Small Business Owner Launches Bid Against Whitmer, Says She’s Responsible For ‘People Losing Their Livelihoods’

A small business owner and chiropractor who made a name for himself by launching an online tirade against Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s restrictive lockdown measures announced Wednesday he would be seeking the Republican nomination for governor.

“Like President Trump, I’m not a politician and I’ve never run for office before,” Garrett Soldano said in a statement obtained by the Daily Caller. “Michigan needs a Governor who will restore the freedoms that Gretchen Whitmer has stripped away from all of us.”

Soldano first made waves in April of 2020, starting a Facebook group called “Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine” in protest of Whitmer’s lockdown restrictions. The group amassed a following of nearly 400,000 individuals before it was shut down by the site, according to The Center Square.

Soldano then launched an organization called “Stand Up Michigan” again in protest of Whitmer’s lockdown policies.

Soldano’s campaign released a documentary highlighting the stories of Michigan residents affected by the lockdown measures.

“We need to re-open Michigan and start the recovery by giving people their lives back,” Soldano said. “This pandemic is real and has impacted all of us, but Governor Whitmer is responsible for the shuttering of businesses, thousands of kids falling behind in school, and people losing their livelihoods all in the name of a political power grab.”

Soldano said Whitmer exploited “a health crisis to gain unprecedented power” and “ignored all checks and balances and empowered bureaucrats to destroy innocent lives.”

Michigan is currently experiencing a spike in new coronavirus cases, with federal officials advising the state to re-implement lockdown measures instead of sending more vaccine doses to the state.

Whitmer enacted some of the nation’s toughest lockdown measures, shuttering businesses, schools and gatherings. Whitmer even declared that a number of home-improvement and gardening items, including fruit and vegetable seeds, were “non-essential.”

I didn’t believe this at first, but Whitmer’s order does indeed require stores to shut down their gardening and planting sections. https://t.co/aV7AOigtQp

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) April 10, 2020

Protesters stormed the state capitol over the restrictions, with some protesters comparing her to “Adolf Hitler” while Republicans lawmakers threatened to sue over her executive orders.

Protesters also went to Whitmer’s house to protect the restrictions.