Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and State Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet recently visited Saginaw Valley State University, where they addressed students and encouraged the youth vote. In a private interview, Whitmer and Rivet discussed several key policies at stake in the upcoming election.
Q: Why do you think the voices of college age voters are particularly important in the 2024 election?
Whitmer: College voters are going to live with the consequences of the outcome of this election longer than any of the rest of us are, and that’s why your voices are really important. If everyone your age voted, you would decide the outcome of every election.
Rivet: Saginaw Valley, right here in the middle of the eighth congressional [district], is really important. This [election] has the eyes of the country on it, and Saginaw Valley students can determine this election.
Q: Student debt is a critical issue for many students and recent graduates. What are your thoughts on student debt relief, and how does it factor into the 2024 campaign?
Whitmer: One of the things that we’ve done at the state level is make it more affordable for young people to go to [school] whether it’s college or community college…We’ve taken a lot of great steps, but we couldn’t have done it without Sen. Rivet, who we’re hoping will be promoted to Congress and take this fight there because the next step is for some real relief on the federal level.
Rivet: We have to figure out how to (go about) student loan relief, and we have to actually put more dollars into the system to make sure that we can bring the cost of tuition down for people.
Q: Looking at climate change, an issue particularly important to younger generations, what steps in the Harris campaign are being taken to push for actionable environmental policies?
Whitmer: One of the things we did here in Michigan is set an attainable but aggressive goal for carbon neutrality. We’re making progress towards that, and we’re seeing with the onshoring of supply chains around batteries and chips [which] are ways to make our lives more efficient and address climate change. That’s precisely why we are going to replicate what we’ve done on the state level and do it on a national level. We need leaders like Rivet, Kamala Harris, and Tim Walz to be at the helm of this work.
Rivet: I had a bill in one of the packages of bills [revolving around climate change] that we moved with discipline and urgency — which I promised when I was running for the state senate. We set the standard across the country, but with the way that we did it, it does not increase electric rates, right? We are not placing that burden on economically stressed families…For me, we have to address climate change, and we have to do it in a way that doesn’t increase expenses for our families right now.
