I expect those people probably think they drove him into retirement. Indeed, there was a lot of speculation that by voting for health care reform, the longtime congressman from the Upper Peninsula may have sealed his doom.
But I don’t think that’s what happened. I do think Bart Stupak was burned out and tired of the constant assault from the crazies.
Yet I think that if he had run he would have won, easily. And he would have been helped by the fact that three bus loads of out-of-towners showed up to try to tell his neighbors to vote against him.
Bart Stupak is a former cop from Menominee who represents one of the nation’s most far-flung congressional districts. Geographically, it is bigger than West Virginia. It takes in the entire Upper Peninsula, and the western Lower Peninsula, all the way down to Bay City. Why is it so big? Because all congressional districts in any state have to be the same population size.
Last time that was 660,000 people, and there aren’t very many permanent residents of the north. I can say this about them:
They are fiercely independent, and see themselves as a breed apart, especially in the U.P, where they like to refer to the rest of us as “trolls.” Why trolls? Well, if you remember your fairy tales, trolls can usually be found under a bridge. Everybody in the lower peninsula lives below the Mackinac Bridge.
Yoopers feel, with some justice, that they’ve never gotten a fair shake from the rest of the state, or, for that matter, from the country. In the 19th century, interlopers cut down their trees and dug out their ore, took the money and ran. Northern Michigan didn’t much share in the auto-based prosperity of the 20thcentury. It is hundreds of miles from Lansing and often feels out of sight and out of mind.
Folks up there consider Stupak, now 58, one of them. They get mad at him sometimes. They felt for him when his teenage son committed suicide the day after his high school prom.
But they knew Stupak when he was a cop and a state trooper. They also know something else about him: That he turns down the cushy health care Congressmen are entitled to, and pays for his own.
Eighteen years ago, his voters sent him to Congress, and he‘s been there ever since. Last time, he won by two to one, in a district that has usually elected Republicans.
Today, when the Tea Partiers roll into Escanaba and the Soo, people might ask some questions the media should be asking. Such as: Who paid for these folks to go tell people in other states how to vote? Reportedly, the organizer of the tour offered Stupak $700,000 to quit his job. Where did that money come from?
My guess is that ten years from now, the Tea Party movement will be a Trivial Pursuit question. We’ve seen odd political wildfire movements spring up before, and vanish like spring dew. And if you doubt that, answer this: Whatever happened to H. Ross Perot?
I was once a pro-choice Republican (now I'm just pro-choice), and I too voted for Stupak in the last two cycles. You're right Mr. Lessenberry, he would have had no problem getting re-elected.
I'm from Atlanta, and despite the conservative tilt of the district, there were no credible challengers to either his left or right.
Just when my Congressman finally makes some news, he leaves.
Now if only John Dingell would leave.
Posted by: metrichead.blogspot.com | April 09, 2010 at 06:54 PM