By Paul Egan and David Jesse

Detroit Free Press

LANSING, Mich. —Democrat Gretchen Whitmer defeated Republican Bill Schuette Tuesday as Michigan voters turned out in large numbers to elect a new governor to lead the state for the next four years.

The Associated Press called the race for Whitmer about 10 p.m. as partial returns showed her leading by tens of thousands of votes.

Whitmer, the former state Senate minority leader from East Lansing, consistently led Schuette, the attorney general and veteran politician from Midland, in opinion polls of voters in one of the most expensive and hard-fought campaigns in Michigan history.

Whitmer and Schuette competed to succeed Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who is completing his second term and couldn’t seek a third because of term limits.

Whitmer’s campaign was buoyed by voters — especially women — angered and energized by the results of the 2016 election and their dislike of President Donald Trump. She said she could work across party lines and pledged to protect and build on Michigan’s expansion of Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act, which she worked with Snyder to get through the Republican-controlled Legislature. Whitmer also pledged to introduce universal pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds while increasing funding for schools and stopping the expansion of for-profit charter schools. And —most of all —she pledged to “fix the damn roads.”

Schuette ran on promises of personal income tax cuts and more job growth and portrayed the choice as one between continued economic recovery or a return to what he called the “lost decade” of the 2000s under Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat. Schuette’s endorsement from Trump helped him win a vigorous four-way Republican primary to secure the nomination. Schuette invoked the president’s name much less frequently in the general election campaign, but took a page from Trump’s national playbook late in the campaign as he continued to trail in the polls.