EDITORIAL: Rep. Debbie Dingell’s Chief of Staff

WHEN FORMER ANN Arbor City Council member Leigh Greden was announced as former Rep. John Dingell’s Chief of Staff for the Congressman’s final months in office, there was anger among Mr. Dingell’s Ann Arbor constituents. Leigh Greden’s involvement in a 2009 email scandal that triggered an Open Meetings Act lawsuit against the city which City Attorney Postema settled out of court, cost Greden his seat on Council. It also earned  him the enmity of those whom he’d insulted in emails sent to others during open meetings.

Rep. Debbie Dingell did not appoint Leigh Greden as her Chief of Staff—as some had suspected she might. Mrs. Dingell took the forward-thinking step of appointing Karen Defilippi. Ms. Defilippi has an impressive résumé. She was the former campaign manager for Pam Byrnes in her 2014 bid to unseat Rep. Tim Walberg.

In the new Congress just 19 percent of the members are women. Out of 530 Chiefs of Staff in Congressional offices on the Hill, only 24 percent are women. However, of the Democratic members of Congress who are women, 52 percent have appointed women as their chiefs of staff. Mrs. Dingell, then, is one of a minority of U.S. Senators and Representatives who employ women as their chiefs of staff.

We applaud Rep. Debbie Dingell for her progressive attitude on staffing. Only 9 percent of the Republican women in Congress have female chiefs of staff. U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow recently appointed a man as her chief of staff. Rep. Dingell, the 14th wealthiest new member of the House, has a net worth estimated at $6.2 million. Despite her firm rooting in the 1 Percent, Mrs. Dingell is working her district with a decidedly populist commitment to her constituents and practicing political progressivism.