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Focus On Integrity In Government

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Parent Issue
Day
29
Month
July
Year
1976
OCR Text

Focus On Integrity In Government

Michigan Congressional Primaries Heating Up

By Joe Davis

The August 3 primary election could prove whether the 11-8 majority which Democrats won in Michigan's Congressional delegation after Watergate will be temporary or permanent.

Before the Watergate backlash in 1974, Republicans held 12 Michigan Congressional seatsand Democrats held seven. All that changed, however, when hard campaigning by Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon could not save two empty Republican seats in a 1974 special election.

The aftershocks can still be felt in several hot primary races this year.

Possibly the hottest of them all will be the battle for the seat which 2nd District Republican Marvin Esch is vacating to run for the U.S. Senate. Running on the Democratic side is Ed Pierce, a charismatic M.D. who gave up a lucrative practice to start a poor people's clinic in Ann Arbor. Pierce must beat former State Representative Marvin Stempien of Uvonia in what still appears a fairly close race.

The two 2nd District Republican contenders are moderate State Senator Cari Pursell of Plymouth and Ann Arbor Councilman Ronald Trowbridge. Pursell, who looks strong on his livonia area home turf, is considered a shoo-in.

A Pierce-Pursell race in November is still too close to call-but if Pierce wins, the Democrats will gain what has been a fairly "safe" Republican seat ever since Esch won it in 1966. And that, in turn, could increase the Democrats' present 11-8 majority. This Democratic majority has only opened up since the Republican party began to crumble both locally and nationally, in 1973.

The Livonia-Ann Arbor "swing" in the 2nd District- between a burgeoning middle-class Republican suburb and a progressive university town- proved tricky in 1974, when Pierce narrowly lost a dead-heat Democratic primary to John Reuther. Esch, with an incumbent's advantage against a nearly paralyzed Democratic party, won by only a 54-46 per cent margin in that year. The Democrats' advantage this November will lie in the blue-collar wards of Monroe County, where Pierce is riding a stampede of endorsements by city, county, and union officials.

Pierce 's near-sainted reputation as a progressive in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area stems partly from the 50 per cent salary cut he took in order to start Ann Arbor's Summit Medical Center for low-income patients, and partly from long devotion to a singularly unrewarding political career, which he began as a City Councilman in 1964. He is one of the few cartdidates this year to disclose voluntarily his income and net worth.

Widespread voter concern over integrity in government, which will work in Pierce's favor, also promises to separate the winners from the losers in two other wide open Michigan primary races in the 12th and 7th Districts.

The 12th District race for the seat which Democrat James O'Hara vacated to run for the U.S. Senate has drawn in a five-candidate free-for-all in each party. The Democratic front-runners are State Senator John Bowman of Roseville and State Representative David Bonior of Mount Clemens. 

Bowman, chairman of the Senate Taxation Committee and a member of the  Corporations and Economic  Development  Committee, is running a well-heeled campaign backed by comparatively large contributors. Bowman is campaigning for pro-tectionist corporate taxes, lower local property taxes, and adjustment of differences in federal welfare funding-which he claims draw poor migrants to Michigan  from states like Mississippi. 

Bowman refused to discuss his 14-year State Senate legislative record with the  SUN. He was the only Senate Democrat  to vote against Michigan's Political Reform Bill, and helped weaken a bill to establish open meetings in the State Legislature.

Bonior, by contrast, is campaigning on  two main issues: integrity in government  and economic measures to reverse the unemployment which hits Michigan workers especially hard. Bonior supported both the Political Reform Bill and the Open Meetings Bill, and is another of the few 4 candidates who have disclosed their net  worth.

Although he was only elected in 1972,  Bonior can point to an extensive record of  progressive legislative action in areas like  health and safety, worker's compensation, energy alternatives, property tax relief, environment, and women's rights. Despite this record, Bonior only began pulling even with Bowman recently, when he began  bringing the issue of political integrity into an emerging two-man race. 

The 12th District Democratic candidate will face the winner of what polls show as a two-man race between Republicans  David Serotkin and Lawrence Zatkoff. Serotkin, a Mount Clemens lawyer-realtor who ran a strong anti-busing Congressional  campaign in 1972, is stressing aid to private Business this year as a solution to unemployment. Zatkoff, a Fraser attorney and former Macomb County Assistant Pro secutor, has drawn attention by exhuming the Vietnam MIA issue.

The August primary strikingly measures : the political stature of Democratic Senator : Philip Hart, whose retirement creates a vacuum three incumbent Congressmen are trying to fiII-Esch, O'Hara, and 7th District Republican-turned-Democrat Donald Riegle. So far, none have measured up conclusively.

The integrity issue has surfaced in Riegle's Flint-area 7th District, too. In the Democratic race there, one-term State Representative Dale Kildee is running well ahead of David Benjamin, President of UAW Local 659 (said to be "the world's largest local"). Benjamin's campaign in the predominantly blue-collar district has been weakened by still-unproven allegations that he misused union funds. Kildee is considered likely to face- and beat- GM personnel expert Robin Widgery, the unopposed Republican.

The two urban Detroit districts held by black Democratie incumbents John Conyers and Charles Diggs look quite safe, both in the August 3 primary and in November. Diggs is unopposed in the primary. However, the fact that Conyers, who was unopposed in the 1974 primary, faces token challenges this August from 23-year-old activist Lawrence Elliottand veteran inner-city campaigner Russell S. Brown, Jr., suggests that Conyers' constituency may be growing alienated.

Two of the most uncertain Democratic seats this year are in the 5th District (Grand Rapids) and the 8th District (Saginaw-Bay City), which the Republicans lost in 1974 Watergate special-election tests. Neither incumbent, Richard Vander Veen in the 5th or Robert Traxler in the 8th, faces significant opposition in the August primary. Both, however, are likely to be targeted for all-out Republican campaigns in November.

Joe Davis is a freelance writer who lives in Ann Arbor.