Gov. Jennifer Granholm

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As governor you've paid a pretty unusual degree of attention to cities. Why did you decide to take that approach?

We have taken on those issues as a cabinet, and sort of structured our processes around them. Cities of Promise and Cool Cities are sort of the flip side to one another. Cities of Promise is targeting the cities of highest poverty. What we're doing is triaging the existing resources that we have to really focus on that community based on what that community has told us. For example, in Flint, they said that they really wanted assistance with blight removal, so we asked our Michigan State Housing Development Authority, within the guidelines that it has, to dedicate money specifically to removing blighted homes. So we had $25 million now parceled out to cities to specifically remove blight.

Cool Cities is really kind of fun because these communities across the state, no matter where they are, they vie for this designation. It's really a very little amount of money, but they're all really excited about it. The people who get the designation are the ones with the best plan who show the greatest potential for community involvement as well as creating something dynamic in the city. So they all present these plans, and they have a big conference, and they're all excited about having been designated as a "Cool City Neighborhood in Progress." It's just a way to configure our cabinet around this goal of invigorating our cities.

What's the most important lesson you learned in your first term?

This is a personal lesson. I'm a naturally impatient person, but I probably assume too much. I probably gave too much time to the legislature in getting them to agree with me on the initiatives that we took on. In fact, in the first term, because I had a legislature that was in opposition to me — I'm a Democrat, they were a Republican legislature — we made a lot of decisions about what we could do on the executive side without needing to go to the legislature. However, some of the biggest and most significant structural changes did need to have legislative input. I would have gone after those structural changes earlier.

Have you come any closer to making a decision about whom to support in the upcoming presidential election? What are you looking for in a president?

I'm looking for a president who's going to support the industrial Midwest. I want to see a president who's got a manufacturing agenda, that will help our manufacturers. And that means fair trade. That means enforcing the trade agreements that we enter into. That means making sure that we are not closing our eyes to the theft of intellectual property by some of our trading partners, and making sure some of our trading partners are as aggressive as we are in environmental standards. You fly to China, and there's a big brown cloud over the top. People have to wear gas masks. That's externalizing the costs of doing business, that's why it's so cheap for people to locate there. That makes it hard for us, and I want to hear somebody talking about it. I want to hear a presidential candidate who will stand up for our businesses in this country by having us enter into an enforced agreement that will be fair.

Second, I want to see a presidential candidate talk about the infrastructure for alternative energy. If our manufacturers are making flex-fuel vehicles, you'd better believe we want people to be able to access that ethanol. That means you have to have pumps in stations around the country, and the infrastructure has to exist for that green agenda to occur.

Third, I want to hear people talking about universal health care. So the presidential candidate that I support is going to say, "It's not just a moral issue any more, it's an economic issue, for our manufacturers, and our businesses who have to compete with Sweden, who have to compete with Germany, where they're providing health care." That is a problem for us.

And the Great Lakes, I need to say one other thing. We need a huge infrastructure initiative to separate the sewers so that we can protect our great lakes, and we need a federal partner who's going to step up. So the quality and the quantity of our Great Lakes and protecting these blue jewels that surround us is a critical presidential requirement for who I support. We've got huge restoration issues. The current administration has talked about Great Lakes restoration. They did this big thing in Chicago that I went to saying they were going to invest in Great Lakes restoration. We haven't seen a dime of it yet. There's an awful lot of municipal waste that's being discharged because of sewer overflow into the Great Lakes right now.

Michigan is obviously in a great period of transition. Where do you see the state in five years?

I completely see us as having established ourselves as the leader in alternative energy and renewable energy solutions for this country, having replaced, if not all, then a good number of the jobs that have been lost in the manufacturing sector with alternative energy and support for alternative energy solutions. For example, right now, the country and the world need a producer of wind turbines. Michigan can be the place where that happens, because we've got the infrastructure for it.

I see us as having doubled the number of college graduates in our state. I see us as having reversed the trend of exodus in cities. I also see us as having demonstrated how a state can have universal health care, because I want that to be a big initiative that we are focused on as well. Those four policy items are critical in terms of transforming Michigan's economy.

And what about yourself? Where do you see yourself in five years?

I honestly don't know. I do know that the transformation of Michigan's obviously not about me, but I have an ego, too. And I'm not going to be governor over a state that's in decline. I intend to preside over the transformation of Michigan and set it on the right path. So that's all I'm focused on: How we're going to be able to turn this state around in the 3.4 years I have left.

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