The 2018 Michigan gubernatorial race has started and the finish line is less than seven months away. The Democratic primary will take place on Aug., whereas its Republican counterpart will take place a day later. The winner of the general election, on Nov. 6, will replace Rick Snyder as Governor of Michigan.

That means that, if you are eligible to vote, you still have time to inform yourself on who is running. To ease the strenuous endeavor of researching each candidate, here is a list of the main contenders, their background (political and general), and their main issues:

Bill Schuette (Republican)

Schuette is the 53rd and current Attorney General for Michigan. He formed the Michigan Commission on Human Trafficking and engineered a plan to fund the testing of thousands of DNA evidence boxes in order to track sexual assault predators. To strengthen our public safety, Schuette put 1,000 new cops on the streets of Michigan.

Schuette is focused on increasing vocational training opportunities for skilled trades after high school. He wants to increase the literacy rates for students up to third grade and make a comeback from today’s staggeringly low student literacy rate for Michigan’s third graders.

To fight the opioid epidemic, he would like to limit the number of opioid prescriptions given to patients. He wants to implement a DNA testing system to track sexual-assault offenders and serve justice for sexual-assault victims. Schuette is also against the hiked income taxes for the highest earners in the state, a policy put forward initially by former-Michigan-governor Jennifer Granholm.

Schuette is a firm believer in the right to bear arms, and promises to protect Michiganders’ second amendment rights. His actions to protect these rights have earned him financial support from the NRA. He supports rights for the unborn and is against implementing laws that make abortions legal.

Schuette garnered a high-profile shout-out when President Donald Trump endorsed Schuette in his run for state governor through a tweet on Sept. 16, 2017:

Attorney General Bill Schuette will be a fantastic Governor for the great State of Michigan. I am bringing back your jobs and Bill will help

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2017

Schuette has been criticized for taking stands on issues only to gain support from far-right constituents. For example, Schuette went against incumbent governor Rick Snyder when he opposed raising the state sales tax to fix roads. Conservative column writers for the Detroit Free Press questioned the decision as a way to win support from Tea Party constituents.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (Democrat)

El-Sayed is a University of Michigan alumnus; he wore their blue-and-maize jersey as a lacrosse player and graduated with a bachelor’s degree. He went on to be a doctorate Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, then finishing out his schooling at Columbia University for a medical degree.

El-Sayed became the youngest health official of a major American city at 30 years old when Detroit’s mayor, Mike Duggan, appointed El-Sayed as Health Officer and Executive director of the Detroit Health Department. He helped rebuild the department after it was privatized from Detroit filing for bankruptcy. He used his power as Health Officer to ensure that kids attending Detroit schools and daycares were drinking lead-free water.

As governor, El-Sayed wants make marijuana legal for recreational use. He then plans to use the tax dollars generated from marijuana sales to rebuild infrastructure and stimulate public education. He wants to make sure Michigan students get a good education from the bottom up; El-Sayed wants to fund and implement universal pre-K education, as well as make public colleges free for families earning under 150 thousand dollars.

El-Sayed is determined to fight socioeconomic and racial inequality. He believes that the legalization of marijuana will help end the mass incarceration of people committing non-violent crimes. He supports a woman’s right to choose and is in favor of implementing laws that guarantee women safe abortions. As well, El-Sayed is in favor of a statewide single-payer healthcare system. He wants to fight the opioid epidemic through mental health reform for those addicted to opioids. El-Sayed is against gerrymandering, and wants to eradicate the redrawing of electoral districts to serve political interests.

Some believe that El-Sayed is not eligible to be governor as he registered to vote for the 2012 presidential elections in New York. One qualification to become the governor of Michigan is to be a registered elector in the state for four years in a row. After living in New York City as a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, El-Sayed moved back to Ann Arbor and re-registered as a voter in the state of Michigan in 2016.

Five out of six election lawyers from Michigan agree that there is no ambiguity surrounding his eligibility; he and his wife have owned an apartment in Ann Arbor since 2008, a proof of their continuous residency in Michigan.

Shri Thanedar (Democrat)

Unlike the rest of the candidates on this list, Thanedar was not born in this country. He grew up in Belgaum, located in South Western India. When his father retired at 55, he took the responsibility of supporting his family financially, working odd jobs starting at age 14. At the same time, he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of Bombay. His interest in chemistry led him to pursue a master’s program there.

Thanedar moved to the United States in 1979 to further his education. He earned a PhD in polymer chemistry from the University of Akron before moving to Ann Arbor, where he was a postdoctoral scholar. Thanedar then started to work for a small chemical services company in St. Louis, Missouri, working night-shifts and weekends for $15 an hour. A year later, he took out a loan to buy the company and grew the small firm from three employees with $150 thousand in revenue (in 2000) to 160 employees and $16 million in revenue within 15 years.

Now, Thanedar wishes to give back to the state that helped him be successful. As governor, Thanedar wants to boost Michigan’s K-through-12 education investment, especially in areas with a high dropout rate. To insure that students will be ready for life after high school, Thanedar wants to make sure that more Michigan residents have either college degrees or vocational training under their belt. He wants to cut the state administered M-STEP testing and switch to a Northwest Evaluation Assessment (NWEA) administered assessment that measures students by their growth, not their achievements.

Thanedar wants to ensure that college campuses are a safe place and place legal liability for universities to inform the police on sexual assault cases. He wants to ensure government transparency through supporting a federal Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) that would ensure that public officials disclose all info and documents pertaining to the U.S. government.

Thanedar opposes a repeal of Obamacare and wants to implement universal healthcare coverage for kids under 18 through strengthening the state’s Healthy Kids program. He wants to call on Washington to to provide an additional 50,000 employment-based visas for entrepreneurs and individuals skilled in STEM. Additionally, as governor, Thanedar has promised to pass legislation that would allow law enforcement to temporarily confiscate guns from those who may pose an immediate risk to themselves or others.

Although Thanedar considers himself the “Most progressive Democrat running for governor,” he did not know what he would run as until weeks before he announced his candidacy. Joe DiSano, owner of the consulting firm DiSano Strategies, told The Intercept in an interview that he did not know what party to run as until February 2017. He initially considered running as an independent before DiSano ran the numbers, showing Thanedar that he would not win as an independent.

Thanedar even met with a Republican consultant, Adrian Hemond, to discuss whether he should run as a Republican. Thanedar told him that he did not care what party he would run as; whichever party that would support him would be the one he would run as.

Gretchen Whitmer (Democrat)

Whitmer was born in 1971 in Lansing, Michigan, where she grew up and went to college years later. She graduated from Michigan State University (MSU) in 1993 with a bachelor’s in communications, then continued on her track at MSU-Detroit towards a JD degree. She is a former Democratic member of the Michigan Senate and Senate Democratic Leader. Before announcing to run for Governor of Michigan, Whitmer was the Ingham County Prosecutor.

As governor, Whitmer wants to incentivize stopping the spread of invasive species, such as Asian carp and lampreys, into the Great Lakes. She wants to shut down line 5, an oil pipeline that runs right under the Mackinac Bridge. To regulate the pollution we emit into Michigan’s environment, Whitmer will hire impartial experts to oversee and regulate emission standards.

Whitmer wants to expand the Soo Locks, and with it, our economy; on average, $500.4 billion dollars worth of goods flow in and out of the Soo Locks. To help Michigan shift into the modern tech age, Whitmer wants to expand broadband internet to all Michigan communities. As well, she wants to expand rehabilitation programs for those addicted to opioids. She believes in treating those affected, not sending them to jail.

Whitmer believes in equality amongst people of all backgrounds. She will make sure to make the state government smarter and more effective by empowering a diverse set of voices in her cabinet and throughout all levels of the state government.

Whitmer faces criticism for declining to file sexual assault charges against Dr. Larry Nassar as Ingham County Prosecutor. A former MSU doctor, Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in prison for child pornography crimes in January 2018. He was also accusations of sexual assault from multiple patients.