Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who serves as co-chairwoman of President Biden’s reelection campaign, issued a statement after the national news outlet Politico suggested she possibly had said that Michigan “was no longer winnable for Biden.”
A Whitmer aide, on the condition that they not be identified, said the comment, which was sourced by Politico to “someone close to a potential 2028 Whitmer rival,” was false.
Whitmer herself claimed something similar: “Anyone who claims I would say that we can’t win Michigan is full of shit. Let’s go.”
The controversial Politico column looked like this, with a disclaimer from the author that the word of a call between Whitmer and Biden aide Jennifer O’Malley Dillon came “from someone close to a potential 2028 Whitmer rival.”
According to Politico, Whitmer made the call to reiterate that she was not considering herself as a replacement for Biden, and hated that her name was being floated as such.
Michigan U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell said she spoke to Whitmer about her Friday call with Biden campaign chair O’Malley Dillon and reiterated that the governor never said Michigan was “unwinnable.”
“We know what needs to be done to win Michigan,” Dingell said. “She’s out there doing everything she can. She’s working her a– off.”
Dingell also blasted the Whitmer rival who tried to spin Whitmer’s conversation with Dillon in an effort to “knife” the second-term Michigan governor. “Women don’t like people that go after each other,” Dingell said.
Pundits have floated Whitmer and others, including Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, as potential replacements for Biden if the nomination were somehow put up for grabs at the party’s convention in August.
The Politico column has been repeated in Republican circles, while the apparent unnamed source was from the camp of a Democratic rival. Maybe rivals would like to pre-emptively wound Whitmer by portraying her as being disloyal to Biden in his hour of need.