by P.D. Lesko

On June 11, Rep. John D. Dingell, Jr.’s office announced the hire of Leigh Greden as Mr. Dingell’s chief of staff. The former Ann Arbor News revealed in 2009 that Greden and others on Council had been vote-rigging via email during open meetings. AnnArbor.com reported the email scandal cost Greden his Council seat. Now, Greden is costing Debbie Dingell support.

“I WON’T BE  supporting Debbie Dingell.” Local Democrats are quietly resolved and hopping mad that Mrs. Dingell’s husband, Rep. John D. Dingell, Jr., hired former Ward 3 Ann Arbor City Council member Leigh Greden as his chief of staff in the beginning of June.

Greden, together with a group of other Council members’ inappropriate use of email during open meetings, triggered an Open Meetings Act lawsuit against the City of Ann Arbor that City Attorney Stephen Postema was forced to settle. Remaining Council members involved in the 2009 email scandal are Ward 3 Council member Christopher Taylor—now running for mayor—and Ward 4 Council member Margie Teall.

The anger generated by Greden’s hire stems from a schism in the local Democratic party. The divide is between pols who’ve controlled local and county politics since the 90s and reformers who’ve ousted long-time Dem Council members from office by promising to fund city services, rebuild police and fire staffing levels and support transparency in government.

Ward 4 Council member Jack Eaton says he believes Debbie Dingell is “the one who can bring the factions together.”

“I know the Dingells are close to Leigh Greden,” said Eaton, “but Debbie didn’t hire Leigh. John did,” said Eaton. “I  know some people think Leigh Greden will end up as Debbie Dingell’s chief of staff. I don’t see that happening.

An Email Scandal Haunts Greden

A June 2009 series of articles published by the former Ann Arbor News revealed then Ward 3 Council member Leigh Greden had used email inappropriately during open meetings. The newspaper used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to hundreds of email messages sent by Greden to his Council colleagues during open meetings.

In dozens of emails made public by the former Ann Arbor News in 2009, Rep. Dingell’s new chief of staff mocked citizens speaking before City Council, made fun of Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere, discussed Christopher Easthope’s judicial campaign with Easthope, who was the Ward 5 City Council member at the time, rigged votes and told his Council colleagues he was so bored he was “playing on Facebook.”

Then, Leigh Greden refused to apologize for his actions.

In a June 2009 article published by the former Ann Arbor News, Greden told the reporter, “I won’t apologize. We relieve stress by chit-chatting and I don’t think it’s inappropriate.”

Three days later he did apologize. He sent an email to a number of his constituents: “… I am embarrassed to admit that a minority of the e-mail that my colleagues and I exchanged during council meetings are, for lack of a better term, childish banter,” Greden wrote.

A citizen group subsequently used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain thousands of emails a group of Council members had sent between 2008-2009. In those emails, Greden is seen scripting comments for his Council colleagues and participating in secret discussions about the issues being considered at the open meetings.

“Me want drinky tonight,” was the title of one email sent to Christopher Easthope in the middle of a July 2008 Council meeting. The two go on over the next 20 minutes to discuss Easthope’s plans to meet his date and whether Greden can come along.

During the same meeting, Greden was also trying to resolve a noise complaint issue and get the details of a conference the City Administrator wanted to attend.

“Leigh Greden’s hire was a deal breaker,” says an Ann Arbor resident who has supported Rep. Dingell with both donations and votes. “What Leigh Greden did was unethical. We need more ethics in DC not less. The Dingells are rewarding him with a job in Washington? I’m sorry to say I won’t be supporting Debbie.”

According to campaign finance disclosure forms filed with the Federal Election Commission, Leigh Greden has given no money to Mrs. Dingell’s campaign. His mother, Renee Greden, gave $2,600. Since the loss of his Council seat, Greden has rarely donated to candidates for local office. His mother, however, has become a regular donor to candidates for local office.

Ward 3 Council candidate Julie Grand listed Leigh Greden as an endorser during her 2013 City Council race, but then a short while later removed Greden’s name from her website.

The sentiments concerning Mr. Dingell’s hire of Leigh Greden are being expressed behind the scenes by voters, as well as local elected politicians and political insiders. No one who spoke to The Ann Arbor Independent wanted to be identified, but no one whom the paper contacted refused to comment. Even five years later, the City Council email scandal and Leigh Greden’s role in it evoke strong responses.

Lingering Anger and Resentment

There are those whom Leigh Greden insulted in the emails which were made public by  the former Ann Arbor News, as well as a group of citizens, who would, perhaps, say that he is high-handed and autocratic. In one email, he tells his  “Birkenstock wearing” Council colleagues that the only issues he care about are “money and buildings.”

During Council meetings, video recordings show Greden responding during the time reserved for Council commentary to residents who’d spoken earlier at public hearings or during the time reserved for public comments. He frequently took to task residents with whom he disagreed, even sarcastically.

It was behavior such as this, coupled with the substance of the emails published in the local newspaper, which readers wrote about in the comment sections of the former Ann Arbor News—hundreds of comments in response to the summer 2009 articles detailing the email scandal, Greden’s initial refusal to apologize and even his subsequent apology.

When he ran for re-election in the summer of 2009, in the midst of the scandal, even the endorsements of Rep. Dingell, Mayor Hieftje and dozens of other local elected Democrats couldn’t save him from defeat.  Greden lost to current Ward 3 Council member and mayoral candidate Stephen Kunselman in a squeaker—505 to 511.

In large part Council member Kunselman decided to run against Greden because of emails that surfaced in which Leigh Greden had insulted Kunselman’s mother. Stephen Kunselman ran promising to craft an ethics policy for City Council. He hammered his opponent’s childish behavior.

Blaming Mrs. Dingell for Her Husband’s Chief of Staff Hire

Through her spokesperson Liz Boyd, Mrs. Dingell admitted that she had fielded complaints about her husband’s hire of Greden: “Debbie did hear from a couple of people who shared their concerns about Congressman Dingell’s hiring of Leigh Greden.  With Debbie’s commitment to being accessible comes a commitment to treat what she is told with an element of confidence so other than to acknowledge she heard from a couple of people, we’re not going to get into what was said to whom. I can say that Debbie is erring on the side of caution given the rules that govern the Congress and campaigns. She has established a solid wall between her campaign and the Congressman’s Office, which includes a wall on communications issues. One is not influencing the other.”

Rep. Dingell’s wife is running for the U.S. 12th Congressional District seat held by her husband since the 1950s. She has faced withering criticism from national media over a variety of concerns.

In February 2014, NPR published this litany about Mrs. Dingell:

1.  The granddaughter of one of the Fisher brothers, who in 1908 began Fisher Body in Detroit, Debbie Dingell grew up in a wealthy Detroit suburb….

2.  Her position with General Motors and personal holdings in the company while her husband served in Congress had long been seen as one of Capitol Hill’s most public conflicts of interest — and never more than during Congress’ 2008-2009 bailout of GM and Chrysler. She ended up leaving GM after 32 years. “I was hoping to finally put this conflicts question behind me,” she said in a 2010 Washington Post article.

3.  She tested the Senate waters last year when Michigan’s longtime Democratic Sen. Carl Levin announced his plans to retire at the end of 2014. But Dingell, stung by a local liberal blog’s criticism that she had “high-handed, autocratic tendencies,” passed on the race. 

The debate, then, centers around whether it’s reasonable  for local Democrats to hold Rep. Dingell’s wife responsible for her husband’s decision to hire Leigh Greden as his chief of staff.

One City Council member summed up the situation thusly: “Think of the Dingells as the Clintons. Think of Leigh Greden and John Dingell’s indiscretion, his Monica Lewinski moment.”

It’s an arguably apt comparison, because like former U.S. Sen. Hilary Clinton, Mrs. Dingell’s Congressional campaign has benefitted tremendously from her husband’s connections and his accomplishments even as his own career has benefitted tremendously from his spouse’s support.

In a February 2014 piece published in The Washington Post, the title says it all: “For Debbie Dingell, a life primed for politics.” In that piece, the reporter Ben Tarris writes that Mrs. Dingell is “known in Washington, D.C., and Michigan as having her hands in just about everything…. Even before she has made her announcement, she already has major players in her corner.”

Tarris’s piece also contains this observation from a DC insider: “She’s one of the better-connected women around, definitely,” says Marlene Malek, the wife of Republican super-aide Fred Malek.

In an April 2014 New York Times piece titled, “Another Season of ‘Dynasty’ for Voters,” writer Brendan Nyhan points out that, “Absent a voter backlash, which rarely occurs, elected officials can often bequeath significant advantages to their…relatives, academic research shows. Even first-time candidates start off with a brand name that is recognizable to voters and can draw on family relationships with politicians, activists and donors that often translate into public support, endorsements and campaign contributions.”

It’s difficult to call an insular, silent revolt over the appointment of Leigh Greden voter backlash.

In the 2012 Democratic primary election, Rep. Dingell captured 16,115 of the 20,235 votes cast in Ann Arbor. In the general election, he captured 91,065 of the 181,118 votes cast in Washtenaw County.

Campaign finance records ending March 31 show that Debbie Dingell’s campaign has raised over $585,000 thus far (July 16 is the next campaign finance statement due date). Her opponent in the Democratic primary, Ypsilanti attorney Ray Mullins, has raised about $4,800.

There’s no reason to believe that any loss of support at the polls or financially in Ann Arbor would hurt Mrs. Dingell’s chances for victory. Washington, DC political analysts at Roll Call stated a Dingell win is “a solid if not quite certain bet.” Holding her accountable for a staffing decision made by her husband, however, could cause hard feelings if one believes she does, indeed, suffer from “high-handed and autocratic tendencies,” as NPR suggested in its February 2014 report. However, Council member Jack Eaton says he sure the “food fight between the local Democrats in elected office,” as he terms the ideological differences, “is a gap that Debbie Dingell would work to bridge.”

A long-time Ann Arbor resident agreed. “You know the thing about Debbie Dingell is that she talks to everybody, not just the usual suspects.”

Rep. Dingell worked tirelessly behind the scenes to push former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to come through with federal TIGER Grant money to rebuild the Stadium Bridges.

As a freshman in Congress, Mrs. Dingell will have neither the seniority nor the committee appointments her husband had that allowed him to consistently bring home the bacon to the 12th Congressional District. Recent allocations have included $48 million for a new Amtrak train station in Dearborn, federal money to rebuild the Stadium Bridges and $767,218,458 in federal stimulus money allocated to Washtenaw county by the Obama administration between 2009-2011. (Wayne County received $2.4 billion in stimulus funding.)

However, if she wins Mrs. Dingell would hit the ground running and be the first woman in the history of the U.S. to have her husband’s seat in Congress without her spouse having died. It’s a peculiar and yet significant glass ceiling that Mrs. Dingell is bumping against as she runs to represent the 12th Congressional District.

As for the complaints about Leigh Greden’s hire, Jack Eaton is sure they’ll die down and he’s equally confident if Mrs. Dingell is elected she will not chose Greden as her chief of staff.

“She has an opportunity to chose a strong woman for that position, and I believe she will do just that,” Eaton said.