Garlin Gilchrist

Garlin Gilchrist II (born September 25, 1982) is an American politician and engineer serving as the 64th lieutenant governor of Michigan since 2019 under Governor Gretchen Whitmer. A member of the Democratic Party, he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2026 Michigan gubernatorial election.

Early life and education

Gilchrist was born in Detroit. In 1989, his family moved to Farmington, Michigan. His mother worked at General Motors for 32 years, and his father worked in defense contract management for the United States Department of Defense.

Gilchrist earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with majors in computer science and computer engineering from the University of Michigan in 2005.

Career

Gilchrist moved to Redmond, Washington, and worked for Microsoft for four years as a software engineer, where he helped build SharePoint. He later worked as a community organizer and director of new media for the Center for Community Change, now known as Community Change. Later, Gilchrist worked for MoveOn.org in Washington, D.C., as national campaign director.

In July 2014, Gilchrist moved back to Detroit and entered a position for the city government under chief information officer Beth Niblock as the director of innovation and emerging technology. He created the Improve Detroit smartphone app that allows residents to report issues to the city. He served as founding executive director of the Center for Social Media Responsibility, within the University of Michigan School of Information, from the University of Michigan Detroit Center.

In 2017, Gilchrist ran for Detroit City Clerk against incumbent Janice Winfrey but lost by 1,482 votes.

Gretchen Whitmer selected Gilchrist as her running mate in the 2018 Michigan gubernatorial election. The pair defeated the Republican ticket of Bill Schuette and Lisa Posthumus Lyons. With Whitmer's victory, Gilchrist became the first African-American to serve as the lieutenant governor of Michigan as well as the first born in the 1980s. He took office on January 1, 2019.

Gilchrist was selected as a Community Change Champion in Community Organizing in 2019 for his work to advance social and racial justice in the United States.

On March 11, 2025, Gilchrist announced his candidacy for the 2026 Michigan gubernatorial election.

Lieutenant Governor of Michigan

Gretchen Whitmer selected Gilchrist as her running mate in the 2018 Michigan gubernatorial election. The pair defeated the Republican ticket of Bill Schuette and Lisa Posthumus Lyons. With Whitmer's victory, Gilchrist became the first African American to serve as the lieutenant governor of Michigan, as well as the first born in the 1980s. He took office on January 1, 2019.

Gilchrist was named a vice-chair of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

On November 8, 2022, Whitmer and Gilchrist were re-elected by a wide margin in 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election, defeating the Republican ticket of Tudor Dixon and Shane Hernandez.

Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities

On April 9, 2020, Whitmer named Gilchrist as the chair of a statewide task force examining racial disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic. Gilchrist, later, claimed victory in reducing the racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths. According to a March 2021 study from the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the Michigan Coronavirus Racial Disparities Task Force “paved the way” for tacking racial inequities and reduced COVID-19 cases and mortality among Black residents. The study further remarked that the task force helped reduce the average number of cases for Black residents “from 176 per million...per day in March 2020 to 59 per million...per day in October 2020.”

Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration

Gilchrist served as co-chair of the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration, a bipartisan working group of officeholders, law enforcement officials, and stakeholders that Governor Whitmer assembled in 2019 to examine the growing jail populations, which had tripled in 30 years, despite historically low crime rates. The group held over a dozen meetings with the public and stakeholders across Michigan in “one of the state's largest bipartisan collaborations on criminal justice reform to date.” The task force issued a final report with 18 recommendations, many of which included a large package of dozens of bipartisan criminal justice reform bills that passed and became law in January 2021.

The “historic” bipartisan package was dubbed “a model for state-level policy change affecting local jail populations” by Pew Charitable Trusts.

Republican leaders of both legislative chambers praised the bipartisan package as an example of "putting people before politics" and "thoughtful and purposeful policies built on the consensus and compromise of a diverse group of stakeholders." The legislation was aimed at protecting public safety, while helping thousands avoid arrest and incarceration for low-level nonviolent offenses. The bipartisan package included bills to:

* Eliminate license suspensions for violations unrelated to dangerous driving
* Classify traffic misdemeanors as civil violations
* Provide discretion to officers to issue tickets, instead of making arrests for many misdemeanors
* Limit occupational licensing boards’ consideration of applicants’ previous low-level offenses
* Seal juvenile records from public view and create a process to automatically expunge juvenile records for those who don’t commit future offenses
* Limit the use of warrants for first time failure to appear for low level criminal violations
* Eliminate mandatory minimum prison sentences for violations of driving, environmental and public health state codes

Personal life

Gilchrist and his wife have three children.

Electoral history

See also

* List of minority governors and lieutenant governors in the United States

References

External links

Government website

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gilchrist, Garlin
1982 births
Living people
African-American people in Michigan politics
Computer engineers
Lieutenant governors of Michigan
Michigan Democrats
Politicians from Detroit
University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni
21st-century Michigan politicians
American software engineers
21st-century American engineers
Engineers from Michigan
African-American engineers
21st-century African-American businesspeople
21st-century American businesspeople
Businesspeople from Michigan
People from Farmington, Michigan
Activists from Michigan
African-American activists
21st-century African-American politicians
20th-century African-American people