Jennifer Mulhern Granholm (born February 5, 1959) is a Canadian-born American politician who was the 16th United States secretary of energy from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the 47th governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011 and as the 51st attorney general of Michigan from 1999 to 2003, the first woman to hold either office.
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Granholm moved to California at age four. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984 and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1987. She then clerked for Judge Damon Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1991, and was appointed to the Wayne County Corporation Counsel in 1995.
In 1998, Granholm ran for attorney general of Michigan, defeating Republican nominee John Smietanka. She ran for governor of Michigan in 2002 and was elected the state's first female governor. She was re-elected in 2006.
Granholm was a member of the presidential transition team for Barack Obama before he assumed office in 2009. After leaving public office, Granholm took a position at the UC Berkeley and, with her husband Daniel Mulhern, wrote A Governor's Story: The Fight for Jobs and America's Future, released in 2011. She became host of The War Room with Jennifer Granholm. In 2017, she was hired as a CNN political contributor.
After President-elect Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate Granholm to head the United States Department of Energy in 2020, she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2021. After serving a full term as secretary, she joined DGA Group.
Granholm was born February 5, 1959, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to Shirley Alfreda (née Dowden) and Victor Ivar Granholm, both bank tellers. Granholm's maternal grandparents came from Ireland and Newfoundland, respectively. Her paternal grandfather was Hugo "Anders" Granholm, who immigrated to Penny, British Columbia, Canada, in the late 1920s from Robertsfors, Sweden, where his father was the mayor. The former Minister for Enterprise and Energy and former deputy prime minister of Sweden, Maud Olofsson, lives in Robertsfors, and when the two met in Sweden, the media revealed that Olofsson's husband is a relative of Granholm. Her paternal grandmother was Judith Olivia Henriette (Solstad) Granholm, an emigrant from Gjerstad in Southern Norway. She came with the ship SS Bergensfjord from Oslo to Halifax, and from there she took the railway to Penny, British Columbia, where her uncles and several others had established a small logging village.
Granholm's family immigrated to California when she was four years old. She grew up in Anaheim, San Jose, and San Carlos. Granholm attended Ida Price Junior High and Del Mar High School before graduating from San Carlos High School in 1977 and won the Miss San Carlos beauty pageant. As a young adult, she attempted to launch a Hollywood acting career but abandoned her efforts at age 21. In 1978, she appeared on The Dating Game, and held jobs as a tour guide at Universal Studios and in customer service at the Los Angeles Times and was the first female tour guide at Marine World/Africa USA in Redwood City, piloting boats with 25 tourists aboard.
In 1980, at age 21, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and worked for John B. Anderson's campaign for president of the United States as an Independent in the 1980 election. She then enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, the first person in her family to attend college. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated in 1984 with a B.A. in political science and French. During a year in France, she helped to smuggle clothes and medical supplies to Jewish people in the Soviet Union and became involved in the anti-apartheid movement. She then earned a Juris Doctor degree at Harvard University, also with honors, in 1987. At Harvard Law School, Granholm served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Granholm clerked for Judge Damon Keith, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, from 1987 to 1988. She also worked for the Michael Dukakis 1988 presidential campaign. After working as an attorney in the Wayne County executive office from 1989 to 1991, Granholm became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1991. She helped to prosecute drug dealers, gang members and child pornographers, sued the state and fought against credit card fraud. Of the 154 people Granholm tried, 151 were convicted. In 1995, she was appointed as Corporation Counsel for Wayne County, the youngest person to hold the position. Granholm defended the county against lawsuits, sued the state over road taxes, and fought to uphold environmental laws.
Michigan Attorney General (1999–2003)
After thirty-seven years in office, Democratic Attorney General Frank J. Kelley chose not to run for a 10th term in 1998 and Granholm entered the race to succeed him. Unopposed for the Democratic nomination, she faced Republican John Smietanka, the 1994 nominee and former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, in the general election. The campaign began as a relatively friendly one, with both agreeing that they wanted to expand the Internet Crimes Unit, start neighborhood-based crime-fighting programmes and continue working as a consumer advocate, as Kelley had done.
However, the race turned bitter in mid-September, when Smietanka ran television ads that called Granholm an "inexperienced" and "dangerous" liberal. He also tried to link Granholm to Democratic gubernatorial nominee Geoffrey Fieger's crime plan, which called for greater emphasis on rehabilitation for non-violent criminals and shortening their prison terms. Granholm, who had disavowed Fieger's crime plan the day it was released, said the claim was "a lie, just a lie" and that as attorney general, "you are the person who is to protect the consumer from deceitful ads." Asked what separated her from Smietanka, Granholm replied, "Besides honesty?" Kelley also came to Granholm's defense, starring in an advertisement where he called Smietanka's ads "garbage" and a "con" and accused him of running a "dishonest campaign". For his part, Smietanka was angered by Democratic advertisements that referred to late child support payments he had made and claimed that he had lied about how much of his own money he donated to his campaign.
After a close race, with polls showing the two candidates with virtually identical votes, Granholm defeated Smietanka by 1,557,310 votes (52.09%) to 1,432,604 (47.91%). After Granholm was elected governor in 2002, arguments arose between Smietanka and then-Republican Governor John Engler about who was most responsible for Granholm's meteoric rise in Michigan politics. Smietanka blamed Engler for trying to force him out of the 1998 race in favor of G. Scott Romney, for dredging up the issue of his missed child support payments and for not supporting him more fully after he defeated Romney at the Republican convention. Engler countered that Smietanka was a weak candidate who should have stepped aside for Romney, who would have beaten the inexperienced Granholm; she would then not have had a launch pad for her gubernatorial campaign in 2002.
Granholm was sworn into office on January 1, 1999, becoming the first female attorney general of Michigan. She served a single term, from 1999 to 2003. In office, she continued Kelley's work on protecting citizens and consumers' rights and established Michigan's first High Tech Crime Unit, appointing Terrence Berg as its first chief.
In April 1999, Granholm announced a lawsuit against RVP Development, builders of the Arcadia Bluffs Golf Course, alleging that poor construction of the course had led to illegal discharges of sediment into Lake Michigan from erosion following heavy storms in 1998, which had "turned a ravine into a ravaged gorge". Development company President Richard Postma refused to pay the $425,000 of state fines, saying he had made moves to stop the erosion and accused Granholm of trying to make him "a poster child for her campaign of the future". Granholm responded that his "perception of the political landscape in Michigan is as poor as his ability to construct a golf landscape". After years of negotiations and legal wrangling, the lawsuit was settled in August 2003, with RVP Development agreeing to pay a $125,000 fine.