The new congressman from the 3rd District is Justin Amash, a Republican who succeeded retiring GOP Rep Vernon Ehlers in the 2010 election. Amash was born in Grand Rapids in 1980, the son of a wealthy Palestinian tool importer who immigrated to the United States with the sponsorship of a Christian church. He began high school at the time of the Republican tidal wave of 1994, and graduated as class valedictorian. He then went on to graduate magna cum laude with a degree in economics from the University of Michigan and earned a degree from its law school in 2005. He counts himself as an admirer of both the 19th-century author Frederic Bastiat, who argued against taxing people to pay for schools or roads, and the 20th-century writer Friedrich Hayek, a favorite of the tea party movement who strongly opposed government intervention in the economy. Amash kept Hayek’s portrait on the wall of his congressional campaign offices. Read More

The new congressman from the 3rd District is Justin Amash, a Republican who succeeded retiring GOP Rep Vernon Ehlers in the 2010 election. Amash was born in Grand Rapids in 1980, the son of a wealthy Palestinian tool importer who immigrated to the United States with the sponsorship of a Christian church. He began high school at the time of the Republican tidal wave of 1994, and graduated as class valedictorian. He then went on to graduate magna cum laude with a degree in economics from the University of Michigan and earned a degree from its law school in 2005. He counts himself as an admirer of both the 19th-century author Frederic Bastiat, who argued against taxing people to pay for schools or roads, and the 20th-century writer Friedrich Hayek, a favorite of the tea party movement who strongly opposed government intervention in the economy. Amash kept Hayek’s portrait on the wall of his congressional campaign offices.

After graduating from college, he became a consultant to his family’s tool-import business. He also served as a corporate lawyer for a year before running for a House seat in the Michigan Legislature in 2008. As a legislator, Amash fought to eliminate state taxes on businesses. A proponent of states’ rights, he proposed an amendment to the state constitution that would prevent the implementation of President Barack Obama’s health care law. The Grand Rapids Press reported in July 2010 that Amash was the only “no” vote on 59 bills in his first term, including measures toughening penalties for human trafficking and allowing military members to get out of cell-phone contracts if deployed overseas. He said he refuses to vote in favor of bills that he has not had the chance to read.

Amash entered the 3rd District race, he said, because he was fed up with eight-term incumbent Ehlers’s moderate voting record. But then, Ehlers announced his retirement. That opened the door for other Republican candidates, including former Kent County Commissioner Steve Heacock, whom Ehlers personally asked to run. In the primary race, Amash out-raised both Heacock and state Sen. Bill Hardiman, and he also won the backing of the anti-tax group Club for Growth. He won the August primary, getting 40% of the vote to Heacock’s 26% and Hardiman’s 24%.

His victory set up a general election race against Democratic lawyer Pat Miles, a former Harvard Law School classmate of Obama’s. Miles accused Amash of exporting jobs to China through his ownership of Dynamic Source International, a Chinese company that supplies industrial tools to his father’s tool-import business. “Instead of making American-made products made by American workers, Justin Amash has chosen Chinese workers to make products, which he then sells in America,” Miles campaign manager Lonny Paris told The Press. To dispel concerns he might be too liberal for the district, Miles said in October that he would not back liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi to remain House speaker if his party retained control of the House in 2010.

Amash held a lead in fundraising and a small lead in the polls through October. In his ads, he accused Miles of supporting taxpayer-funded abortions because he backed the Democrats’ health care overhaul. Amash got a boost when Time magazine named him to its recent “40 under 40” list of civic leaders. He won 60% of the vote to 37% for Miles. Amash is one of two Arab-Americans in the 2010 class. The other is Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y.