The congresswoman from the 10th District is Candice Miller, a Republican elected in 2002. Miller grew up in Macomb County. Her family ran a marina, and Miller was engaged in life on the water from an early age. She was on the crew team in high school, and later was a member of the first all-woman team to sail the prestigious Bayview Mackinac Boat Race, one of the longest fresh water regattas. In 1979, at age 25, she was elected Harrison Township trustee. A year later, she was elected as the youngest and first woman supervisor of the township. Read More

The congresswoman from the 10th District is Candice Miller, a Republican elected in 2002. Miller grew up in Macomb County. Her family ran a marina, and Miller was engaged in life on the water from an early age. She was on the crew team in high school, and later was a member of the first all-woman team to sail the prestigious Bayview Mackinac Boat Race, one of the longest fresh water regattas. In 1979, at age 25, she was elected Harrison Township trustee. A year later, she was elected as the youngest and first woman supervisor of the township.

In 1992, she won an upset bid to become Macomb County treasurer. And two years later, she defeated 24-year incumbent Richard Austin to become the Michigan secretary of state, the first woman to hold the post. Prevented from running for re-election by term limits, Miller was the favorite to succeed Democratic Rep. David Bonior, who ran for governor in 2002, in a district that had been redrawn to make it more Republican. Still, Democrats were enthusiastic about Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga, who had been in office for 20 years. But Marlinga could not keep pace with Miller’s fundraising. He also called himself a “Hubert Humphrey Democrat”—not a big advantage in the redrawn 10th—while Miller called herself a “George W. Bush Republican.” She opposed abortion rights, supported free trade agreements, and favored making the Bush tax cuts permanent—all positions opposite of Marlinga’s. Both candidates supported gun rights. Citing her daughter’s membership in the United Auto Workers, Miller reached out to unions and was endorsed by the Teamsters, but not the AFL-CIO. She won handily, 63%-36%, carrying Macomb County 61%-37%. She has been re-elected easily ever since.

In the House, Miller has a moderate-to-conservative voting record. She supported the 2007 minimum wage increase and the 2009 expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. She and Ohio Democrat Betty Sutton co-sponsored the bill creating the popular 2009 “Cash for Clunkers” program in which the government gave people money for trading in old cars for new fuel-efficient models. She embraced her party’s call for fiscal responsibility in 2010, abandoning her practice of seeking earmarks for her district.

In 2011, she became the chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, giving her a new platform for her tough illegal immigration stance. She is the sponsor of a proposed constitutional amendment to exclude illegal aliens from the decennial congressional reapportionment process, calling it “absolutely outrageous” that non-citizens have “a profound impact on our political system.” She also promised to address the U.S.-Canadian border in 2011 after a Government Accountability Office report said that just 32 miles of that 4,000-mile span has adequate security. Miller takes seriously her district’s proximity to the natural assets of the Great Lakes, and has warned that the lakes can’t be relied on “to solve the nation’s water problems.”

Miller is also preoccupied with issues that affect auto manufacturing, a mainstay of her state’s economy. She has criticized advocates of tougher fuel-efficiency standards for seeking “to bankrupt Detroit.” In 2009, she lobbied to keep open a Chrysler plant that employs 1,400 in Sterling Heights in her district after the company announced plans to close it while maintaining a plant in Mexico with similar production abilities. Chrysler decided to keep it open after securing business tax credits of $1.3 billion from the state.

In her congressional career, Miller had one encounter with the House Ethics Committee. The panel admonished her for attempting to influence the vote of Republican Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan in 2003, when he opposed a major Republican initiative to create a prescription drug bill in Medicare. The committee concluded that Miller tried to intimidate Smith to vote for the legislation. Miller told the Detroit Free Press: “If a black belt can be intimidated by an overweight, middle-age woman, that’s too bad.”

In 2008, Miller chaired recruitment for the National Republican Congressional Committee in what turned out to be a dismal election year for her party. Michigan Republicans are likely to protect her from massive changes stemming from post-2010 census redistricting, when Michigan will lose a House seat.