According to polls compiled by RealClearPolitics, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer leads all of her potential Republican challenges in a head-to-head matchup.
GOP voters will choose from five candidates in the August 2 primary, including supposed frontrunner Tudor Nixon, but a poll by Detroit News/WDIV shows Whitmer leads Nixon 51%-40%.
Whitmer, a former state lawmaker, won her first term as governor in 2018 after defeating Republican Bill Scheutte, the term-limited attorney general. She handily won over the GOP candidate 53%-43%.
Citing the polls, Rob Chambers, vice president of AFA Action, the political arm of the American Family Association, says it appears Michiganders have not learned a lesson from Whitmer’s tyrant-like actions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The State is to be their nanny over everything,” he says. “The nanny tells you when to wear a mask. The nanny tells you when you can take your mask off.”
Gov. Whitmer signed an executive order in July 2020 that ordered private businesses to turn away customers not wearing masks, which forced business owners and their employees to enforce it. Like many other politicians caught breaking their own pandemic rules, she later broke Michigan Dept. of Health guidelines (no more than six people) after a photo posted to Facebook showed her happily smiling at an East Lansing bar with 12 others.
The governor’s husband, Marc, dropped his wife’s name and influential title to the owner of a boat dock company when he called to demand the family’s boat get set up for the Memorial Day weekend. That demand came after his wife had urged fellow Michiganders not to travel to the popular area in the name of public safety.
"A small spike could put the hospital system in dire straits pretty quickly," she pleaded. "That's precisely why we're asking everyone to continue doing their part."
Beyond mask-wearing and social distancing, state governors both Republican and Democrat forced employees to lose their jobs and business owners to lose their livelihood. In Michigan, by the spring of 2020, the state government was providing unemployment benefits to more than 1 million workers, and blaming the virus, but it was Gov. Whitmer who issued a stay-at-home order that was later ruled unconstitutional.
Anna Visser, a pro-life activist with Right to Life of Michigan, tells AFN the governor should be remembered by voters for her radical defense of abortion. Last week, Whitmer issued a line-item veto that stripped funding to pregnancy resource centers.
“[Whitmer]claims to be pro-choice but it's very clear that she is pro-abortion,” Visser says. “She doesn't actually want women to have a choice.”
Last week’s veto marked the second year in a row Gov. Whitmer has pulled out funds approved by the state legislature.
Editor's Note: AFA Action is an affiliate of the American Family Association, the parent organization of the American Family News Network, which operates AFN.net.
