“He better pick a black woman. If he picks Gretchen, he’ll lose Michigan,” said Virgie Rollins, chair of the Democratic National Committee Black Caucus, who hosted Biden at her home before his Michigan primary win this spring.

“There are a lot of Black people mad at her [Whitmer] in this state,” Rollins told POLITICO, citing her record on Flint’s lead water crisis and education policy, particularly in Detroit.

As Biden prepares to announce his choice this week, Black women activists and operatives have launched an eleventh-hour campaign to pressure him. In a pair of open letters Monday and last week, they made the case that he needs strong African American turnout in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to win…

“I don’t want to bash Whitmer, but I could not stand by quietly while we were putting these women, these Black women, out there to take all these hits,” Pamela Pugh, the elected vice president of the Michigan State Board of Education, told POLITICO.