Gretchen Whitmer is really good at having it all

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, right; her husband, Mark Mallory; and daughters Sydney and Sherry attend the Michigan Inauguration on Jan. 1, 2023. | Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance

Gretchen Whitmer has been known for a lot of things in her life.

She’s never lost an election, gaining national attention for fighting against anti-abortion and anti-labor policies while serving in the Legislature. As Michigan’s 49th governor, she was the subject of an assassination plot during her first term and went on to sign an avalanche of progressive legislation after winning a landslide reelection. And she’s been considered for the role of vice president twice in a four-year span.

Whitmer’s latest role is hype woman for Vice President Kamala Harris and her friend, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“Tim and I get along because we both live by a three-word strategy: Get sh-t done,” she declared at a rally this month in a Detroit Metro Airport hangar that drew 15,000 people.

That certainly describes Whitmer’s governing philosophy, delivered with her salt-of-the-earth rhetorical flair (her first gubernatorial campaign slogan was “Fix the Damn Roads,” after all, which gave some male pundits the vapors).  

But after covering her for two decades and reading her first book, it’s clear that’s also her general approach to life. 

Whitmer starts out “True Gretch,” by announcing that she hails from a family of hard workers. Time and time again, she encounters obstacles, grits through it, and knocks them down. Sometimes she goes with her gut, like when she disclosed her sexual assault in an emotional Senate speech during an abortion bill debate. Other times, that comes after carefully assessing the situation and listening to others, like when a severe winter storm threatened to knock out power for millions.

But at the end of the day, Whitmer, 52, always plays through pain — be it her mother’s devastating cancer diagnosis or threats on her life — and gets sh-t done. There’s really nothing more Midwestern or Generation X than that.

If you really want to understand Gretchen Whitmer, though, it starts with appreciating how important her family and being a mom are to her. It’s something I’ve gotten to see up close and personal over the years — our kids happen to be the same ages — but it also comes through on every page.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer speaks to a crowd in Detroit at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for president on Aug. 7, 2024. | Anna Liz Nichols

Eldest daughter syndrome

Gretchen Esther Whitmer — named for both her grandmothers, who both play a prominent role in her book — was born into a family of public servants. 

Her mother, Sherry Whitmer — for whom her eldest daughter is named — was an assistant attorney general under Democratic Attorney General Frank Kelley, and her father, Dick Whitmer, led the Commerce department under GOP Gov. William Milliken. 

You really couldn’t script a better background for someone who aspired to be governor of a big purple state. But despite her political pedigree, Whitmer shares plenty of self-deprecating anecdotes, like losing her two front teeth at camp and earning the nickname, “Gravity Gretchen.” She even notes that her dad told a reporter during her first campaign for the Michigan House, “Gretchen knows she isn’t special.”

Somehow I knew the first time I met Rep. Whitmer back in 2005 that she was the firstborn (we tend to spot our own). When I interviewed her last month about “True Gretch,” I asked her if she thought it was a story of eldest daughter syndrome.

“That’s funny,” she said and paused. “You know what? I think that being the oldest, as well as other things, probably informs a lot of who I am. So yeah, that makes sense.”

With her parents divorcing when she was 6, Whitmer took on the caregiver role for her younger siblings, Liz and Richard, with whom she still shares a close, goofy relationship. She writes about being sick with worry about her sister walking home alone from school. She also worried about her dad being alone a lot of the time and took to leaving little notes and drawings around the house for him to find.

Whitmer’s caregiver role continued into adulthood when she had a “classic sandwich generation situation” during her first term in the House while giving birth to her first child as her mother was dying of cancer. In one of the more poignant moments of the book, she climbs into her mom’s hospital bed following her first surgery. Instead of weeping, the two end up sharing a joke and howling with laughter.

Much has been written about the latchkey kids of the ‘80s — most of it serving as a condemnation of working women, as the feminist backlash was in full swing — but it’s worth considering that many children learned valuable lessons in independence and resilience.   

Whitmer recalled in a recent interview that as a kid, she called her mom at work after her sister broke her arm and was told, “Oh, give her a Twinkie and I’ll check it when I get home.” While today’s helicopter parents would wince at that exchange, the book seems to underscore that Whitmer benefited from having to figure out things on her own.

In 159 brief pages of “True Gretch,” she breaks down 10 of her most significant life lessons, with chapters titled, “Never Give Up,” “Learn to Listen” and “Run Toward the Fire,” interspersed with bright, shorter asides like the “True Gretch Playlist” and her take on the “Saturday Night Live” portrayal of her during the pandemic. (There’s also no index, which will disappoint politicos who live to search for their names).

It’s a breezy read, with Whitmer taking great pains not to lecture or hector anyone, instead assuming the tone of a wise girlfriend who’s figured some stuff out and isn’t afraid to share her wins and losses over a bottle of mid-priced wine.

An audience member holds a copy of “True Gretch” during a stop on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s book tour in East Lansing, Mich., on July 23, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)

Ambition and motherhood

Almost all politicians talk about family, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that the tent poles of Whitmer’s brief book are her parents, grandparents, siblings, husbands (yes, she’s close with her ex) and children.

Whitmer seems to have realized what so many women have: There’s no ideal time in your career to have a baby. You just take the leap and do your best, because there will always be tons of hurdles. She had her first daughter shortly after taking office, something we bonded over as I had mine within a year of landing my first reporting job.

“My girls have grown up around the Capitol. Sherry [was born in] my first term and Sydney my second term,” Whitmer told me in an interview last month. “… They understand politics. They understand why this is something that I’m called to do.”

She balanced work with parenthood just like the rest of us (we’d leave Senate committee hearings to pick our kids up from theater camp at the same time) — even though her job was far more important than most. I remember one time when I confessed over coffee that I was gripped with mom guilt after being late to my kid’s birthday celebration at school. She gently reminded me that it’s good for our daughters to see us trying to make a difference in the world.

The centerpiece of the ‘80s feminist backlash was admonishing women that you couldn’t have it all — kids and career — and if you tried, you’d constantly fail at both jobs. I doubt that Whitmer set out to prove that maxim wrong — she was probably just emulating the strong women in her family — but she has. She’s always been an involved parent who has continued to pursue her political dreams. And while mothers with school-aged children are still a minority in Michigan politics, there’s a much stronger support network today.

When Whitmer was tapped in 2020 to deliver the response to then-President Trump’s State of the Union — an honor usually bestowed upon one of the opposing party’s rising stars — she chose her daughters’ high school as the venue. (Her kids invited a gaggle of friends to the event who promptly all took selfies at the podium).

A month later, the state was engulfed in the pandemic and Whitmer had to make some agonizing choices, like an executive order closing down schools. “With a stroke of my pen, I canceled my own kid’s high school graduation, her senior prom,” she writes, noting she understood all too well why people were angry.

Earlier in the book, Whitmer devotes a surprising amount of time to a 2019 crisis when a polar vortex threatened the state’s power grid, and she called on people to voluntarily turn down their thermostats. In hindsight, you can see that she wishes that’s how COVID would have gone down, with everyone working together to save people’s lives instead of getting caught up in political battles. One of her recurring themes is that leaders aren’t going to get everything right, but you have to try to help people.

Whitmer describes her daughters as even-keeled, “stoic Whitmers,” even when she shares with them the threats on her life. They’re now both in their early 20s but they remain close with her, even getting matching tattoos — smiley faces as a callback to Whitmer drawing them on their stomachs before they left for overnight camp.

But there is a special pain that Gen X women feel, having been raised with the promises of second-wave feminism that told us we could be anything we wanted to be, only to see our daughters be stripped of their most basic rights. When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Whitmer’s first thought was of her daughters and what that meant for their future.

Still, she still enjoys light moments with her Gen Z kids, like when one of her social media posts goes viral and she exaggeratedly exclaims, “Wow, I just can’t stop trending!”

Predictably, they always roll their eyes.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer with her daughter, Sherry, as she signs Senate Bill 4, which expands the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act to include protections for the LGBTQ+ community, on March 16, 2023. (Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)

A woman governor (again)

Michigan has had a female governor before — now-U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm served two terms in the aughts — but that hasn’t prevented Whitmer from enduring her fair share of misogyny.

Even before she was elected to the state’s highest office, Whitmer was named on “hottest politicians” lists and belittled as a “junior senator” by a male colleague (who never used that term for anyone else). As governor, she’s been called “batsh-t crazy” by a male Senate majority leader, who also bragged he “spanked” her on COVID policy.

After she gave her first State of the State address in 2019, FOX-2, a Detroit TV station, ran a sleazy story on people commenting about the blue dress she wore with highly specific critiques of her body, something she refers in the book to as a “sartorial sh-tshow.” She includes her tweets responding to the article, where she notes she’s used to criticism. “I’m tough, I can take it,” she tweeted, but ended with a message for women and girls dealing with “garbage like this”: “I’ve got your back.”  

When I asked Whitmer if she’s worked harder to be taken seriously as a woman in politics, she said yes.

“I think that there is an aspect of that where if you know you’re going to be distilled down to something really superficial, you could throw your hands up and rail against it or you could roll up your sleeves and work that much harder to show your substance,” she said. “I think my natural tendency is to do the latter. But also do it with an eye toward: How do we make the world a better place for our daughters so that they don’t have to deal with as much of this B.S. as we’ve had to navigate? Just like the people that came before us did for us.”

For many Gen Xers, it can be hard to find Boomer women mentors in male-dominated fields like politics. Some are absolute gems, like the late Kelly Rossman-McKinney, the ultimate PR pro who shared her wit and wisdom with hundreds of women in Lansing for decades. But unfortunately, there are some women who resent those of us who supposedly have it too easy after they broke the glass ceiling. 

It’s even more disheartening to engender the resentment of younger women in the field, some of whom seem to think you’re a sucker for working so hard and deserve to be put out to pasture. Talk about the sandwich generation.

Whitmer has seemingly escaped that trap, however, and has a bevy of Millennial and Gen Z women on staff. Their influence is readily apparent in her irreverent Tiktoks and her last State of the State address in which she played her “greatest policy hits” and unleashed music-themed puns with abandon. (You could say she’s in her DGAF Era).

And because Whitmer isn’t the first female governor, she seems less constrained by gendered expectations and routinely ditches the unofficial female politician uniform of inoffensive pantsuits in favor of leather jackets and fuschia dresses (her “power color,” in a tribute to her mom).

“I think that the women who before my generation created more acceptance for us showing up as we are,” she said in an interview in May. “And I think also I’m of an age now where I’m a lot more comfortable with who I am, and I’m going to show up as I am. And I hope, and I see that in my kids, that their generation doesn’t have the baggage that mine did at that same age.” 

In other words, Whitmer seems free to embrace “what can be, unburdened what has been,” as Kamala Harris would say. 

She’s also more forgiving and gracious than most of us, writing that she wants to sit down with the far-right men who plotted to kill her.

“I really would,” Whitmer said at an East Lansing event in May before her book came out. “I would like to do that because I know that they are human beings who something’s not working for them in their lives and I’m curious, you know, what really is happening to see if there’s something I could do that would be helpful.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the Executive Office in December 2022 | Andrew Roth

Political future

If Tim Walz is everyone’s Midwestern Dad, it’s only right to acknowledge that Gretchen Whitmer’s Mitten-bred folksiness helped pave the way. 

While Trump vilified her during the pandemic as “the woman from Michigan” and egged on right-wing protesters, Whitmer embraced the nickname and proudly notes she “made it my own.” But being “Midwest nice” doesn’t mean you’re a pushover. At the Detroit rally, Whitmer joked that Walz may be the only other governor that she knows who swears more than her. 

In politics, writing a book is seen as a naked audition for your next gig, so naturally speculation about a future presidential run has been a fixture of Whitmer’s whirlwind media tour.

She’s sold out venues in Michigan and beyond, with her event in the moneyed playground of Martha’s Vineyard — moderated by Hollywood royalty Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen — billed as “one of the most highly anticipated events on the Island this summer.” 

At the beginning of her tour last month, President Joe Biden was still in the race after his calamitous debate performance. (Whitmer told me she’d been at a celebrity-strewn party in California beforehand, but had to hop on a plane before the debate began and somewhat conveniently missed his implosion). As one of his national campaign co-chairs, Whitmer was inundated with questions about whether he should drop out and if she’d run in his stead (including from the Advance), which was clearly wearing on her.

Whitmer seemed to be struggling to balance her personal loyalty to Biden, a friend who had put her on his VP shortlist four years ago, and her allegiance to the country and her party, as she appeared to harbor some doubts about his ability to beat Trump. She dipped her toe in the water with comments like saying it “wouldn’t hurt” for both men to take a cognitive test, but she’ll never be able to be as calculating and cutthroat as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who masterfully eased the president off the stage. (The vast majority of people in politics can’t stand to be hated. Pelosi doesn’t care).

Although Whitmer was once again considered for vice president, this time by Harris, she seems content to campaign for the ticket in Michigan and across the country. 

“I woke up in Big Gretch mode this morning because I am fired up to elect Kamala Harris as our president!” she declared at the Detroit rally to thunderous applause.

She’s defended Harris from attacks on her signature laugh, telling the Washington Post that it’s “been so energizing to see young people make memes and videos of a joyful, happy warrior. And I think that’s going to ultimately be a strength.”

Whitmer casts herself in that role in her book, and their similarities could be one reason Harris didn’t pick her as her running mate  (apprehension about an all-female ticket was likely the ultimate culprit).

Like Harris, Whitmer is also married to a successful man who isn’t afraid to let her shine. Her husband, Marc Mallory, doesn’t do interviews — I’ve tried — and didn’t co-author the book, as former first gentleman Dan Mulhern did with Granholm in 2011 for “A Governor’s Story.” (There also are no anecdotes in the book about Mallory making Whitmer fetch his tea at the end of a frenzied day).

But while now-second gentleman Doug Emhoff willingly stepped away from his law practice when Harris was elected VP, Mallory retired early from his dental practice due to ongoing threats.

Whitmer doesn’t devote much time to details like that, although she briefly ties the assassination plot against her to threats on her grandfather’s life when he helped integrate Pontiac schools as superintendent shortly after she was born. A Publisher’s Weekly review complained that there was “almost certainly enough material — personal and political — for Whitmer to deliver a meaty memoir. Unfortunately, this isn’t it.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaks at the Michigan Democratic Party’s Election Day watch party in Detroit on Nov. 8, 2022. (Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)

When I noted that there were many significant events that she didn’t include in “True Gretch” — like organizing a 2012 performance of “The Vagina Monologues” on the state Capitol lawn after two female lawmakers were silenced during an abortion debate — Whitmer stressed it wasn’t a memoir, but a “handbook.”

“What I really wanted to do was put out something that would be accessible for people that is not long-form, but really got to the point of 10 things that I’ve learned over the course of my life that I’ve used in certain circumstances as governing,” she said.

Leaving your audience wanting more isn’t a bad thing, of course. Whitmer is term-limited in 2026 and has four years before the next presidential election to write another tome. (Speaking in March at the annual Gridiron dinner — a rite of passage for ambitious politicians — she teased the speculation by ending her speech with a cheeky: “See you in 2029!”)

With Democrats cautiously optimistic now that Harris could win this fall, that would upend any plans Whitmer has for a presidential bid. But I know she believes preserving American democracy is a greater goal than any that she might personally harbor. And as a true Midwesterner, I don’t think Whitmer has ever been so presumptuous to start measuring the drapes in the Oval Office. She’d also never make such a big decision without considering what it means for her family.

When I asked her in July what she’d want to accomplish if she did run for president in the future, Whitmer gave a quick and somewhat drained answer.

“Susan, I don’t know that I’ll ever run for president,” she said. “I know this, that we need leaders who care about people and can solve problems and can work with anybody. I will always be an enthusiastic supporter of great candidates. I don’t know that I’ll be one myself. But I think that I understand where the questions are coming from. Sorry, I don’t have a more satisfying answer for you.”