Gov. Whitmer, it's time for a special election in Michigan's 35th District | Editorial

It's been 194 days since Jan. 3, the day Kristen McDonald Rivet was sworn in as the representative of Michigan's 8th District in the U.S. Congress District, a seat she'd won in the 2024 election ― leaving a vacancy in the 35th District state Senate seat she'd held for the previous two years.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gives her State of the State Address at the Michigan State Capitol building in Lansing on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

In the normal course of events, McDonald Rivet would have been replaced by a new state senator, chosen by residents of the 35th district in a special election. Or, at least, an election would have been scheduled, promising a representative by a date not too far in the future.

But after 194 days, the seat is still vacant, and 270,000 residents of the 35th District — comprising parts of Bay, Midland and Saginaw counties — still lack representation in the Michigan Senate, with no end in sight.

Why?

Ask Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

It's the Michigan governor's responsibility

The state Constitution gives Michigan's governor responsibility for setting such elections. And while it's not unheard of for governors to exercise what we'll call "discretionary timing," more often than not, this process runs like a top.

An analysis by the Lansing news service MIRS found that since the adoption of the Michigan Constitution in 1963, our state's last seven governors ― Democrats and Republicans, from Whitmer to Romney ― took, on average, 14 days to call special elections to fill 113 legislative and congressional vacancies. (MIRS excluded a 1992 outlier, when Gov. John Engler took around 90 days to call a special state House election, because contemporary reports don't specify the exact number of days before the special election was called. The seat was also the subject of an ongoing redistricting lawsuit.)

But for the last seven months, Whitmer has offered only vague assurances that she definitely plans to call a special election.

Eventually. Someday.

'At some point' there will be a special election

“At some point there will be one," Whitmer told radio station WCMU in April. "But I don’t have an announcement to make yet.” (By the Free Press' Tuesday deadline, Whitmer's office had not responded to an email requesting comment. After publication, spokesperson Stacey LaRouche emailed, "We will keep you posted on when we have news to share.")

Republicans have been grousing about the vacancy since Jan. 4. And while Democrats are doing the same, if mostly behind closed doors, two of Michigan's most prominent Dems have spoken publicly: Whitmer's lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist II, a candidate to succeed his boss in next year's gubernatorial election, has said both he and 35th District residents are "ready," and Attorney General Dana Nessel has said Whitmer should call the special election.

In the absence of some clearly articulated, fundamentally sound explanation from Whitmer, there's really just one conclusion: Democrats, having lost the state House of Representatives in 2024, hold a one-seat majority in the state Senate. Dodging a special election in the 35th District maintains the last shreds of Democratic power in Lansing ― at the expense of both the residents of the 35th District and the democratic norms Whitmer's party claims to uphold.

The 35th District has long been a Democratic stronghold, but demographics and redistricting are changing that. Polls suggest that Dems have a roughly 50-50 shot at keeping the seat.

To pass legislation requires a majority of sitting senators. With 37 of 38 seats occupied — 19 Democrats and 18 Republicans — that's 19 votes. A 35th District Republican would create a 19-19 split, giving Gilchrist, in his role as president pro tem of the state Senate, the tie-breaking vote.

But political insiders expect a different scenario: Senate Republicans could routinely instruct a GOP senator to abstain from voting, resulting in an 19-18 split ― leaving Democrats one vote shy of a 20-vote majority, but without creating a tie Gilchrist could break ― and effectively blocking anything the Democrats muster.

On a visceral level, we get it. Whitmer is a talented executive, focused on finding common ground and delivering pragmatic policy solutions to a state that badly needs them ― who spent her first term in office with a GOP-led Legislature more interested in cutting her off at the knees than meeting her halfway. And she served in the state Legislature during the years when partisan gridlock became de rigeur.

To contemplate going back is migraine-inducing. And we understand the irony of urging Whitmer to practice good governance so her political opponents can indulge in gamesmanship at the expense of their own constituents.

But that's the thing about democracy. It's important, even when it's inconvenient.

Gov. Whitmer, it's time.

Call the election.

Without a voice or an advocate

It's an argument that shouldn't need making: Michiganders are entitled to full representation in every aspect of government, from the governor's office to the local drain commissioner.

While the seat is vacant, 270,000 Michiganders lack a voice in the state Senate to represent their concerns in policy decisions. And as a practical matter, they're denied an advocate who can intervene when government services aren't working as they ought, ensuring access to health care or unemployment benefits or any number of life-saving programs.

Representative government exists for a reason, and Michiganders in the 35th deserve to have it.

It's just politics

Besides, partisan gridlock is already here.

Democrats won unilateral control of state government in the 2022 election, re-electing Whitmer, Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and winning slim majorities in the state House and Senate. And by "slim," we mean "really slim" ― 56-54 in the House, and 20-18 in the Senate.

Republicans regained control of the state House in 2024, winning a less-slim 58-52 majority and ending the Democratic trifecta. Democrats' attempts to pass any sort of agenda came skidding to a halt. If Republican state Speaker Matt Hall won't go for it, it's not going to happen. And on most of the issues important to Dems, it's a foregone conclusion that he's not going to go for it.

Hall has been willing to cooperate with Whitmer on a narrow set of issues that fit his party's agenda ― Asian carp in the Great Lakes, a new fighter mission at Selfridge Air Force Base, disaster relief Up North ― but the relationship between the two has frayed in recent months, particularly over the state budget; the divided Legislature has already blown past a July 1 deadline to finalize a budget for Michigan's K-12 schools.

Hall plays hardball, and he and Whitmer are simply fundamentally opposed on most issues. An analysis by Bridge Michigan found that in the first six months of the year, this Legislature sent just six bills to Whitmer; the next-lowest number of bills was in 2007, another era of partisan logjam, when 31 bills landed on Gov. Jennifer Granholm's desk.

None of that will change if 35th District voters send a Republican to the state Senate.

Whitmer has positioned herself as a commonsense Democrat, someone who puts ego aside and works hard for Michigan. Democrats have positioned themselves as the party of democracy, upholding the rule of law in an era of shifting scales.

Michiganders should be able to take for granted that our elected officials will cooperate to fix our roads, fund our schools and ensure that our needs are met. We can't, and that's a failure of our politics.

But Republican intransigence isn't a good reason to leave the 35th adrift, or indulge in the sort of slippery politics that allows the other side to go just a little bit further, next time, in eroding the rule of law.

We've no appetite for mindless partisanship or institutionalized bickering. And it's frustrating to have to do the right thing, when others won't.

But the alternative is chaos, and we've even less appetite for that.

This column was updated after publication to include a response from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's office.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Gov. Whitmer, it's time for a special election in Michigan's 35th District | Editorial