The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, is warning President Biden’s campaign that President Trump has already won her home state, according to a new report. While she is committed to helping Mr. Biden as much as possible in the lead-up to the November elections, she is concerned that the president’s disastrous performance at the Thursday debate has already sealed his fate in her home state. 

According to Politico, Ms. Whitmer on Friday called Mr. Biden’s campaign chairwoman, Jen O’Malley Dillon, who also managed the president’s successful 2020 bid. The governor told Ms. Dillon in no uncertain terms: she is not trying to replace Mr. Biden as the 2024 presidential nominee, she is not behind the “chatter” about such a possibility, and she would be a passionate surrogate on the campaign trail for Mr. Biden. 

Ms. Whitmer was a finalist to be Mr. Biden’s running mate in 2020, and was seen as a favorite to run in 2024 had Mr. Biden decided to step aside. After winning her reelection by double digits less than two years ago, she remains broadly popular across the state, compared to Mr. Biden whose approval rating has hit historic lows. 

Fears of losing Michigan were already omnipresent in Mr. Biden’s campaign and in the larger Democratic Party because of the war at Gaza. Michigan is home to a sizable Arab-American and Muslim population, which helped the president win the state in 2020, though an impressive campaign by those anti-Israel activists to send “uncommitted” delegates to the convention this year had many fearing that the state was already out of play for 2024. 

Mr. Biden won the state by more than 150,000 votes in 2020, but the uncommitted campaign garnered more than 100,000 votes. Trump has been consistently leading in the polls in Michigan. 

Within three minutes of the presidential debate beginning on Thursday, cell phones began ringing at a Los Angeles watch party attended by Ms. Whitmer and two other governors with potential presidential ambitions: Illinois’ chief executive J.B. Pritzker, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky.

According to CNN, donors and political professionals at the gathering were calling on the three governors to enter the race for the nomination with just over a month to go before the start of the Democratic National Convention.