Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan widely spoken of as a possible Democratic candidate for president should Joe Biden cede to growing pressure and leave the race, wants to meet members of a far-right militia who plotted to kidnap and kill her.
“I asked whether I could meet with one of the handful of plotters who’d pleaded guilty and taken responsibility for their actions, just to talk,” Whitmer writes in a new book, of the plot motivated by resistance to Covid public health measures and revealed with 13 arrests in late 2020.
The attorney general of Michigan, Dana Nessel, said it might be possible to talk to the plotters, Whitmer writes, though it has not happened, due to “all the various trials and appeals.
“But I do look forward to being able to sit and talk, face-to-face. To ask the questions and really hear the answers. And hopefully to take some small step toward understanding.”
As described by Nessel’s office, the affair of the “Wolverine Watchmen” resulted in “20 state felonies against eight individuals alleged to have engaged in the planning and training for an operation to attack the state Capitol and kidnap government officials.” Five men were convicted.
Federal charges were filed against six more men, four of whom were convicted. Two pled guilty to conspiracy charges and co-operated with prosecutors.
Whitmer describes the plot, and how she coped with it and other threats from the armed pro-Trump far right, in True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between. The book will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Given Whitmer’s presence in the ranks of proposed replacements for Biden after the president’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump escalated Democratic panic last week, the governor’s book will be eagerly read.
Whitmer has said she does not want to replace Biden but that has not stopped speculation. On Wednesday, she was due to be among Democratic governors meeting Biden at the White House.
Though True Gretch is a standard campaign-oriented biography – perhaps intended as a marker for a run in 2028 – Whitmer does not shy from describing the violent plot against her.
Describing plotters’ threats such as “Grab the fuckin’ governor, just grab the bitch” and “Just cap her”, she considers the toll taken on her husband and daughters as well as on herself.
She describes how her husband was forced by threats to close his dental practice; how her two daughters have refused to go back to a family cottage the plotters were revealed to have “scoped out”; and her own disappointment when two men were acquitted.
Despite it all, showing willingness to bridge the sort of jagged partisan divide that affects the battleground state of Michigan, and the US as a whole, Whitmer insists she wants to talk to those who wanted to kill her.
Elsewhere in the book, the governor does shy away from one thing: open discussion of any ambitions for national office.
In fairness, True Gretch was written before Biden’s hold on the presidency began to be seriously questioned by Democratic politicians, pundits and strategists, concerned that at 81 the former senator and vice-president is proving himself too old to beat Trump and serve a second term.
Whitmer’s readers, however, may spot allusions to higher ambitions now thrown into sharp relief.
Chapter four, describing Whitmer’s first steps as governor of Michigan and the challenge of dealing with extreme cold weather, is titled “Surround Yourself with Great People – and Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help”.
In Chapter 10, Whitmer describes how she prepares for campaign debates, the sort of challenge Biden failed so starkly.
Whitmer’s chapter title is “Be a Happy Warrior” – a label defined by dictionary.com as “a person … undiscouraged by difficulties or opposition” and in US politics perennially linked to Alfred E Smith, Hubert Humphrey, Ronald Reagan and others who ran for president with a determinedly optimistic message.
In her epilogue, Whitmer moves from Reagan to another Republican: Theodore Roosevelt. In “every campaign, and during every term I serve”, she writes, she shares the 26th president’s “Man in the Arena” speech.
In that speech, given in Paris in April 1910, Roosevelt said: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Whitmer’s use of the quote may strike a chord with Democrats panicked by Biden and now looking the governor’s way. So might what Whitmer writes next.
“Though these words were written more than a hundred years ago, they’re just as true today – except for two things. The “man” may be a woman. And she may just be wearing fuchsia.”
