Gretchen Whitmer Elected As Governor: 2018 Election Results

MICHIGAN — Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, the former Senate minority leader, has defeated Republican and Attorney General Bill Schuette and will succeed Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who couldn’t run again because of term limits.

With 93 percent of Michigan's precincts reporting, Whitmer had 2,,097,000 votes of 53 percent of the tally; Schuette had 1,735,000 votes or 44 percent.

Whitmer and Schuette held sharply different views on road funding, health care and education, among other issues, and ran a heated race up until the election. Polls showed Whitmer’s solid lead over Schuette up until Election Day.

Whitmer also defeated Libertarian Bill Gelineau, U.S. Taxpayers Party candidate Todd Schleiger, Green Party candidate Jennifer Kurland, and Natural Law Party candidate Keith Butkovich.

Want to get to know more about Whitmer? Check out this timeline of her life:

1971: Born to Sherry and Richard Whitmer, a former president of Blue Cross/Blue Shield and director of the state Department of Commerce. Sherry Whitmer was an attorney in the state Attorney General’s Office.

1998: Received a law degree from the Detroit College of Law at Michigan State University.

2000: Won a seat in the state House of Representatives, representing East Lansing and serving three 2-year terms. During her first term, she lost her mother to brain cancer, and had her first baby, daughter Sherry, with then-husband Gary Shrewsbury. Daughter Sydney came a year later. Whitmer and Shrewsbury divorced in 2008.

2006: Won a seat in the state Senate, where she served two four-year terms, rising to become the Senate minority leader in 2010.

2007-13: Serving in the minority in the Legislature, she only has three bills to her name: allowing mail-order prescriptions; licensing fees for campgrounds and public swimming pools and increasing the calculations for the earned income tax credit.

2011: Married Lansing dentist Mark Mallory and gained three stepsons: Mason, Winston and Alex.

2012: During contentious lame duck session, she led the opposition to the state’s “right-to-work” law, which means workers cannot be forced to pay union dues as a condition of being employed. The bill passed with only Republican votes.

2013: During a heated debate on a bill that would prohibit insurance companies from including coverage for abortions in health care plans and force women to buy additional insurance to cover them, she disclosed for the first time that she had been raped while a student at Michigan State University. She didn't give details, never sought to press charges and said she had spent the years since the assault trying not to talk about the experience. Democrats lost that fight and the bill became law.

2013: Helped collect the votes necessary to pass an expansion of Medicaid in Michigan, which has resulted in 680,000 low-income residents in the state gaining access to health insurance.

2014: Began teaching at the University of Michigan law school and went back to private law practice with a Lansing law firm.

2016: Was appointed interim Ingham County Prosecutor to take over for disgraced Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings, who was convicted of soliciting prostitutes. During her six-month appointment, the sexual assault case against former Michigan State University sports doctor Larry Nassar surfaced with cases in both Ingham and Eaton counties. Schuette’s campaign claims she shirked her duties by not prosecuting the case. Whitmer has said she issued a warrant to search Nassar’s home, which led to federal child pornography charges and that the MSU Police Department never submitted reports to her office and instead took the case to Schuette.

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