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Last Updated June 22, 2005
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 changes in education finance, 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. 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 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; in 2000 he secured near-unanimous approval for an increase in H1-B immigration visas for high-tech workers. 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 $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. 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 normal trade relations with China. Stabenow said Abraham was beholden to corporations and special interests and attacked his stands on prescription drug and HMO regulation. This race was light on debates-- the candidates 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 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 continued to sponsor drug reimportation in 2003 and 2004; her bill included FDA inspection of foreign facilities. It generated considerable publicity but did not come to a vote. Stabenow has sponsored measures affecting Michigan's environment. In January 2003 Toronto began shipping all its trash to a landfill southwest of Detroit: 180 truckloads a day, 1.1 million tons a year. By November 2004, 415 truckloads a day of Canadian trash was entering Michigan, most of it over the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron. Stabenow opposed this and argued that it violated a 1992 treaty. In June 2003 she began an online campaign to amass signatures to demand that EPA enforce the treaty, which required notification of each shipment and allowed the U.S. to decline any shipment. In May 2004 she presented 165,000 signatures to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt. Leavitt argued that only hazardous waste violated the treaty; Stabenow argued that all waste was covered. Leavitt said he would establish a pilot program to ask Canadian shippers for notification and promised he would fund the state's efforts to stop shipments that violate state standards; a law took effect in October 2004 requiring out-of-state shipments to meet state standards. But in late 2004 the shipments continued, and the fight on this issue did not seem to be over. In the meantime, Stabenow placed in the Senate transportation bill $204 million for Michigan border crossings, including a new plaza for the Blue Water Bridge and improvements on I-69 and I-94 segments feeding into the bridge. But the transportation bill was never passed. Stabenow also sponsored a bill to preserve Michigan's historic lighthouses, piers, museums and vessels. She sponsored an amendment to the corporate tax bill for $6.5 billion in accelerated tax relief for manufacturers; this act did pass. With Carl Levin, she sponsored a bill to end the Federal Prison Industries monopoly on federal office furniture; Michigan ranks number one not in autos but in office furniture. Stabenow has proved to be an effective partisan. She blocked the approval of Engler aide Dennis Schornack to be the U.S. Chairman of the Joint International Commission, which handles U.S.-Canada border issues. With Levin, she blocked Bush appointments to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals until June 2005. In November 2004, when Barbara Mikulski stepped down from the position of Secretary of the Democratic Caucus, Stabenow called Mikulski and asked for her support; they worked the phones and Stabenow got the job, the number three position in the leadership. It has not led to higher leadership posts in the recent past, but it does give her a seat and a voice at leadership meetings. Stabenow comes up for reelection in 2006. A senator elected by a 49%-48% margin can expect serious competition, but by early 2005 two Republican House members, Candice Miller and Mike Rogers, indicated that they would not run. By June 2005 declared Republican candidates included engineer Bart Baron; former Detroit Councilman Keith Butler and Jerry Zandstra, a director at a religious think tank. Also mentioned as a candidate was Jane Abraham, Spencer Abraham's wife.
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