The button-bedecked members of the Michigan Education Association–the state’s largest teachers union–do seem thrilled about Granholm’s visit. As the Democratic gubernatorial candidate enters the hall, the roaring crowd welcomes her like a rock star. The candidate responds in kind. Waving to her fans, she takes her place behind the podium and immediately rejects its formality. “I feel like I’m in the dark,” she says, “so I’m going to come out into the light.” With that, she wades into her adoring audience, Oprah style.
The festive mood was a sweet moment in an increasingly acrimonious race between Granholm and her Republican challenger, Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus. Posthumus, a career politician who enjoys strong support from the religious conservatives in rural western Michigan, is trying to close his double-digit deficit in the polls by attacking Granholm as beholden to the primarily African-American city of Detroit. In a move criticized by Democrats as racial politics, Posthumus is running ads showing photos of the white Granholm with Detroit’s black mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick. The ads target a memo Kilpatrick wrote–but never delivered–to Granholm, promising to get out the vote in the predominantly Democratic city in exchange for her appointing African-Americans to state posts and putting state offices in Detroit. Against an ominous black background, the Republican ads warn that Granholm will “write a blank check for Detroit.” Local residents did not need the subtext spelled out. In this race-sensitive region, “Detroit” means the mostly-black city, not its mostly-white suburbs and outstate region.
So far, Granholm, 43, has managed to fend off the Posthumus onslaught. A charismatic political novice who won her first election to become Michigan’s attorney general in 1999, she remains 10 points ahead in the latest poll–down only slightly from a 13-point lead in August. In two debates this month, Posthumus, 52, has argued that the Kilpatrick memo proves Granholm is part of a corrupt political machine that can’t “say ’no’ to special interests.” Granholm fired back, accusing Posthumus of engaging in “deplorable” politics of division. “I’m being criticized through hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertising for a memo I did not write, did not receive and I don’t agree with,” Granholm said in a debate Tuesday. “It’s the oldest strategy in the book, divide people from people, to divide city from suburb, to divide east from west. It is not worthy of the citizens of Michigan.”
If Granholm sustains her lead, she will make history as Michigan’s first woman governor. Whatever happens, she is already part of a new wave of credible female gubernatorial candidates. Republicans and Democrats have nominated an unusually high total of 10 women for governorships in Campaign 2002; analysts believe that as many as seven or eight could win in states ranging from Hawaii to Maryland and Massachusetts.
Granholm’s rise has been rapid: just a few years ago, she wasn’t even a blip on Michigan’s political radar. But soon after she won the hotly contested attorney general’s race, beleaguered Michigan Democrats began to view her as their best hope to turn back the Republican’s 12-year dominance of the statehouse and governor’s mansion. In the Democratic primary last August, she steamrollered her two more experienced challengers–former Michigan governor James Blanchard and U.S. House Minority Whip David Bonier–by winning 48 percent of the vote.
Both Posthumus and Granholm have solid political backgrounds. But Granholm’s style seems to be attracting crucial support among Republican as well as Democratic white suburban women. Part of the reason may be her ability to meld her glamour and good looks–the Harvard Law School graduate once took a shot at an acting career–with a softer, down-to-earth human touch and a smooth, articulate delivery on the campaign trail. “She’s reasonably moderate and tries to be all things to all people,” says Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a political newsletter. “She’s not extremist or left wing. That’s the reason she’s done well.”
Though Granholm is the mother of three young children, she has decided not to emphasize a soccer-mom image. Instead, she’s run on her record as attorney general and a former assistant prosecutor in Detroit’s Wayne County. Granholm routinely highlights her high conviction rate and her pursuit of gangs, Internet child predators and abusive nursing-home officials. “People are voting for her not because she’s a woman, but because she represents change and a new direction,” says pollster Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC/MRA, an independent Lansing, Mich., research and consulting firm. “She has a resume.”
Posthumus, for his part, has a resume that includes three decades in politics. But his struggle to dent Granholm’s lead is the reason for the race rhetoric heating up as Election Day draws nearer. Lately, he has faulted her for proposing to pay reparations to descendants of slaves when addressing an African-American audience, then backing off to avoid antagonizing white voters. Granholm contends she never suggested writing checks, but just wants to ensure equal opportunities for all groups.
Posthumus, an ardent opponent of abortion, also attacks Granholm’s pro-choice stance. Though Granholm is Catholic and says she personally opposes abortion, she contends that it is not “right to legislate the Catholic faith.” As a result, pro-lifers routinely picket her church.
While Granholm has charmed teachers by promising to support public education, two of her three children attend private school. “I wanted to educate them in the Catholic faith and you obviously can’t do that in the public schools,” she told NEWSWEEK. But if she’s elected governor, she promises to send all three children to public school.
At the Michigan teachers’ rally she brushed aside concerns about the Kilpatrick memo. “It’s so negative, I think people are sick of it,” she said. “They look at my opponent as divisive.” (A Posthumus spokesman, however, contends that fallout from the memo is costing Granholm some of Michigan’s critical union votes.) In a tailored khaki pantsuit with an American flag on the lapel, Granholm demonstrated her Clintonesque personal touch. She greeted educators as if each were an old friend, focusing intently on them with the laser stare for which the former president is famous. Granholm furthers the intimacy by lightly touching the upper arm of a supporter while lingering over a handshake. She patiently posed for rolls of pictures, her smile never faltering. And neither did her personal banter. “How old are you?” she asks a shy 10-year-old girl, who eyed her with adoration. “You look older than you are.” For Jennifer Granholm, no supporter is too young to charm.
