By Zachary Gorchow
President of Michigan Operations
Posted: December 29, 2020 1:31 PM

Michigan governors don't lose bids for a second term. They are five for five since Michigan went to a four-year term for governor.

The gubernatorial candidate of the president's party does poorly in the governor's race in Michigan. Since 1966, those candidates have lost 11 out of 14 races including the last seven in a row.

Which brings us to the 2022 election cycle when Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer will be seeking a second term with Democratic President Joe Biden in the White House.

Ms. Whitmer will be the first incumbent governor running for reelection with their party also controlling the White House since Republican Governor William Milliken hung on in 1974 with Republican President Gerald Ford in the White House months after Mr. Ford succeeded the resigned President Richard Nixon. She will be the first Democrat to seek reelection with a Democratic president since the advent of the four-year gubernatorial term and the first in any situation since Governor John Swainson lost to George Romney in 1962 with President John F. Kennedy in the White House.

When Ms. Whitmer ran for governor in 2018, she had close to an ideal political environment with President Donald Trump in the White House prompting massive Democratic voter mobilization and a malaise among some of the newer Republican voters he brought to the polls in 2016 (and 2020) who weren't motivated to show up without him on the ballot.

2022 will be different. The president's party traditionally struggles in the midterm, losing seats in Congress and the Michigan Legislature. Yet the governor's party usually dominates midterms in Michigan when the governor is seeking reelection (as seen in 1986, 1994, 1998, 2006 and 2014).

But we have not had this combination of a Democratic governor seeking a second term with a Democratic president in the White House in modern Michigan political history. It is hard to know how this will pan out.

Much will depend on the caliber of the Republican gubernatorial candidate. It is quiet on that front right now though potential candidates will have to start making initial moves early in 2021.

Another big factor is the midterm motivation factor for each party's core voters. Do Democrats slack off like they did in 2010 and 2014 when President Barack Obama was in the White House? Or does Republican turnout ebb without Mr. Trump on the ballot like in 2018? Do the Democratic Party's inroads with college-educated suburban voters continue without Mr. Trump on the ballot and if so does that boost their midterm numbers since those are most reliable midterm voters? Or do they come home to the GOP?

Ms. Whitmer enters the 2022 cycle with many strengths. She has universal name recognition thanks to the pandemic. She starts out with a commanding edge in money. I think some caution should be exercised regarding polls that have shown a majority supporting her handling of the pandemic since those same polls also clearly wildly oversampled Democratic voters and undersampled Republican ones in the presidential race and, well, because polls. Unless Candice Miller fulfills the GOP dreams of the last 20 years and runs for governor, the Republicans lack an immediately obvious candidate who poses a major threat to her reelection.

But sometimes we have to say when we don't know about the upcoming political climate. This is one of those times.