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Michigan: Junior Senator Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) Last Updated July 25, 2003
Michigan's junior senator is Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat elected in 2000. Stabenow grew up in the small Outstate town of Clare, where her father was an Oldsmobile dealer and her mother a nurse. She went to Michigan State, where she got a master's degree in social work and made money singing folk songs in coffeehouses. She marched in antiwar rallies and volunteered for George McGovern in 1972, when her then-husband ran an unsuccessful race for Ingham County Commissioner. Provoked when the commission closed a nursing home, she ran for the commission two years later and, at 24, beat an incumbent who referred to her as "that young broad." She was elected to the state House in 1978, at 28, and was elected to the state Senate in 1990. In 1994, while running for governor, she was at the storm center of state politics and policy. In response to Republican Governor John Engler's call for education finance reform, she proposed to zero out the property tax and start over, apparently calculating that he would reject such a drastic tax cut. Instead he accepted her proposal and passed a plan reducing property taxes vastly and increasing the sales tax, which was approved by voters 70%-30% in March 1994. In the August 1994 primary for governor, the major forces in the Democratic Party opposed Stabenow: the Michigan Education Association, the UAW and AFL-CIO. She won 30% of the vote, ahead of Larry Owen's 26% but behind former Congressman Howard Wolpe's 35%. Perhaps it is best she lost; she was chosen as Wolpe's running mate, but the ticket lost to Engler by a 61%-38% margin. Undaunted, Stabenow almost immediately began running for Congress. The 8th District seat, which included Lansing's Democratic Ingham County and heavily Republican Livingston County to the east, was held by Republican Dick Chrysler. For the 1996 race, Stabenow raised more than $1 million in individual contributions, a tribute to her industriousness and the fundraising prowess of the feminist left; overall each spent $1.5 million. On national issues, Stabenow struck a thematic note similar to Bill Clinton, calling for "balancing the budget in a way that does not shift the burden to middle class families," equipping schools with computers, and encouraging job creation by new-tech small businesses. She won impressively, 54%-44%. In the House, Stabenow had a fairly liberal voting record; she was sought out by the moderate Democratic Blue Dogs but did not join. She opposed trade promotion authority and the partial-birth abortion ban. In March 1999 she announced she was running against Senator Spencer Abraham in 2000; the same day Abraham ran full-page ads calling her a liberal. This turned out to be one of the critical races in the 2000 Senate cycle. Abraham, a former state Republican chairman and deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, had been elected in 1994 by a 52%-43% margin over Congressman Bob Carr. The grandson of immigrants from Lebanon, his greatest achievement in the Senate was to squelch proposals to reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed in each year; Abraham put together an alliance of conservatives and liberals that beat subcommittee chairman Al Simpson, and the basic immigration laws remained unchanged. In 2000 Abraham secured near-unanimous approval for an increase in H1-B immigration visas for high-tech workers--one of the chief legislative goals of the high-tech industry. Abraham was also a strong supporter of tax cuts, but he kept a relatively low profile in Washington. The good news for Abraham and Stabenow was that neither had primary opposition; the bad news was that neither was known in any depth by most Michigan voters. The first barrage of ads in the race came not from either candidate or party, but from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which in early 2000 spent $700,000 attacking Abraham for his stands on immigration and charging that his stands cost Michigan workers jobs. In 1999 Abraham's voting record became more moderate than before, and in July 2000 he called for a suspension of the federal gas tax until November, a move beaten in the Senate 59-40. In summer 2000 Abraham used his money advantage--he ultimately spent nearly $13 million, to Stabenow's nearly $8 million--to run ads spotlighting his own program for prescription drugs for seniors and attacked Stabenow as a free-spending liberal favoring increased bureaucracy and opposing tax cuts, opposing welfare reform and supporting more lenient sentences for criminals. He set up a liberaldebbie.com website, and faced threats of a lawsuit from the makers of Little Debbie cakes. Stabenow resisted pressure and hoarded her money for an October ad buy. This proved to be a good strategy: Stabenow was down by 17% in one mid-October poll but, after several weeks of equal advertising by each, wound up winning by 1%. Stabenow answered charges that she was a liberal by citing her votes for a balanced budget and ending the marriage penalty; she kept herself in the good graces of labor by voting against PNTR with China. Stabenow said Abraham was beholden to corporations and special interests and attacked his stands on prescription drug and HMO regulation. He pointed to his votes for a balanced budget, welfare reform and highway funds for Michigan and talked of "the total absence of congressional achievements of Debbie Stabenow." This race was light on debates-- the two had just one televised debate--and heavy on ads by outside groups--the Sierra Club, Peace Action and EMILY's List for Stabenow, the Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, Americans for Job Security, National Rifle Association and Michigan Right to Life for Abraham. This was the most expensive Senate race in Michigan history, and the first since 1942 in which neither candidate won a majority of the vote. Stabenow won 49%-48%; she said that after the campaign Bill Clinton "told me all along that next to Hillary's, mine was the race he was most proud of." Abraham won Outstate Michigan 56%-42%, but in the metro Detroit area, Stabenow led 57%-40%. Stabenow carried only 13 of the state's 83 counties, but she ran essentially even in critical Oakland and Macomb Counties. Senate Democrats made Stabenow head of the prescription drug task force, and she concentrated on the issue, organizing bus trips of seniors to Canada and pushing for a package of legislation that came to the floor in July 2002. The Senate, unlike the House, was unable to pass a prescription drug benefit. But it did pass a law withdrawing patent protection for pharmaceutical companies pending the outcome of suits brought by generic drug companies by 78-21. And it passed measures allowing reimportation of drugs from Canada--though both Clinton and Bush HHS secretaries found this to be unsafe and did not allow it--and to allow states to continue to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies on Medicaid drug purchases. But the House did not act on these. Stabenow objected strongly in December 2002 to the insertion into the homeland security bill of an amendment directing suits against Eli Lilly for its vaccine additive thimerosal to the Vaccine Injury Compensations program; the suits allege that thimerosal causes autism and the VIC handles all other vaccine lawsuits with the federal government compensating victims. Trent Lott promised to bring the measure up in early 2003, and Bill Frist said he would honor that promise; Stabenow and Patrick Leahy sponsored a bill repealing the provision. In 2001 Stabenow's bill to impose a two-year moratorium on slant oil drilling under the Great Lakes passed the Senate; the House passed a permanent ban but Stabenow compromised to get the support of Pete Domenici. Michigan under Governor Engler was the only state to allow slant drilling; his successor Jennifer Granholm opposed it in her campaign. Stabenow was less successful in getting approval to an agreement between Engler and the Bay Mills Indians to build a gambling casino under the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron; Harry Reid of Nevada objected to her unanimous request motion. With Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, Stabenow sponsored a bill for a national AMBER Alert child abduction advisory system; state systems have recovered 27 children. In December 2002, Stabenow was appointed vice-chairman of the Senate Democrats' campaign committee.
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