Michigan voters overwhelmingly chose women at the ballot box Tuesday, electing women for the first time in state history to all three of the top offices — governor, secretary of state and attorney general.

Debbie Stabenow held onto her U.S. Senate seat and three new female Democratic representatives — Haley Stevens, Elissa Slotkin and Rashida Tlaib — will walk the halls of Congress alongside Debbie Dingell and Brenda Lawrence, both of whom won re-election.

"It’s a big deal," said Shannon Garrett, co-founder of VoteRunLead, a nonprofit organization that trains women to run for office.

"What this tells us is that the Michigan voting public is trusting women’s leadership. In the areas where they had an actual choice, voters were choosing women. There is a shift happening in how we trust women to lead."

That's not all.

Voters also picked women for the state Supreme Court — incumbent Elizabeth Clement and newcomer Megan Cavanagh both won.

And in the state House of Representatives, women nabbed at least eight more seats than they held last term, upping their ranks from 33 to 41.

In the state Senate, women nearly tripled the number of seats they hold — from 4 to 11.

Katie Gritzinger, a 27-year-old Royal Oak resident, said she felt a sense of urgency in 2018 and voted for Democrats — and women — up and down the ballot.

“I really wanted to see a woman governor again. I actually voted for 17 women,” she said. “It felt really, really good.”

What appears to have driven a record number of women to run for office not just in Michigan, but nationally, is backlash from the 2016 presidential election, said Kira Sanbonmatsu, a professor and senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

"Some of the interest came right after Election Day," Sanbonmatsu said. "We saw unprecedented mobilization of women in the Women's March. I think what occurred is a combination of factors, but certainly either the victory of Trump or the defeat of (Hillary) Clinton or both seems to have motivated a lot of women to become active and to actually decide to run for office.

"I don’t know what percentage of women’s candidacies can be explained by the 2016 election, but we are certainly in an unprecedented situation."

While there was a surge among women running for office not only in Michigan, but nationally, Sanbonmatsu said what's notable is that most of the new female candidates are Democrats.

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"In some ways it’s hard to disentangle the blue wave from the pink wave," she said. "We are seeing new Republican women running, but we’re just not seeing the numbers that we are on the Democratic side."

Garrett agreed that dissatisfaction with Trump's leadership nudged some women to run for office in the midterms, but other factors also played into the boom of female candidates.

"It was having Hillary (Clinton) run and seeing a woman get so close to breaking that barrier with putting a woman in the White House," she said. "It was Trump. It was seeing the way that women have been treated, and all of these movements from Black Lives Matter to the #MeToo movement, to policy decisions coming out of Washington and out of Lansing. It culminated in this moment of time when women have said, ‘Enough. I’m ready.’

"Women finally saw for themselves that maybe I’m the one I’ve been waiting for," Garrett said. "They thought, if I keep waiting for the perfect candidate or candidates who I feel represent my voice, maybe it’s me. Maybe I should be the one to run.' "

In previous years, Garrett said women would come to training sessions with VoteRunLead but then wait a few years before trying a run for office.

"This year, they didn’t wait," she said. "They came and found us. ... They almost immediately after the 2016 presidential (election), stood up and said, 'I’m running.' "

Haley Stevens, a digital manufacturing executive from Rochester Hills, was among the first-time female candidates to run this year.

She won her seat in the 11th Congressional District against another first-time female candidate, Lena Epstein, a Republican from Birmingham.

On Election Day, Stevens met canvassers inside a vacant storefront at a Novi strip mall. She hugged some of her supporters as they returned cold and wet from knocking on doors in the blustery wind and rain.

"I got into this race really early for a reason," she told supporters. "And that's because we had to move this mountain and because something was happening in this country and people were asking for something better from our government.

"We need to stand up for health care ... for every single person, unapologetically. ... Something special is happening in Michigan. Change is coming once again."

Julie Bartholomew of Birmingham was motivated for the first time after the 2016 election to get involved in campaigning.

On Tuesday, she collected campaign materials and got a map of a neighborhood to canvass on behalf of Stevens. "I have never done this before," she said Tuesday. "It was an amazing grassroots effort to get her message out. Her message is strong and powerful and she's charismatic and authentic and I've never met somebody like Haley."

Working on the campaign, Bartholomew said, "made me feel like we were doing something, that we were part of something bigger than ourselves. That took the fear away ... the fear of rights being taken away, and of people making decisions that I don't feel represent me.

"I think that a lot rests on this election. What I do believe is that the momentum demonstrates that we're waking up and ... people understand their vote counts. I love it that (Stevens) is a woman and she fits. ... She's what we need in Washington to help get things back on track, to make sure our district's interests are covered, to make sure pre-existing conditions are something we don't lose, that we don't lose health care, women's rights, our schools. Everything she cares about, I care about. So I'm here to make sure that other people hear that, too."

In Oxford, Debbie Holland was cold calling voters Tuesday evening, trying to persuade them in the final two hours before the polls closed to hurry out to vote in support of Elissa Slotkin, the democratic candidate for the eighth Congressional District.

Health care is a pivotal issue for her. Holland lost her job in August because she couldn't work while recovering from surgeries to correct a congenital heart defect.

"My COBRA payments were over 50 percent of my income," she said. "So I had to let it go."

She is now uninsured and has a pre-existing health condition.

"I want somebody in office who is going to protect our health care," she said. "My voice can make a difference. If there was 1 million of us, can you imagine what we could do? I decided to take my anger and make a difference."

Holland joined a group of women at the Oxford home of Jody and Samantha LaMacchia, organizers of the North Oakland Women Making a Difference group, on Election Night.

Mindy Denninger was there, too. She ran for the first time as a Democrat this year, hoping to nab a seat in the state House's 46th District, but ultimately lost.

She rolled her eyes when she spoke about the way women are grabbing headlines as part of a trend in this election.

"I kind of get a little tired of hearing, 'Oh, look at all these women running,' " she said. "In my past, I was an automotive engineer. I spent my whole career around men, being the girl, the different one. Now, to be talked about again as a novelty, it's like no. Let's not talk about that."

Instead, she said, the conversation should be about how America is finally realizing that it gets a better pool of candidates when diverse people are encouraged to run.

"There's so much more depth going on here. That's what I think is a better story," Denninger said. "It's widening the talent pool. It's changing the kinds of people who run, and it's making the men realize that they don't get to be bullies and have everything they ever wanted. That's the message we're sending.

"When you spread it out to women, to young people, to everybody else, you're not just getting people of different colors, different genders, different ages, you're getting better people. And I think that's what we should be talking about. Not, 'oh, look, it's a girl.' "

Denninger said she's not likely to try again. Campaigning was difficult for her.

"There were lots of parts I was uncomfortable with — public speaking, door knocking, Website design, financial stuff," she said. "I'm not the first person like me to run but it's too hard on me and my life and my family."

She may be the exception, said Mark Grebner of Practical Political Consulting. Usually, once people are motivated to take political action, they tend to remained committed for life.

"Hundreds of thousands of people have gotten politicized in this election and now see themselves as school board, county commission, town supervisor, judge material," he said. "And they’ll gradually go up the food chain. One of them will be president eventually, and she’ll say she got politicized by Donald Trump."

Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her @kristenshamus on Twitter. Free Press staff writer Kathleen Gray contributed to this report.