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MI-01: Stupak Will Retire

by: James L.

Fri Apr 09, 2010 at 10:42 AM EDT


First it looked like he would, then like he wouldn't... but now it's a done deal. Roll Call:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who led a key group of anti-abortion-rights House Democrats that helped secure passage of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, told the Associated Press that he will announce his retirement later Friday.

Stupak said he wants to spend more time with his family and start a new career after 18 years in Congress, and he will announce his retirement Friday afternoon at Northern Michigan University, the AP reported.

Stupak's full statement is available here. In the diaries, Menhen recently took a look at some possible Stupak successors -- it's well worth a read.

UPDATE: With Stupak's retirement, we're adding MI-01 to our list of competitive House races, at "Tossup."

UPDATE: At his news conference this afternoon where he confirmed his retirement, Stupak stopped short of an explicit announcement, but he gave a shout-out to conservative Democratic state Rep. Mike Lahti, who's been on most people's short lists of possible replacements:

"A lot of people could do it," Stupak told a reporter when asked if Democratic candidate could win the seat. "People like Mike Lahti would do a great job."

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MI-01: Stupak Will Retire | 43 comments
MI
I am not confident we will keep this seat.

That being said, I know we will field a good candidate.

Does the GOP have any top tier options?

29/D/Male/NY-01

Our eternal optimist
Tek, if you said anything positive about our chances of retaining any Democratic seat, Hell would be frozen over.

Check Menhen's diary..it covers both Democrats and Republican candidates.

40, male, Democrat, NC-04

[ Parent ]
Hey, be nice
That was actually a rather optimistic comment--I know we'll field a good candidate--from our resident pessimist.

I'm with you, Tek, I know we'll field a good candidate. This ain't KS-03. Another bright side: in voting for the healthcare bill (eventually) Stupak has given our potential candidate a lot of cover on that issue.  

Kansan by birth, Californian by choice, and Gay by the grace of God.

[ Parent ]
Stupak Gave Cover on Lots of Things
Stupak has been a reliable liberal vote on anything that doesn't have to do with "culture of life" stuff.  

Trivia, btw: if Prusi wins, it will continue the funny connection between him and Mark Schauer.  Prusi took over the Senate Dem caucus when Schauer was elected to Congress.  Then he'd be following Mark to Congress.  But more than that, they share another connection: Schauer is currently married to Prusi's first wife.  

[ Parent ]
that's awkward
n/t

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
He wasn't even...
really a "Christian conservative", when it came to the Religious Right's issues that didn't have to do with abortion.  The Christian Coalition only gave him a 53% rating, FWIW.
[ Parent ]
You picked up on only one part of the comment
I was referring to the "I am not confident we will keep this seat" portion of Tek's comments.  The "sky is falling" mentality without providing any evidence on why "the sky is falling" is useless.  

Although this district is R+3, we have a solid bench, and someone off this bench can save this seat.  

40, male, Democrat, NC-04

[ Parent ]
I saw that
But he's our resident pessimist, if he was confident we'd keep the seat, he wouldn't be the SSP byword for pessimism. Baby steps, y'all...

Kansan by birth, Californian by choice, and Gay by the grace of God.
[ Parent ]
You are right
That would almost be like Beck saying "you know, this guy is just way too extreme".  Got to look at the context, I guess....

40, male, Democrat, NC-04
[ Parent ]
GOP Probably Doesn't Have Anyone Who's Not a "Troll"
["troll"=Upper Peninsula parlance for someone who lives "underneath the {Mackinac} bridge]

The UP is under half the population of the district and probably less than half the vote, but the Lower Peninsula section of the district doesn't have a cohesive character, or an anchor community like Traverse City, so there's no Republican with much of a base.  Also, the two Repub state senators who represent most of the district that's not in Prusi's district (most of the UP) don't live in the Congressional district; Jason Allen lives in Traverse City, and Tony Stamas is (I'm pretty sure) from Midland.  All but 1 of the state reps whose districts are mostly or all in CD 1 (and all 4 from the UP) are Democrats. So, we have the better bench of elected officials.

What we have to avoid is a bloodbath primary, and hope the GOP doesn't get a self-funder.  This is not a district where people should fantasize about a great grass roots, door knocking effort.  It's huge; it probably takes 8 hour to drive from the Bay City area to the western UP (when there aren't snowstorms or the Bridge isn't closed due to high winds).  The biggest town in the district is probably Marquette, which has less than 20,000 people.  This is a district where you do TV, and lots of it, so having name ID and raising money will be keys, because it's very hard to touch many people because it's so large and the population so diffuse.  

[ Parent ]
What WOULD Be a Disaster...
...is for blogostan to embrace that woman a few people got all excited about simply because she was running against Stupak.  She's only won one thing, a special election for a small local seat, where she chose to run as an independent instead of a Dem, got 300 votes, and then was drummed out a few months later in the general election, then was destroyed in 2008 in a state house race.  She's a lightweight, from the wrong part of the district, but if people get all excited about her, it would be a silly waste of time and resources.  
[ Parent ]
I'll bet they're already crowing
that they made Stupak leave.

The Netroots will do what they want, and no-one can stop them. If that's what the race hinges on, the Democratic Party is pretty weak in that district.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  

[ Parent ]
Mainstream news says teabaggers forced him out
Any netroot viewing this as a good thing (or lamely claiming credit) has his/her philosophy in a pretzel.
[ Parent ]
Daily Kos seems to be soft-pedaling the retirement
which surprises me, given how much hype about his so-called "coathanger amendment" was thrown around and how big so many folks there were on primarying him. (For the record, I am strongly opposed to the Hyde Amendment and any other legislation that limits access to or government funding for abortions, but know the difference between banning abortion and making it harder to get. I also supported primarying him only if his opponent had a realistic possibility of winning the general election - ergo, didn't really support the primary.)

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
Why keep pushing a lose?
Stupak is gone. They effectively have their head on a pike. They know they'll have difficulty against an established candidate without Stupak's baggage, so why get yourself bloodied up over it?

They can just claim the moral victory and move smoothly on to more winnable battles.

[ Parent ]
Usually
when a mob has someone's head on a pike, they have a raucous celebration.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
Bart Stupak went to Cooley
My law student friends and I (who all dislike Bart Stupak, them from the left and me from the right) love to make fun of the fact that Bart Stupak went to Cooley Law School, the most brazenly awful law school in the country. They build a massive library and used that to claim that they're almost as prestigious as Yale, despite the fact that they'll admit people who don't have a college degree.

So that's about all you really need to know about Bart Stupak- he went to Cooley.

Silly Comment
Half of the people who work in Lansing go to Cooley. They let essentially anyone in, and they flunk out probably half of them, and the people who graduate pass the bar.  Stupak went there because he was a state trooper working at the capitol.

Credentialism is a sign of a trivial person.  

[ Parent ]
And At The Time, Cooley Was the Only...
...law school in Michigan outside Detroit and Ann Arbor.  (Detroit College of Law has since moved to Lansing and affiliated with Michigan State.)  John Engler went there, and you can scoff all you want about Engler, but last time I checked, he kicked the shit out of us in Michigan for two decades.  
[ Parent ]
And letting anyone attend is the sign of a trivial school
n/t
[ Parent ]
Although I will concede
that John Engler is a political juggernaut. So maybe there are a few smart people at Cooley.
[ Parent ]
Cooley
There are actually a couple of law schools ranked lower than Cooley (at least in the "official" US News rankings, if you look at the mean score of the Tier 4 schools), but I think Cooley may be the most unjustifiably pretentious law school in the country, which IMO is even worse. Anyway, I only remember Cooley's dubious place near (but not quite on) the bottom of the list because my dad went to Michigan when I was a kid and brought me back their t-shirt. I still don't know why.

FYI, Indiana's own Chris "Count" Chocola also went to Cooley. You know the Club for Growth is in good hands when...

[ Parent ]
So?
I attended UNC-CH, which on paper is a very fine school, but I don't believe my education is superior to anyone that attended a school that is supposedly inferior on paper.  Stupak's Cooley experience shouldn't be mocked.

40, male, Democrat, NC-04
[ Parent ]
This whole
"Cooley is bad/no it isn't" theme is kind of distracting from the whole discussion of the open seat. Can we all just agree to disagree and move on?
[ Parent ]
Yeah, one of the weirdest derails
I've ever seen on the site.  There must be blogs out there on the merits of law schools.

34, WM, Democrat, FL-11
[ Parent ]
I think Stupak is a total douche
but making fun of him b/c he went to Cooley Law school is totally lame.  and republicans say that liberals are elitist.
[ Parent ]
Any arguments confirming your opinion?

[ Parent ]
i do have arguments for why stupak is a total
douche, but they have to do with his views on reproductive rights and the his role in the healthcare debate (which, from what i understand, are outside the scope of acceptable topics of discussion on this website).

Or do you want me to justify my opinion that it's totally lame to make fun of people based on where they attend school?

[ Parent ]
No, the first one.
And let's agree to disagree here - i consider Stupak a very good fit for his district, so i am really sorry about his retirement...
[ Parent ]
He must have been a pretty good fit for MI-01
Especially since he's held this seat since 1993.  

40, male, Democrat, NC-04
[ Parent ]
i discussed that issue in this thread
here: http://www.swingstateproject.c...

and DavidNYC told myself and everyone else to move along.  since you participated in that thread, i'm sure you are aware of that, so i don't know you want to bring that back up.

i just made that comment because i wanted to make the point that you don't have to love stupak to think that it's lame to make fun of him b/c of where he went to school.  jeez, i was trying to defend him.

[ Parent ]
Good. I almost forgot about THAT discussion

[ Parent ]
stupaks comments on more chellenges ahead
I wonder if her's thinking of running for governor.  probably not this year, but down the road.  just not the senate because A it doesn't solve his "I never get to see my family problem" and B: in a state like michigan we can get a pro-choice dem if one of the current senators were to retire.

Top ten signs you're an SSPer #1: your favorite song is "Panic At Tedisco" and no one understands what you mean.
I'm getting sick of Dems who don't want to fight for re-election.
Suckiness.
I appreciate the sacrifice made by public servants
and their families.

I sure wouldn't want to run for office in this political environment, and I can't blame anyone who runs away after getting hammered.

And Stupak got hammered from both sides.

[ Parent ]
More than that, he's been getting death threats
I can't see blaming someone getting death threats for saying (or, well, thinking) "Fuck it and fuck you! I'm OUTTA HERE!"

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
ezra klein on how not to make enemies
http://voices.washingtonpost.c...

Compare Nelson and Stupak to people such as Mark Warner or Brad Ellsworth, both of whom are moderate Democrats who had serious concerns about the bill, but who spent their time quietly getting those concerns addressed rather than using them to get TV bookings in advance of a high-profile deal. Nelson and Stupak made themselves into targets for both the left and the right, and ended the process with lots of notoriety but even more new enemies. Warner and Ellsworth haven't suffered from the same backlash. The old model in which moderate Democrats justify their vote for a bill by talking trash about it until they get bought off doesn't work in an environment where the media and the political opposition is waiting to pounce on the buy-off.

[ Parent ]
These seem like excellent points
and certainly a propos to Stupak.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  
[ Parent ]
Exactly
Him and Lincoln brought this onto themselves by being mouthpieces on tv about their problems.  The Democrats taking the less amount of heat on this bill are the ones who didnt grandstand and got with the program.  I fully acknowledge Stupak doing the work of his constituents in his actions, but he essentially tied his name to the bill and did so in such a divisive way.

He played bad politics and now he cant handle the after-effects.  The ones who played the power-brokers are the ones who got fucked by the media (rightly so in some circumstances).  This was not the bill to take big stands on and then cave.  If you got problems, take it up with the Majority Leader/Speaker, not CNN.

[ Parent ]
Its called being a public servant
And that's different from being a slave.  

40, male, Democrat, NC-04
[ Parent ]
I'll
give Stupak a pass, however I do find it slightly annoying when members of Congress get slightly scared of the thought of actually having to (gasp!) campaign and they retire. Now that isn't the case with every member, obviously no one expects you to run if you're sick or getting death threats. I mean in most cases it's called taking one for the team and waiting until a better cycle.

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  
[ Parent ]
The timing does suck
That's a given.


40, male, Democrat, NC-04
[ Parent ]
It would be great if Stupak ran for Gov
Excellent candidate, and he would be a lightning rod for the lunatic extremists to attack, in a state where that lunacy will not play well against an established moderate.

He'd be a great Governor, and would instantly be the frontrunner.

MI-01: Stupak Will Retire | 43 comments

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