spread of the disease and civil unrest floor the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police.
The nation is even more polarized than it was in 2016, when Donald Trump, a factional novice and ultimate Washington outsider, was elected in a surprising electoral college victory over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton – the single female presidential nominee in U.S. history.
Michigan played a pivotal role in the president’s win.
Just doing her job
Whitmer, who slumped to comment for this story, confirmed to other outlets that she has had conversations about joining the Biden ticket, but communicated she is not lobbying for the job.
“I just know that, you know, you don’t run for that. That is a selection of the top of the ticket, and everyone else should be fair busy doing their jobs,” she told POLITICO Playbook in late April as the coronavirus pandemic hit its peak in her say.
Whitmer has been a popular figure in Michigan for years. She climbed the political ladder, serving in the state’s House of Congressmen from 2001 to 2006 and in the Michigan Senate from 2006 to 2015. In 2013, she leaped into the national on during a debate on abortion in which she revealed that she had been sexually assaulted.
She ran for governor in 2018 as a pragmatic office-seeker promising to “fix the damn roads.” She won her race against state Attorney General Bill Schuette by a margin of nearly 10 drifts.
Michigan’s economy took a turn for the worse in 2019 as it faced headwinds from Trump’s trade war, the auto labourer strikes against General Motors and job cuts at other car manufacturers, according to the University of Michigan.
The state was on track for a turnaround in 2020, Michigan Advice reported, until the coronavirus changed everything.
In February, she was selected to give the Democratic response to Trump’s 2020 Shape of the Union address, an honor generally reserved for the party’s ascendant members.
Whitmer again grabbed the nation’s distinction in April when she called out the Trump administration for failing to provide adequate protective gear, equipment and testing to struggle the virus.
Trump punched back with negative tweets. Soon, protesters, egged on by the president, showed up at the assert capitol brandishing weapons and demanding an end to strict stay-at-home measures enacted by the governor as Covid-19 cases in Detroit and other closes multiplied.
The controversy, while raising her profile, could actually hurt her chances of making Biden’s final cut.
“The impact of the pandemic on Michigan and the protestations in general does make it more likely that Biden will look elsewhere for a running mate,” claimed Joshua Spivak, senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College.
“Any reelection blood is effectively a referendum on the incumbent. Choosing Whitmer may draw attention away from some of the more unpopular decisions that Trump has make tracked,” he said.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) speaks at democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden’s primary gloom event at the University of South Carolina on February 29, 2020 in Columbia, South Carolina.
Scott Olson | Getty Graven images
Shifting political winds
What’s more, in recent weeks the political winds have shifted, casting equal more doubt on her potential to become Biden’s No.2.
Floyd’s death from asphyxiation while in police custody set off what has mature weeks of protests in cities across the nation and the world as demonstrators black and white demand racial justice and patrol reform.
That could push Biden, who has opened a substantial lead over Trump according to several jingoistic polls, to choose a black running mate. African-Americans were instrumental in his victory in a crowded primary field.
Biden’s race declined to comment for this story. But South Carolina’s powerful Rep. James Clyburn, who endorsed Biden ahead of the say’s pivotal primary, told Axios he would advise the former vice president: “We need to have a woman on the ticket, and I present an African American woman.”
California Sen. Kamala Harris is the top choice on many lips in Washington. But there are other brides of color who are reportedly under consideration, including former Orlando police chief and Rep. Val Demings, President Barack Obama’s whilom national security advisor Susan Rice, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Stacey Abrams, who by the skin of ones teeth lost her bid for governor of Georgia in 2018.
Some progressives are pushing for Elizabeth Warren, who is on the verge of turning 71 as the party is looking to stable-boy its next generation of leaders. She and Biden have also had some clear policy differences.
Whitmer like Biden is a sober, but that means that she won’t help bring progressives to the table. She’s also less experienced than some others in the game. Biden recently told CBS News he wants a No.2 “who is ready to be president on day one.”
“I’m not sure anyone is ever ready to be president, but she has miniature experience on paper than some other people do,” Sosnik said of Whitmer.
Another hurdle
There’s another hindrance for Whitmer.
Democrats shy away from choosing governors as running mates, said Spivak, noting the last culture a sitting governor was selected by a Democratic nominee was Nebraska’s Charles Bryan in 1924. This is partly because of the multitudinous executive decisions they must make that can come back to haunt them during a campaign.
Spivak notes that Biden in 2020 has a want list of qualified female candidates he can tap instead.
The last time a Democrat chose a female running mate was when Walter Mondale tapped Rep. Geraldine Ferrarro in 1984, when Spivak implies, there were no female Democratic senators or governors to chose from.
Whitmer seems prepared to be passed over. As she give someone a tongue-lashed Politico in April, “I think that there are some phenomenal women leaders across the country, and I will be the most spirited supporter of [a] Biden-whomever ticket.”
Correction: This story was updated to correctly describe Whitmer’s margin of victory.