By Zachary Gorchow
President of Michigan Operations
Posted: May 18, 2021 1:27 PM

This mess Governor Gretchen Whitmer now finds herself in regarding her trip to Florida to visit her ailing father, Richard Whitmer, started out from my standpoint as a nonstory.

The governor's father has been battling a chronic condition for some time. He was not doing well while at a second home in the Palm Beach, Florida, area. The governor did what anyone with an ailing parent would do, go visit to help.

Republicans have claimed Ms. Whitmer did what she told others not to do during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that's just not the case. There were no travel restrictions in place. There have been no government-imposed limits on travel in more than a year.

Yes, Ms. Whitmer around the time she went to Florida in mid-March responded to a reporter's question about whether she had concerns about people traveling to Florida for spring break in the affirmative, that she was concerned. But she did not tell people to stay home. And there is a big difference between going somewhere for spring break and all that entails – drinking and dancing at crowded bars in a state with a laissez-faire approach to the virus – and hunkering down at your dad's residence for a long weekend and doing not much else.

Yes, the Department of Health and Human Services would a few weeks after Ms. Whitmer returned from Florida issue an advisory against travel. This came after Michigan's third wave of coronavirus cases had exploded. When Ms. Whitmer left for Florida, cases had bottomed out about a week earlier and were only slowly trending up.

So other than "bad optics," what was there really other than the governor looking in on her dad? Nothing.

But the governor and her staff were creating problems for themselves. For starters, they allowed the story to leak out, let others frame it and put themselves in a reactive posture. Meanwhile, the governor and her staff said little about the trip once stories started to appear – even where and when it happened – citing security concerns.

No doubt, this governor has to exhibit more caution about security than any other Michigan governor after the events of 2020 amid a slew of death threats, at least one of which resulted in charges, and the plot to kidnap her. The staff is dealing with threats. It's a terrible situation. But there was no explanation that made sense as to why revealing that the governor went to Florida to visit her father between March 12-15 a month after it happened would compromise the governor's security.

How different things might be if on March 16, upon returning, Ms. Whitmer held a news briefing to say she had traveled to visit her father because he was ailing, explained how long she had been gone, where she went and detailed how she got there?

How she got there. That was the one nagging piece of what started out as a nonstory and now has become a significant story.

Some digging by Deadline Detroit's Charlie LeDuff revealed Ms. Whitmer had used a high-end Gulfstream jet owned by some of Michigan's most prominent business executives (who also happen to be among the largest donors to Michigan Republican politics, which as an aside probably meant this trip was never going to stay secret and should have been revealed by the governor not long after she was wheels down in Michigan).

That raised two issues. One, how did the governor end up getting access to this plane? And two, how was it paid for?

The governor and her staff again tried to stonewall questions about the topic, saying the trip was neither a gift nor paid for at taxpayer expense but then also saying they would have nothing else to say about it.

Usually when an elected official says they have said all they are going to say on a topic, they will find themselves saying more about that topic in the not too distant future once that story starts to spiral out of control.

It doesn't help when the governor and her staff come up with varying descriptions for the trip length – "two full days," "two full days or less," etc. Finally the trip was acknowledged as leaving on a Friday and returning on a Monday. Why not just say that from the beginning instead of looking like there was something to hide?

Some of the governor's allies have privately been tearing their hair out at her handling of this story, wondering why she would not have been more transparent about something that if not handled well could become a problem. Other continue to defend Ms. Whitmer's trip and say this remains a nonstory.

There are a couple reasons I now see a story where at first I did not.

Let's go back to that first question, how did the governor get access to this plane. Someone had to ask. Yes, we now know that the governor used a 501(c)4 fund set up to help with inaugural costs and since converted to an account to defray executive office expenses from the taxpayers. Is it a good idea for the governor and/or her staff to be asking to use a plane owned by people who own companies heavily regulated and permitted by the state (PVS Chemicals and the Detroit International Bridge Company)? No, it is not. Yes, the governor used a fund she controls to pay for it, but it still looks like asking a favor. How are they supposed to say no? That's not a good position for the state to be in or to put someone in.

And now the second question, how the flight was paid for. Whitmer Chief of Staff JoAnne Huls, in a memo to Executive Office staff that the governor's office released late Friday, revealed it was the 501(c)4 Michigan Transition 2019 doing business as Executive Office Account that paid the $27,500 for the flight. Ms. Whitmer then reimbursed the fund $855 for the cost of her seat. Ms. Huls said in her memo this was in compliance with the law. And yet there are now a lot of questions being asked about whether reimbursing the cost of a personal trip fits within what the IRS permits a fund like this to cover. Maybe it was all above-board, I'm not an expert on the IRS, but again this would have been a great topic for the governor and her staff to address head on at that hypothetical March 16 news briefing.

The hypocrisy on display in both parties is something to behold right now. Democrats who lambasted Governor Rick Snyder over his nonprofit fund (remember the NERD fund?) now suddenly are unconcerned. Republicans who themselves control a vast number of 501(c)4 accounts that do not disclose their donors or expenses now suddenly find themselves V-E-R-Y concerned (skypoint to the late Hugh McDiarmid Sr.) about the governor's use of her fund.

The governor was in a bad spot. She needed to help out her ailing father in Florida. She needed a secure way to get there. It was going to cost a lot.

The decision not to be upfront from the get-go about the trip has resulted in a different kind of cost.