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Last Updated June 22, 2005
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 of Michigan includes much of this southeastern corner of the state. 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; it voted 74% to legalize medical marijuana in November 2004. 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 in Detroit 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 two others served in the 1960s (John Conyers 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 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 headed the Michigan campaigns for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, and helped each win 51% of the vote in this battleground state. For 14 years, from 1981 to 1995, 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 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. But in 1999 his amendment ended the push for more gun control legislation after the Columbine massacres. On the old Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, he was responsible for wildlife refuge legislation, and one of his proudest accomplishments is the creation in 2001 of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, on both sides of the river from Zug Island in River Rouge south to Lake Erie. This is not publicly owned land; Dingell has worked to get donations of land or easements from private landowners, land preservation groups and the Army Corps of Engineers. In many ways, he is an old-fashioned Franklin D. 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 been successful on occasion in forging Democratic positions that prevailed in the Republican House. 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. Again the Senate didn't act, and Dingell and Norwood tried again in 2001. 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." He opposed the Republicans' Medicare/prescription drug bill in 2003 and went out on the road to criticize it in 2004; when Republicans admitted that Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services head Thomas Scully concealed higher cost estimates for the bill, Dingell demanded access to all actuarial estimates. In June 2004, after an adverse Supreme Court decision, he said he would reintroduce his HMO regulation bill. "HMOs, foreign diplomats and the mentally insane are the only people in this country who are exempt from the consequences of their decisions." He also has worked to relieve the cost burden of health insurance plans from the auto companies. In 2001 Dingell and Billy Tauzin 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. In 2004 Dingell and the new Energy and Commerce Chairman, Joe Barton, asked the FCC for an investigation of a la carte cable channels (customers would pay for only those channels they wanted). Dingell tended toward opposition. Dingell has sprung into action when Michigan has been adversely affected. After the August 2003 blackout, which hit Michigan hard, he sponsored a stand-alone bill made up of the electricity provisions in the larger House and Senate versions of the energy bill. Dingell argued that there was consensus on the need for making the North American Electricity Reliability Council rules mandatory and for strengthening the regional transmission organizations, and that these measures should not be held hostage to Republicans' desire to pass more controversial measures. He amassed signatures on a discharge petition, but fell short of the needed 218 signatures in 2004. In January 2003 the city of Toronto started transporting all its trash--180 truckloads a day, 1.1 million tons a year--in a landfill in southwest Wayne County, in Dingell's district. Dingell had long complained of Canadian trash dumping, and he and Senator Debbie Stabenow insisted that EPA enforce a 1992 treaty which, they said, required that Canada give notice of each shipment and which allowed the U.S. to reject each one. EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt argued that only hazardous waste was covered by the treaty, but Dingell persisted and got a 12-4 subcommittee vote demanding enforcement. After voters in Romulus approved an Indian casino, Dingell put an amendment approving it on the transportation bill in March 2004, though it was later removed. Dingell has long opposed raising CAFE gas mileage standards, but has not followed the industry lead uncritically. In October 2003 the House accepted his amendment to require NHTSA to raise fuel economy standards enough to save 5 billion gallons of gasoline. He was also pushing an amendment with incentives for the auto companies to develop diesel engines with low sulfur emissions and to offer more diesel cars and trucks. "I'm giving the industry good counsel. One of my major jobs is to address environmental concerns. If I don't tell them where they have problems, I'm not being a good friend to the industry." Since his first election in December 1955, 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 his father 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. 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. This was Michigan's most expensive House primary ever. Dingell raised $2.5 million, from unions, the auto industry and regulated industries generally. Rivers, with major help from EMILY's List and its bundled contributions, 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. 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. In the August primary 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 August 2004 he became the fourth longest-serving House member in history; in December 2005 he will have served 50 years; in February 2009, he will have been the longest-serving House member in history; in January 2013 he will have served longer in Congress than anyone else in history. Asked about his longevity in Congress, Dingell said, "I never expected to be in Congress this long," Dingell has said, and attributed his longevity to "hard work, good luck and a very tolerant, lovely wife." And despite his frustrations in a Republican House, he said, "What I've learned is that we are the most fortunate race in the history of mankind, with a government that is nearest to perfect as you can find on this planet."
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