Rep. John Dingell (D) Elected Dec. 1955, 24th term
Born:	July 8, 1926, Colorado Springs, CO
Home:	Dearborn
Education:	Georgetown U., B.S. 1949, J.D. 1952
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Deborah)
Military Career:	Army, 1944-46 (WWII).
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1952-55; Wayne Cnty. Asst. Prosecuting Atty., 1953-55.
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The southeast corner of Michigan is a part of the country most Americans don't think about much, and it doesn't look very interesting out the plane window as you approach Metro Airport. The flat marshlands along the shore of Lake Erie give way to flat farm lands, with rivers flowing lazily in summer and flashing with ice in winter. Here and there you see power plants with giant smokestacks and factories. Out on the horizon you can get a glimpse of the sprawl of metro Detroit, of the great auto and steel and chemical plants along the Detroit River; over on the other side is Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan.

The 15th Congressional District includes much of this southeastern corner of Michigan. It owes its shape to Republican redistricters, who in July 2001 devised the nation's most successful partisan redistricting plan of the decennial cycle. The 15th was drawn to put two incumbent Democratic congressmen in the same district, John Dingell, the dean of the House, and Lynn Rivers, an Ann Arbor liberal first elected in 1994. Each had represented about half the new district. The district includes industrial parts of Wayne County, all of Monroe County and the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti areas in Washtenaw County. In Wayne County, the 15th includes the western part of Dearborn and most of Dearborn Heights; the most heavily Arab-American parts of Dearborn were put in the 14th District, and these are more middle class, even affluent areas; the line cuts through Dearborn Heights and put one trailer park in two districts. To the south are working class suburbs: Taylor, Romulus (home of Metro Airport), and Woodhaven, site of a big Ford plant. Flat Rock is home to an automaking plant owned by both Ford and Mazda; in 2003 Ford announced it would move production of the Mustang muscle car here from its Dearborn Assembly Plant. Monroe was the birthplace of General George Armstrong Custer, and in his day agricultural; now it is more industrial, and the southern part is in many ways an extension of Toledo, Ohio. (Michigan and Ohio almost went to war over the Toledo land in the 1830s; Ohio got Toledo and Michigan got the Upper Peninsula as recompense.) Ann Arbor is one of the nation's largest university towns, oriented to the university but also full of people, from auto executives to perennial graduate students, who like the atmosphere of a town with plenty of book stores, coffee houses and liberal neighbors. Ypsilanti, though it also has a university (Eastern Michigan), is less bookish and more industrial. All of these areas tend to vote Democratic, though Monroe is sometimes marginal, but they house very different kinds of Democrats. In Wayne County, union political operatives have dominated Democratic party politics for 50 years. In Ann Arbor, Democratic politics is dominated by leftist peace enthusiasts, environmentalists and, most of all, feminists.

The congressman from the 15th District is John Dingell, the senior member of the House of Representatives. His father, John Dingell, Sr., was elected to the House in 1932, from a district created as a result of the Detroit area's auto boom. The first Congressman Dingell was one of the most productive urban liberals of his day, a sponsor of Social Security and, starting in 1943, of national health insurance. John Dingell Jr. has been around Capitol Hill almost as long. He was a House page from 1938-43 and served in the Army in World War II; he graduated from Georgetown and its law school, paying his way by working as an elevator operator in the Capitol; he practiced law and served as an assistant prosecutor in Wayne County. After his father died in September 1955, Dingell was elected to succeed him in December, at 29, from a district entirely within Detroit with large Polish, black and Jewish populations. He still uses his father's office furniture and every session continues to introduce as H.R. 15 (the number matches the district) the national health insurance bill his father co-sponsored in 1943. He is the only member of the House who served in the 1950s; indeed only three others served in the 1960s (John Conyers, Philip Crane and David Obey); it is a measure of his seniority that the second most senior member of the House, Conyers, once served on his staff. He has an interesting personal life, raising his children after his divorce (his son Christopher was elected to the Michigan Senate in 1986) and marrying in 1981 a granddaughter of one of General Motors' Fisher brothers. Debbie Dingell is head of the General Motors Foundation and a Democratic National committeewoman, and an encourager of bipartisan amity as well; she also headed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign in Michigan, and is given much credit for his 51%-46% win there.

From 1981-95 Dingell was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and of its Investigative and Oversight Subcommittee, one of the most powerful and effective chairmen ever. It had wide jurisdiction, handled up to 40% of all House bills, and had the largest budget and staff of any House committee. As institutions will, the committee took on the character of its leader, widely known as ''the truck'': bright, aggressive, domineering, determined. Dingell and his committee superintended the breakup of AT&T and the sale of Conrail by public offering; Commerce's cable reregulation law of 1992 was the only bill on which Congress overrode George H.W. Bush's presidential veto. After a decade of sparring over clean air legislation, Dingell worked together with Health Subcommittee Chairman Henry Waxman to produce the 1990 Clean Air Act.

On other issues, Dingell backed organized labor's agenda against NAFTA and trade promotion authority. An avid outdoorsman (he hunts deer, elk, caribou and moose), he long opposed gun control but voted for the 1994 crime bill and resigned from the National Rifle Association board. In many ways, he is an old-fashioned Franklin Roosevelt Democrat, supporting big government and strenuous regulation, taking a conservative line on some cultural issues and backing an assertive foreign policy; he was the only Michigan Democrat to vote for the Gulf War resolution in January 1991, although he voted against the Iraq war resolution in October 2002.

When the Republican majority took over, many expected Dingell to sulk or to launch bitter attacks on the other side. But he did neither. As the senior House member, he swore in Newt Gingrich with good grace and proceeded to work with Republicans and produce legislation.

Dingell has also been successful in forging Democratic positions that prevailed in the Republican House. He proposed the health care portability legislation that passed in somewhat different form in August 1996. He introduced a bill to regulate HMOs in February 1998 and then joined with Republican Greg Ganske. It lost 217-212 and a Republican alternative passed 216-210. The Senate never acted. In July 1999 Dingell came back, allied with Ganske and Republican Charlie Norwood, and in October 1999 the renamed Dingell-Norwood bill passed 275-151, with 68 Republicans voting yes. The bill imposed uniform national standards for health insurance, including guaranteed access to emergency care and medical specialists, appeals of coverage decisions to an independent board, a prohibition on HMOs retaliating against doctors and a right to sue HMOs in state courts. Again the Senate didn't act, and Dingell and Norwood tried again in 2001. In the course of negotiations at the White House, George W. Bush joshed Dingell, "You're the biggest pain in the ass on Capitol Hill." Dingell replied, "Thank you for a high compliment. I've worked 47 years for that reputation, and I'd hate to see it dissipate in one afternoon." But in August 2001, Bush managed to convince Norwood to sign onto a bill with less regulation, which passed the House; but the Senate again didn't act. Dingell's goal remains national health insurance; asked what is a desirable system, he says, "Canada's, right across the river."

In January 2001 Dingell strongly opposed stripping the Commerce Committee of jurisdiction over insurance and the securities industry, which was part of a Republican plan to make Mike Oxley the chairman of Banking, a committee Dingell accused of "incompetence and indifference." In July 2001 Dingell and Billy Tauzin reached agreement on CAFE standards for gas mileage: the Department of Transportation would be directed to reduce gas consumption for SUVs and light trucks by 5 miles per gallon by 2010. This was a substitute for mandating the auto companies to meet higher standards and was part of the energy bill that passed the House in August 2001. In 2001 Dingell and Tauzin also pressed for their bill allowing regional Bell companies to provide broadband service. Despite opposition from the Judiciary Committee, this passed 273-157 in February 2002, but got no vote in the Senate. Dingell and Tauzin also urged the FCC to take action against piracy of digital TV.

Since his first election, Dingell has had only two serious challenges, both in Democratic primaries after being redistricted in with another incumbent. In 1964 he ran in a district mostly new to him against another incumbent who had followed him to the House, John Lesinski of Dearborn, who was the only northern Democrat to vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With strong support from the UAW, Dingell won 54%-46%. Then in July 2001 the Republican legislature put him in the same district with Lynn Rivers of Ann Arbor. Rivers was born in 1956, one year after Dingell was first elected to the House, and was first elected herself in 1994. Dingell was elected in the first of 40 consecutive years of Democratic majorities in the House; Rivers never served in a Democratic House. She had a leftish voting record and took no major role on legislation. After redistricting, some Democrats urged her to run in the 11th District, which included some of her old territory. But she decided to stay with Ann Arbor and run against Dingell in what she called a "David vs. Goliath match up."

It was that, and more. Their voting records were similar, though not identical, but their cultural backgrounds were as different as the working class suburbs of Wayne County and the university town of Ann Arbor. Rivers campaigned as a congresswoman who knew what the ordinary person went through and cast her votes accordingly. Dingell campaigned as a congressman who had gotten many things done and was in a position to do much more. Dingell was endorsed by the state AFL-CIO, the UAW and the National Rifle Association. Rivers was endorsed by EMILY's List, the Sierra Club and the Brady Campaign. On September 10, 2001, the day before the redistricting bill was to be signed, Nancy Pelosi, then running for minority whip, sent Rivers $10,000--"a minor annoyance," Dingell said, though he later refused to raise any money for the House Democrats' campaign committee. Rivers emphasized their differences on the partial-birth abortion ban, particular gun control proposals and environmental standards; Dingell voted for the first, opposed the second and tended to support the auto companies (and the UAW) on the third. Rivers said, "Clout is a wonderful thing, if you're using it for good. If you're using it to stop gun control legislation, that's not a good thing. If you're using it to limit women's choice, that's not a good thing." Dingell parried by pointing to the women's issues he had been instrumental on--breast and cervical cancer screening, minimum hospital stays after childbirth, children's health insurance. Dingell talked of the work he had done on wildlife refuges and cleaning up the Rouge River; with Carolyn McCarthy, he sponsored a bill making it tougher for felons to buy firearms. Dingell reached into her old district for endorsements, including the 13th District Democratic party and several local Democratic officials.

This was Michigan's most expensive House primary ever. Dingell raised $2.5 million, from unions, the auto industry and regulated industries generally. But Rivers was competitive. With major help from EMILY's List and its bundled contributions she raised $1.5 million, enough to make this a seriously contested race on television. For most of the months before the August 6 primary Dingell led in polls by about 10%. In June, Rivers started running spots in which she recounted her personal struggles and how she understood what working families go through. Her plainspoken, perky manner evidently got through: by late July, two polls showed the race even. Dingell fired back with a spot praising his effectiveness on prescription drugs, HMO regulation, children's health insurance and the Clean Air Act. In contrast, he said, "She's never authored a single piece of legislation that's been signed into law." On the stump, Dingell told reporters that he had had some difficult times in life as well. "I know what it is to sit up at night with sick kids and take care of kids and help with their homework. I know all of these things firsthand, because I've lived them. I got the kids in a terrible divorce because I had no choice. These things do not qualify me for office. They might qualify me for sympathy, but I'm Polish, and Poles don't ask for sympathy. I have the curious view that I should be judged on the basis of what I stand for, what I've done, my ability, my effectiveness, the kind of service I give my constituents, my legislative record, my personal integrity." For him the race came down to the question, "Are you going to replace one of the most effective members of the House of Representatives with one of the least effective members?" Dingell was endorsed by the Ann Arbor News as well as the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News. Bizarrely, John Conyers in July circulated a letter calling on Dingell to drop out and be elected Speaker when Democrats won a majority; Dingell would have none of it.

On August 6, Dingell won 59%-41%. He won 74%-26% in Wayne County, which cast 43% of the votes, even though part of it was in Rivers's old district, and 80%-20% in Monroe County, which cast 19% of the votes. Rivers won Washtenaw County 69%-31%. The general election was anticlimactic; Dingell won easily in this Democratic district. In September 2002 Dingell said he would run again in 2004 and didn't expect another tough fight for 10 years. He stands to become the longest-serving House member in history in February 2009.

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DC Office
2328 RHOB 20515, 202-225-4071; Web site: www.house.gov/dingell

State Offices
Dearborn, 313-278-2936; Monroe, 734-243-1849.

Committees

• Energy & Commerce (RMM of 26 D).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	90	79	89	88	43	38	20	42	4	0	8
2001	95	--	100	79	--	--	11	41	24	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	77%	--	23%		84%	--	15%
Social	68%	--	33%		66%	--	34%
Foreign	60%	--	40%		82%	--	18%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N 2. Limit Patients' Bill of Rights N 3. Campaign Finance Reform Y 4. Ban ANWR Development Y 5. Faith-Based Charities N 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts N		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  8. Arm Commercial Pilots Y  9. Trade Promotion Authority N 10. Bar Funds for Intl. Court N 11. Authorize Force in Iraq N 12. Deny Home. Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2002 general	John Dingell (D)	136,518	72%	$3,461,009
	Martin Kaltenbach (R)	48,626	26%
	Other	3,919	2%
2002 primary	John Dingell (D)	58,120	59%
	Lynn Rivers (D)	40,832	41%
2000 general	John Dingell (D)	167,142	71%	$1,048,787
	William Morse (R)	62,469	27%
	Other	5,906	3%
Prior winning percentages: 1998 (67%); 1996 (62%); 1994 (59%); 1992 (65%); 1990 (67%); 1988 (97%); 1986 (78%); 1984 (64%); 1982 (74%); 1980 (70%); 1978 (77%); 1976 (76%); 1974 (78%); 1972 (68%); 1970 (79%); 1968 (74%); 1966 (63%); 1964 (73%); 1962 (83%); 1960 (79%); 1958 (79%); 1956 (74%); 1955 (76%)

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	161,913	60%
	Bush (R)	101,607	38%
	Other	7,086	3%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fifteenth District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D +11
• District Size: 981 square miles
• Population in 2000: 662,563; 87.7% urban; 12.3% rural
• Median Household Income: $48,963; 10.3% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 26.2% blue collar; 59.0% white collar; 14.7% gray collar; 11.1% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 79.2% White, 11.7% Black, 3.7% Asian, 0.4% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 2.0% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 2.8% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 15.0% German, 8.4% Irish, 6.7% Polish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.