Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R)

The congressman from the 11th District is Thaddeus McCotter, a Republican elected in 2002. He grew up in Livonia, where his mother was city clerk. He graduated from Detroit’s Catholic Central High School, where he was a first-team all-Catholic football player, and from the University of Detroit and its law school. He was elected to the Wayne County Commission in 1992, at age 27, and became the driving force to change the county’s charter to require a vote of two-thirds of the commission plus 60% of the voters in a referendum to pass a tax increase. In 1998, he was elected to the state Senate, where he became vice chairman of the Senate’s reapportionment committee. He helped design the new 11th District, which included his entire Senate district, and so made himself the early front-runner for the 2002 election. He received encouragement from House Republican leaders and won the primary, 69%-31%. But McCotter did not win the seat without a contest. In the general election, he faced Democrat Kevin Kelley, the Redford Township supervisor. Kelley called himself a “centrist Democrat,” and both candidates supported the Bush tax cuts and authorization of military force in Iraq, and both opposed creating individual investment accounts in Social Security. McCotter defined himself as a conservative who opposed abortion rights and gun control. Kelley supported abortion rights and restrictions on gun ownership. Kelley hoped to benefit from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jennifer Granholm’s local popularity. McCotter raised more money, much of it at a mid-October fundraiser with Bush. His 57%-40% victory was larger than expected.

In the House, McCotter established a moderate-to-conservative voting record, with streaks of independence. He is an avid rock-and-roll fan, with a quirky sense of humor, prone to quoting song lyrics. He has a large poster of Beatles legend John Lennon hanging on the wall in his congressional office. He enjoys playing the guitar, and with four other House members he formed the Second Amendments, a bipartisan rock and country band, which has performed for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2006, he voted “present” on a Republican leadership resolution supporting the war in Iraq and rejecting a timetable for withdrawal. He called the resolution “strategically nebulous, morally obtuse, and woefully inadequate.” In March 2007, he was one of 13 Republicans to vote for House passage of organized labor’s bill to expedite union organization.

McCotter was an early supporter of John Boehner of Ohio for Majority Leader in 2006 and was welcomed into his inner circle. That may have helped him defeat California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa in a November 2006 contest for chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, a rung on the leadership ladder. He has used his leadership position to advocate the idea that Republicans should be less centralized and do a better job of engaging rank-and-file members. He took some innovative steps, such as opening Policy Committee membership to any House Republican who wanted to participate and starting a blog on its website. He skipped the Republican national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September 2008 so that he could continue to lead the Republican protest on the floor—while the House was not in session—of the Democrats’ inaction on energy policy.

In this competitive district, McCotter has been blessed by weak opposition. He has won re-election by unimpressive margins against underfinanced opponents. In 2006, he won 54%-43% against Tony Trupiano, an outspoken syndicated radio talk show host. While Democrats captured two adjacent districts in 2008, attorney Joseph Larkin ran a below-the-radar challenge to McCotter in 2008, and McCotter prevailed 51%-45%. A well-funded, top-tier Democratic opponent might give McCotter a tough race.