by P.D. Lesko
Congressman John D. Dingell, Jr. is 17 months away from breaking the late Congressman Robert Byrd’s record for total combined congressional service in the House and Senate. Dingell has been in the U.S. House since 1955, when he was elected to fill the seat held by his father, who had held it since 1933 and who died in office. In the 1964 Democratic primary, Representative Dingell faced one of the stiffest challenges ever for his seat from a candidate who opposed the passage of the Civil Right Act. Rep. John Dingell, whose seat is coveted by a host of Michigan politicos, including Republican Randy Richardville, the Michigan State Senate Majority leader, is 85 and talked to Vanity Fair magazine about life in a Congress whose approval ratings are in the single digits.
Does that mean he’s ready to retire? Well, not just yet. He announced his intention to run for another term shortly after he won the 2010 November general election against Ann Arbor Republican challenger Dr. Rob Steele. The 2010 race for the 15th Congressional District reportedly had Democratic leaders in Michigan and Washington, D.C. fretting. In 2010, the Dingell campaign sent out this missive to Michigan Dems in the form of a fundraising pitch:
“This year I need your maximum financial contribution to my campaign,” the Michigan Democrat wrote to supporters in a fundraising letter earlier this month. “My opponent is running with the tea party and he claims he will invest his quite substantial personal fortune in his effort to defeat me. He is running around with a poll showing that I am vulnerable.”
Representative Dingell went on to snag a comfortable 57 percent of the vote in the November 2010 general election, ultimately, but Steele came away with 40 percent of the vote, the closest any challenger has come to victory against the Dean of the House in decades. The House of Representatives that Dingell went back to is one he holds in little esteem. He summed up working in U.S. House of Representatives thusly: “This place is about as poisonous as I’ve ever seen it in my career. There is little room for moderates. It used to be that when we’d get a bill that we’d really need, we could always count on some across-the-aisle dealings. No more.”
In fact, the atmosphere is so partisan, when asked if he thought the Civil Rights Act could pass the U.S. Congress today, Michigan’s longest serving Congressman shook his head and said, “No, no, no, no.”
Conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote in November 2010, “Damn. John Dingell wins. Rob Steele came closer than anyone. Maybe next time. But I predict John Dingell will retire after this term because the Republicans control the Michigan Legislature and will redraw the districts, including his, to be better suited to electing Republicans. To the GOP winners in 2010, go the redistricting spoils, once U.S. Census data is compiled and released.”
Well, in redistricting the state, the Michigan GOP and Governor Rick Snyder spared the rod and spoiled every long-term Democratic incumbent in the Michigan Congressional delegation, including Representatives Dingell, Sander Levin and John Conyers. Representative Gary Peters turned out to be the politico looking around for a chair when the music stopped. However, Peters is the man to beat in the Gerrymander 500, the race in the newly created Michigan 14th Congressional District.
Serving in Congress may be tougher than ever, and Dingell might believe his colleagues incapable of significant bipartisanship, however, barring a political upset the likes of which would cause the political firmament to tremble, Congressman John Dingell will expect to be returned to office in 2012.
