Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is releasing a memoir this week as her Democratic Party is facing a particularly tough moment.
The memoir, titled “True Gretch,” is set to release on Tuesday, a little more than a week after questions started swirling about whether Whitmer could be elevated to a potential presidential candidate for the party following President Joe Biden’s abysmal performance at the first presidential debate.
The memoir itself — both the fact that it’s been written and the timing of its release — could be seen as Whitmer attempting to gain more national notoriety for a potential future White House bid.
Speaking with The Associated Press about the upcoming launch of the book, Whitmer said she did everything she could to shut down such speculation. She even said that if Biden were to step down as a candidate, she would not step up in his place.
As she said:
“It’s a distraction more than anything. I don’t like seeing my name in articles like that because I’m totally focused on governing and campaigning for the ticket.”
Whitmer covers multiple national events that happened throughout her political career. This includes a foiled plot to kidnap her and her family, as well as multiple clashes she’s had with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Even though Whitmer says she isn’t interested in all this national attention, she’s gained it by ascending through the Democratic Party swiftly in the last 20 years. In that time, she went from graduating law school to becoming governor of Michigan, which has put her firmly near the top of the liberal party.
After ascending through the ranks, Whitmer established her firm position in the party in 2022, when she was decisively re-elected and also helped her party win both chambers of Michigan’s state legislatures. That marked the first time in almost 40 years that Democrats had control of both chambers in Michigan.
In the early part of her memoir, Whitmer writes:
“I’ve spent the first quarter of this century watching as the arc of our politics has bent uncomfortably toward incivility and strife. … That’s why I decided to write this book: to put a little light out there in a damn dark time.”
Whitmer first burst onto the scene in 2013, when she became the minority leader of the Michigan Senate. As she was about to give prepared remarks on the floor before a vote on an anti-abortion bill, Whitmer decided to abandon those remarks and share that, when she was in college, she was raped.
As she writes in her memoir:
“It was terrifying to think of opening myself up, of telling this room full of mostly men about being assaulted as a young woman.”
The bill passed then, despite Whitmer’s efforts. Yet, 10 years after that time, she signed a law that repealed it as governor of the state. At the same time, she successfully worked to get a new state law passed that enshrines the right to abortion in the Michigan constitution.
