In fact, I would have been surprised if he hadn’t run. Last November, he lost by barely two percent, or seven thousand votes, to State Senator Mark Schauer of Battle Creek.
The two men fought it out in Michigan’s Seventh District in the south-central part of the state. The district runs from the Ann Arbor suburbs to Battle Creek, with Jackson in the middle. It is shaped like a box with a little panhandle, which is Eaton County.
In the old days, it was solidly Republican territory. But not any more. In fact, it has become Michigan’s ping-pong district.
This district has elected four different congressmen in the last four elections, and could well change hands again. Nick Smith, a dairy farmer from Addison, held the seat for a dozen years.
When he retired in 2004, there was a hotly contested primary to succeed him. State Senator Joe Schwarz, a moderate Republican, beat out four other guys, and was elected easily that fall.
But Schwarz wasn’t all that popular with the Republican base, who saw him as a closet liberal. That seems strange indeed, when you consider that he is a Vietnam veteran and a former CIA agent who was stoutly in favor of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But Schwarz, who is also a physician, thinks abortion should be safe, legal and rare, and thinks the government has an obligation to fund higher education at decent levels.
That was enough to attract fierce opposition from the Manhattan-based Club for Growth, which poured money in to support Walberg, who then beat Schwarz in a GOP primary three years ago.
Walberg then won a narrow victory over an unknown Democrat who had no money whatsoever. That set the stage for last year’s race, which may have been the most expensive in the country.
Once again, the incumbent lost. But there is clear evidence that Schauer rode in on President Obama’s coattails. The President ran well ahead of the rest of the ticket. Odds are that next year won’t be so much of a Democratic year. But, of course, only time will tell.
However, you have to wonder about two things. Does this all really have to start this early? Babies not yet conceived will be born before this election, in some cases to parents who haven’t yet met.
And finally - they are going to spend millions in a battle for a job that may not even exist two years from now. I am not talking about the fact that they have to run every two years.
Michigan is going to lose a congressman after the next census, and somebody’s district will be eliminated.
And the contours of every remaining district will change. But, no matter. It is clear that today, we have a new career category called “perpetual candidates.” By the way, up in Oakland County, Paul Welday’s been running since April.
Well, at least all that campaign spending has to be good for the economy.
I suppose that we could all be making snide comments about the re-election battles in the Michigan 13th and 14th Congressional Districts. That is, if there were real battles for those seats, currently occupied by Monica Conyers' husband John, and Kwame Kilpatrick's mom, Carolyn.
And indeed, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, so pubicly debilitated by the depredations of her son, actually did face a wholly unlikely primary battle in 2008, that caused Momma K to sell her Michigan soul to Nancy Pelosi, in trade for a campaign glamor-stop late last summer.
But MI-13 and MI-14, carefully gerrymandered in order to predetermine two black Congressional seats, are such safe Democrat districts that the current occupants (or whichever Democrats they might choose to succeed them) are guaranteed re-election until eternity.
So there's not much of a story there; at least not much in terms of primary-campaign fundraising. And maybe that's the difference between those Districts and real swing districts like the Michigan 7th, 8th and 11th.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 17, 2009 at 04:19 PM