Published: March 23, 2008 09:56 am         

Op-Ed: In the middle of it all

On Capitol Hill, northern Michigan tilts well to the right among Republicans and to the center among Democrats.

First District Rep. Bart Stupak of Menominee had the least liberal 2007 voting record of any of the six Democrats in the Michigan congressional delegation, according to the National Journal's recently published composite scores on 109 economic, social and foreign issues.

Stupak, who last week announced his bid for a ninth term, had a liberal score of 58.3 percent---prompting the Journal to list him among those at the "ideological center" of the House. In contrast, Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, with a 95 percent liberal score, led not only the Michigan delegation; he was among seven members tied for first as the most liberal in the entire House.

(In 1981, Sen. Carl Levin was pegged most liberal in the Senate at 94 percent. Now, at 76.5 percent he's ranked 26th. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, at 82.8, is 16th.) While Stupak bucks liberal orthodoxy among Democrats, eight-term 2nd District Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Holland and nine-term 4th District Rep. Dave Camp of Midland are in stride with the GOP's conservative tide.

Hoekstra's 80 was the highest conservative rating among Michigan's nine Republicans. Camp was third at 78.

After their many terms and committee leadership positions in Congress, the Northern Three have considered, or have been prominently mentioned, as potential candidates for statewide office: Stupak years ago for attorney general and as a prospective running mate with now-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and now maybe as a statewide candidate in 2010; Hoekstra for the Senate or governor; Camp for the Senate.

Camp, who has a good shot at becoming the ranking Republican on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is not in the media-mention mix for statewide office. But Stupak and Hoekstra are -- although their public stance is the standard "I like what I'm doing." Hoekstra and Camp have solidly Republican districts. On paper, Stupak's sprawling 31-county district is considered marginally Republican and has been trumpeted as a 2008 target by the Michigan GOP.

I don't see Republicans taking Stupak's seat as long as he is in it, or until they nominate a well-known and well-financed candidate.

Among Stupak's three Republican challengers, energetic state Rep. Tom Casperson, a trucker from Escanaba, has drum-beating support from GOP leaders in Lansing and Washington, D.C., who see him as a potential winner. Stupak jibes that the term-limited lawmaker is "looking for a job."

Stupak's other challengers are retired businessman Don Hooper of Iron River, who got about a third of the vote as the GOP nominee in 2002, 2004 and 2006, and makes a fourth bid running with "conservative Christian values;" and attorney Linda Goldthorpe from Curtis, who is running as "a Ron Paul Republican."

In announcing his re-election bid to reporters on a two-peninsula conference call, Stupak said, "I'm just as excited now as I was 16 years ago" when he first ran. As a political "junkie," he finds this year's presidential election particularly zesty.

Stupak was an early supporter of former Sen. John Edwards who was opposed to the Jan. 15 Michigan primary because it was nothing more than a meaningless "beauty contest" since it was not sanctioned by the national party. But he said he would not make a choice between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination while party leaders seek to resolve the lingering dispute over seating Michigan delegates.

Stupak has been pushing a complicated alternative solution that would allocate Michigan's delegates based in part on votes for Clinton and "uncommitted" (a percentage of which would go to Obama) and on percentages coming out of the remaining state votes.

Two days after Stupak spoke, the state Legislature's attempt for a Michigan re-do collapsed.

Detroit Debacle

It's a city council matter replete with congressional relationships.

Monica Conyers, president pro tem of the Detroit City Council and wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, was the only dissenting vote last week when the council voted 7-1 for a non-binding resolution calling on Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to resign in the wake of a text message scandal involving whether he lied about having an affair with his then-chief of staff.

Monica Conyers said: "Stop playing symbolic games with symbolic resolutions that make us look like we are doing something when in point of fact we are doing nothing but playing feel-good games that get headlines, TV and radio breaking-news flashes."

Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins, the former congresswoman defeated in the 1996 Democratic primary by Kilpatrick's mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (who once unsuccessfully ran for the city council), said: "The city has been hammered, I believe, in going about the business of managing the city. I think at this point the mayor should consider resigning so the city can get back to business as normal."

In her biographical submission to the state-published Michigan Manual, Congresswoman Kilpatrick said her son "was elected in 1996 to the Michigan House of Representatives and filled the seat his mother vacated. Kwame Kilpatrick went on to become Michigan's youngest-ever and first African-American State House Democratic Leader. In 2001, he was elected Mayor of Detroit."

While my focus here today has been on congressional politics Up North, who among us on either side of the bridge would not be interested in the soap opera, with all of its congressional ties, on how the political world turns these days in Detroit?

George Weeks retired in 2006 after 22 years as political columnist for The Detroit News. His weekly Michigan Politics column is syndicated by Superior Features