JOHN CONYERS, JR.
Posted on 06/17/2005 7:23:46 AM PDT by SJackson
JOHN CONYERS, JR.
John Conyers is, according to National Journal, the most leftwing Member of Congress. But in the attack he launched Thursday on President Bush, this Michigan Representative from the most Islamic district in America also has other motives and some sinister behind-the-scenes allies. Before believing his carefully packaged propaganda campaign about the British Downing Street Memo, Americans ought to learn more about Congressman John Conyers and the forces behind this con game.From Hamtramck the Muslim call to prayer now echoes across the area from local mosque loudspeakers five times each day, the first at 6 A.M. and the last at 10 P.M. Conyers' official congressional web site allows visitors, at the click of a mouse, to read its contents in Arabic.
John Conyers, Jr. is a Democratic Member of Congress who represents the 14th District of Michigan, which includes roughly half of Detroit, most of Dearborn with America's biggest Arab-American community, and all of once-Polish-American Hamtramck.
This district, slightly redrawn since the 2000 Census, has had an electorate 61 percent African-American and in 2000 cast 81 percent of its votes for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. In 2004 Conyers won re-election with 84 percent of the vote, approximately 11 percent more than Democratic standard bearer Senator John F. Kerry drew here in Wayne County.
John Conyers, Jr. was born in Detroit in 1929, five months before the stock market crash that began the Great Depression. He was the first of five children born to a factory auto painter who soon became a leftwing organizer for the United Auto Workers (UAW), one of the first labor unions to organize black workers. The UAW, begun in 1935, was a union dedicated to class warfare by its radical parent the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), later merged into the AFL-CIO.
In 1943, 14-year-old Conyers witnessed a race riot in Detroit. "Every black man considered every white man his mortal enemy, and vice-versa," Conyers is quoted recalling this riot in Richard Bruner's 1971 book Black Politicians (New York: David McKay). "It operated on a very personal, animalistic level; they were reduced to trying to destroy each other. People were being pulled off street cars and literally beaten to death right out in public. It was a form of insanity."
After high school, Conyers worked briefly at a Lincoln Motors factory, went to night school, trained to be a civil engineer, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1951 and served a year in Korea as a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. After discharge in 1954, he used veteran benefits for college. While attending local Wayne State University Conyers became involved in politics, narrowly winning election to the local Democratic Party's organizing committee. He completed his BA degree in 1957, a doctorate in jurisprudence at Wayne State in 1958, and became a lawyer by passing the Michigan Bar Exam in 1959.
Conyers worked as legislative assistant to young Detroit Congressman John Dingell from 1959 to 1961, and from 1961 until 1964 as a politically-appointed referee of the Michigan Workmen's Compensation Department.
In 1964 Conyers ran for Congress, winning the Democratic Primary by 44 votes and the general election in a Democrat-gerrymandered district by more than 110,000 votes. Conyers since then has been in Congress for more than four decades, making him the second most senior member of the House of Representatives. The most senior is his mentor Dingell.
Congressman Conyers belongs to the radical Progressive Caucus, and in 1969 he was one of 13 co-founders of the Congressional Black Caucus in the House of Representatives. His voting record, according to the progressive Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tilts left between 90 and 100 percent of the time. According to the 2002 rankings of the National Journal Conyers is the most "liberal" member of the House of Representatives.
Conyers is the most prominent lawmaker lobbying to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted murderer of a Philadelphia police officer. Conyers has been a National Executive Board member of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which was created as a Soviet front and still embraces its Communist heritage. In a June 1, 1979 New York Times opinion piece he co-authored with Marcus Raskin, co-founder of the extreme leftwing think tank the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Conyers asserted that "government's responsibility is to revitalize the nation's economy through creative forms of public ownership" - in other words, through socialism.
Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks worked on Conyers' 1964 campaign and was employed for more than two decades in his Detroit office. But unlike Parks, who committed civil disobedience to change society by refusing to sit in the back of a segregated public bus, Conyers has deliberately designed laws to treat citizens of different races differently and to impose obedience to policies of reverse racism. One such Conyers law requires police to keep statistics on the race of people they question or arrest in to order to discourage "racial profiling" of minorities, a law that also makes police more reluctant to question or arrest minority citizens even when such actions are warranted.
Conyers helped enact "hate crime" laws, which critics have described as punishing people for "thought crimes" and politically-incorrect speech. These laws in practice are often applied unequally. If a white hits a black, big city prosecutors frequently add hate crime charges to impose a heavier criminal penalty. If a black hits a white, such prosecutors seldom add charges involving hate crime statutes.
Conyers has authored a bill to study the economic harm done to descendants of slaves, the results of which research will lay the basis for demanding that potentially trillions of dollars in reparations be paid by American taxpayers to black Americans. None of today's taxpayers have legally held slaves in America, and none of the potential recipients of such reparations have ever been slaves, slavery having been abolished in the U.S. in 1865. But as Fabian socialist playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, he who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on Paul's support.
For a radical like Conyers, such racially-polarizing issues are win-win propositions. They encourage minorities to regard themselves as victims and to regard white America as their victimizer. If reparations are paid to every African-American, Conyers can take credit for the largesse. If reparations are not paid, Conyers can denounce this as racism and use the issue to stir resentment and to justify more political transfer of wealth to minorities via other means such as welfare and racial preferences.
Conyers describes as one of his "major accomplishments" the "Motor Voter Bill of 1993," which facilitates the voter registration of all who apply for a state driver's license or for welfare or other government benefits. Conyers' legislation also impeded the removal of potentially fraudulent names from local voter rolls.
Conyers has joined fellow Black Caucus (and former Progressive Caucus) member Rep. Charles Rangel (D.-New York) in supporting renewed military conscription, arguing that the volunteer military disproportionately enlists the poor and minorities. This puts Conyers in the odd positions of being a pro-draft-but-anti-war activist as well as a reparations-for-slavery advocate who favors involuntary servitude.
Like most leftwing Democrats, Conyers voted against the use of force in Iraq but also against permitting oil drilling by union workers on a scant 20 acres of the 1.2 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), thus voting to keep America dependent on Middle Eastern oil while opposing efforts to make that region politically democratic and stable.
But Conyers went farther. In January 2003 he was the only member of Congress to speak before, and lend his prestige to, an anti-war rally organized by the Marxist-Leninist, pro-North Korean front group International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Rep. Rangel also addressed the rally but not in person - via a letter read by another speaker.) Conyers embraced his comrades in this group with the same enthusiasm and support he gave during the Cold War to the Soviet-backed World Peace Council.
He co-sponsored, and persuaded many other members of the Progressive Caucus to sign, a letter pressing President Bill Clinton to "delink" economic from military sanctions against Saddam Hussein. This letter, which was aimed at ending economic sanctions against the Iraqi dictator, supported Hussein's propaganda depicting American and British-backed sanctions as the main cause of disease and infant death in Iraq. In fact, the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program was generating billions of dollars to help the Iraqi people - but much of this money was being siphoned off by Hussein for weapons and palaces, and by U.N. officials and political figures in nations such as France who were on Hussein's then-secret payroll.
In May 2002 Conyers was one of 17 House Democrats who voted against a Resolution (HR 392) expressing support for Israel as it faced terrorist attacks that killed more than 600 civilians, including several Americans. The resolution stated that "the United States and Israel are now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism." Whether Conyers voted against this resolution because he represents more Arab-Americans than any other Member of Congress, or because radical American Muslim groups lobbied against it, or because many leftwing radicals like himself now support the Palestinians who refuse to make peace with the Jewish State, Conyers did not say.
In 2001 the United States withdrew most of its diplomatic participation in the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia And Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa after it became clear that the gathering would give prominence not only to anti-American but also to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic leaders. Despite this, several leftwing Americans including Congressman Conyers and six other congressional Democrats attended and lent their prestige to what became an anti-Jewish hatefest.
Congressman Conyers has also long favored reducing or ending U.S. economic sanctions and travel restrictions against Cuba, for whose Marxist regime Conyers in 1997 helped arrange an opportunity to lobby Congress in lawmaker offices on Capitol Hill. But Conyers has not always opposed such sanctions, even when they imposed hardship on the poor in targeted nations. In 1972 he joined then-Congressman Ron Dellums from Berkeley, California, in co-sponsoring legislation to impose harsh economic sanctions against white-ruled Apartheid South Africa.
"When we introduced the bill to bring sanctions and disinvestment of American corporations in South Africa," said Dellums in a 1998 PBS interview, "it was a Berkeley, Commie, Pinko, Socialist idea, but later on it became an idea that people all over the country embraced because they understood it." Apparently sanctions in Conyers' view are fine when used to bring down a white racist regime in South Africa - but not when used to weaken the red racist regime of Fidel Castro or the Ba'athist socialist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
When Castro and his Soviet allies attempted to take over Central America during the 1980s, Conyers strongly supported the Nicaraguan Sandinista dictatorship backed by those Marxist powers. "There is more freedom and less brutality in revolutionary Nicaragua," wrote Conyers in a letter published in the March 7, 1986 New York Times, "than in Central American countries supported by the [Ronald Reagan] Administration." Conyers signed a fund-raising letter for the organization Medical Aid to El Salvador that channeled medical supplies to groups and regions controlled by Cuban-backed Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) terrorist guerrillas.
On March 11, 2003 Congressman Conyers privately convened and invited other members of Congress to a gathering that featured former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, now associated with the Communist front organization International A.N.S.W.E.R., and more than two dozen leftist attorneys and legal scholars. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how to impeach President George W. Bush as a way to prevent military action against Saddam Hussein. When Roll Call magazine two days later reported that the meeting had happened, Conyers staff initially denied it, but a Conyers spokesperson Dena Graziano later confirmed the story and added that no "consensus" had been reached about how to proceed. Two decades earlier Conyers had likewise proposed impeaching President Ronald Reagan.
On June 16, 2005, Conyers scheduled a media event to deliver to the Bush White House what, in his Internet blog, Conyers described as "over 540,000 signatures from Americans demanding a response from the Administration to the charges set forth" in the so-called Downing Street Memo (sometimes also called the Downing Street Minutes).
This memo is a purported internal British Government note dated 23 July 2002 by go-between Matthew Rycroft. Its text was published on May Day 2005 by the Times of London. This memo has been seized on by Conyers and more than 100 other Democratic Members of Congress as evidence that the Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair governments were looking for, and cooking up, reasons to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power.
Was the likelihood of military intervention against Iraq a secret? No, because Saddam Hussein by July 2002 had already defied more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that he submit to unencumbered inspection for prohibited Weapons of Mass Destruction at all Iraqi potential military and technology sites.
Does this British memo, as Conyers has claimed, show that the Bush and Blair governments believed Hussein had no Weapons of Mass Destruction and that they therefore conspired to lie about this to justify military action? No, the memo explicitly asks what the consequences would be "if Saddam used WMD on day one" of a potential U.S.-British military action - which confirms that Bush and Blair were convinced that Hussein had such weapons. But Conyers and his cohorts somehow neglect to mention this and other evidence in the memo that disproves their own partisan conspiracy theories.
The June 2005 Conyers media event designed to push his latest attempt to undermine the Bush Administration's War on Terrorism was carefully orchestrated. It included pre-arranged interviews with Cable News Network (CNN), the Democrat-funded Air America Radio network with its star Al Franken, taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR), radical Amy Goodman on her show Democracy Now! and other left-liberal establishment media.
How did Conyers obtain 540,000 "signatures" of citizens assailing President Bush over this British memo? On June 1, 2005 Conyers wrote to his supporters on his blog that "the story dies without blogs like Raw Story, BradBlog, DailyKos, Democratic Underground, Progressive Democrats of America and others. The blogosphere has put us well on our way to over 100,000 Americans willing to ask the president to respond to the leaked Memo by signing my open letter to Bush." The gathering of these signatures, in other words, was a concerted campaign involving the cadres of several of America's most extreme left-wing Internet blogs.
"This [Memo] story," wrote Conyers, "should not be allowed to fall down the memory hole during wall-to-wall coverage of the Michael Jackson trial and a runaway bride," as he worked zealously to keep it alive and growing.
On June 9, 2005, Conyers wrote to supporters on his blog: "Today, I am pleased to announce that Moveon.org [sic], one of the pioneers in internet activism has joined our drive to demonstrate that the stonewalling of the White House on the Downing Street Minutes will not stand. We deserve answers and we deserve them now. Given Moveon's involvement, I think we can go for half a million signatures, don't you?"
MoveOn.org is far more than just another leftwing web site. MoveOn.org is heavily funded by, among others, the eccentric billionaire international financier George Soros who spent at least $27 million to defeat President Bush in the 2003-04 election cycle. Soros has said that President Bush made the United States "too strong" in the world, and that Soros sought to oust President Bush to reduce American power to be more on a par with Germany or France.
Operating with the money of Soros and other wealthy leftists, the head of MoveOn.org's Political Action Committee following the 2004 election boasted that "we bought it, we paid for it, we own the Democratic Party." MoveOn.org is one of the "seven sisters" of the Soros-funded "Shadow Party" now busy taking control of the Democratic Party and much of the rest of the left side of America's political spectrum. MoveOn.org and Soros have put their backing behind Conyers' attempt to turn a British memo into a Bush memogate scandal.
Why are Conyers and his fellow left-liberal Democrats eager to wage campaigns to impeach President Bush or to smear him with a scandal as flimsy as the Downing Street Memo? In Conyers' case such tactics can pay many dividends. Such issues divert public attention from the Democrats' lack of any credible positive plan for defeating terrorism or solving social problems. Conyers' issues have the potential to put Republicans on the defensive or at least waste their time and resources, and to provide a rallying point for leftists and Islamists worldwide who are eager to undermine and discredit the war on terrorism and the President leading it. The Michigan district Conyers represents has been gerrymandered to include far more Democrats than Republicans, and far more Muslims than Jews.
In 2004 Conyers was one of the few congressmen prominently featured and positively portrayed in left filmmaker Michael Moore's pseudo-documentary Fahrenheit 9-11. In May 2005 Conyers became a regular contributor to "progressive" columnist Arianna Huffington's webzine of blogs The Huffington Post.
On March 23, 2005 Conyers spoke at a Lyndon LaRouche event in Detroit. LaRouche, a former Socialist Workers Party (SWP) organizer and follower of Marxist Leon Trotsky, co-founder of the Soviet Union, later embraced conspiracy theories and held at various times that the world was secretly controlled by Britain's Queen Elizabeth, British bankers, Israel or the Trilateral Commission. The Anti-Defamation League has described LaRouche as an anti-Semite.
LaRouche, now in his eighties, is also a perennial presidential candidate who made his 8th run for the Oval Office in 2004. In 2000, running as a Democrat, LaRouche won 22 percent of Arkansas' primary votes against Al Gore but was denied any delegates at the Democratic National Convention because the Democratic National Committee ruled he was "not a real Democrat." In December 2004, according to one account, Conyers "invited LaRouche's group to present political testimony of alleged GOP voter suppression before an unofficial panel he chaired."
(These deceptive Conyers "Hearings" have been published as a paperback book the Congressman gives to those who contribute $50 to his campaign coffers. This book, titled What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election, was published by Academy Chicago Publishers "more as a public service than a money making venture," said Conyers on his blog. If so, does this make publication of this book a potentially-illegal campaign contribution? The book, adds Conyers, "has an amazing forward [sic] by Gore Vidal.")
It strains credibility for a powerful and sophisticated Democratic leader such as Conyers to claim no knowledge of who and what Lyndon LaRouche is. This, however, is what Conyers' staff did when reporters, in response to an internet story, began asking about the Congressman's links to this controversial figure accused of anti-Semitism.
Confronted with several of LaRouche's statements about Jews, a member of Conyers' staff told one journalist: "After finding your post, we went to your suggested links and pulled up the LaRouche quotes that were, to say the least, antisemitic and racist. We brought them to Mr. Conyers attention. He was shocked and surprised. On his behalf: he unequivocally condemns these statements, and he will not speak before any group he knows to be associated with LaRouche unless they renounce these views. If he knew about these sickening quotes, he would not have spoken before the group."
But on stage at the LaRouche event, flanked by the Midwest coordinator of the LaRouche Political Action Committee (sponsor of the event) and a leader of the LaRouche Youth Movement, Conyers according to one source had told the audience that he wanted to help them "take these [LaRouche] arguments, the book [LaRouche's Draft Democratic Party Platform], the weekly newsletter, and let's get it out into the debate ... what I would like to do with you, is to begin to debate these issues. I know that they're taken as gospel. But, unless they can stand the test of debate, they're just a great view held by a number of people, who believe one thing. But that's not going to sell it. And so, what I want to do, is, extend the discussion: What we need is discussions about this and where [the Democratic Party is] and where are we going."
Rep. Conyers is the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, and he also sits on the Courts, the Internet & Intellectual Property Subcommittee and the Border Security & Claims Subcommittee. If Democrats regain a majority in the House of Representatives, Conyers will become Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and have the power to determine who receives lifetime appointments as federal judges or U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Each of these federal judges and Justices will have the power to reshape American law.
Tied for the title as Conyers' single biggest campaign contributor is the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA), whose members make much of their money by threatening to sue American businesses. Other big donors include organized labor, which provides nearly 37 percent of his Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions. Almost 60 percent of Conyers' PAC money comes from businesses and professional groups. Among his largest recent campaign contributors have been AT&T, Time Warner, Echostar Communications, MCI Group, MGM Mirage casino, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and the National Association of Broadcasters. Among his big donors is General Motors but, oddly, not the labor union for which his father was a leftist apparatchik, the United Auto Workers.
In 2003-2004 Conyers received 85.4 percent of his campaign contributions from outside the state and district he represents.
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One more thing.
John Conyers often comments that people who have been covicted of a felony cannot vote in Michigan. This is a blatent LIE. I am a convicted felon and a legal voter. Under Michigan law any legal resident over 18 may vote as long as they are not currently incarcerated, on parole or probation.
Conyers true goal is for prison inmates to vote.
Shine that light, the MSM certainly won't.
I swear. Listen to him.
He was outside the White House gates last night trying to deliver a "petition" to the guards there on the DSM.
We chanted "Conyers is a phony" to him and about 100 of his supporters.
It was like swatting a hornet's nest.
*interesting read ping*
It may also be stated that Conyers district(s) that he has represented over the past 40 years has lost more people than any other district in the U.S. The phrase "votes with ones feet" most certainly applies here. Conyers is a sad, pathetic relic and very much a willing tool of the radical anti-American haters. It's sad we no longer arrest people for treason and sedition.
I am a former Detroiter; there are lots of former residents of that city. Conyers district is a sewer. Residential streets are NEVER plowed in the winter, crime is out of control, people live behind bars in their own homes. Gangs rule the neighborhoods, prostitution is open, homes are into as neighbors stand by afraid to report the thieves to police. Is Conyers interested in any of this? No, he's too busy toting the radical Muslim propaganda line.
It is a joke that a man like this can be elected over and over again to the House.
LOL!
Not to mention a prime example of what has happened with allowing African-Americans to put all of their proverbial political eggs all in one basket. A two-party system would never allow this abomination to happen. Sadly, when Conyers finally heads south for his eternal nap, his replacement will scarcely be better than he. Only some will recall, but his former fellow Congressman from the other majority-Black district was George Crockett, another unabashed Communist (perhaps even more leftist than Conyers), who replaced the crooked Charles Diggs, Jr. Crockett was then replaced by the rabidly racist nitwit Barbara-Rose Collins (though at least to that district's credit, defeated her in a primary, although she's now back on the Detroit City Council), and now we have Kwame's Mama, Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick. Disgraceful.
His district has a higher proportion of Muslims than any other in Congress, and his official congressional web site can be read in Arabic
That was only recently with the 2002 redistricting. Until then, East Dearborn was represented by John Dingell (For 40+ years). Dingell now only has West Dearborn where he lives. I'm not sure if Hamtramck was Conyers or Kilpatrick country. I know that Conyers has had West Detroit since Detroit went from three reps to two.
This district, slightly redrawn since the 2000 Census, has had an electorate 61 percent African-American and in 2000 cast 81 percent of its votes for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. In 2004 Conyers won re-election with 84 percent of the vote, approximately 11 percent more than Democratic standard bearer Senator John F. Kerry drew here in Wayne County.
That was because of Detroit. Detroit went 93% for Kerry and Gore. Dearborn went 58% for Kerry(and Bush won it in 2000). One other thing that needs to be mentioned is that Detroit and Dearborn do not get along. The blacks and whites there for years were not fond of one another, and the blacks and Arabs there do not get along that well either. There's a lot of regional Detroit dynamics in effect. All Conyers cares about is what the City of Detroit thinks - which is what most of his district covers. The burbs in his district, including East Dearborn, have no representation.
Whether Conyers voted against this resolution because he represents more Arab-Americans than any other Member of Congress,
In March 2002? That most likely isn't possible. The redistrict battles were still going on at that time and the representatives might not have known what their district would look like. Conyers did not represent East Dearborn until late 2002.
I know the 1992 and 2002 maps, but not before then.
I agree - and those who have completed their prison terms should be allowed to re-register to vote .. while I also agree that those who are currently imprisoned should not be allowed that priviledge.
And I believe .. Boxer/Clinton have already submitted legislation to do just that - allow incarcerated felons vote.
I get pretty irritated by some of the felon voting threads here sometimes. They tend to be heavily populated by people who don't know what they're talking about. In the end those people will only help Hillary because they're uneducated about the real issue.
When I was committing my crimes voting was the last thing I cared about. When I cleaned up my act I became conservative and got registered and have voted almost exclusively republican. I think most of the other freeper felons are much the same way.
A prison inmate on the other hand will vote simply for a change of pace for a day and there is little doubt that they will vote for the candidate most likely to release them early.
Most disgusting are the freepers who have said that I should be stripped of all of my rights for good because I'm a felon who can't be trusted. Seems a little harsh for past drunk driving arrests to me. This is especially true coming from people who brag about their drinking prowess.
"will only help Hillary because they're uneducated about the real issue"
That statement is the key. This is exactly why Hillary and her goons want these people to be able to vote.
I still say .. once a person has done their time and turned their life around, they should be allowed to apply for voting rights. However .. if they end up back in jail for some reason .. it's easy to remove that right .. so I don't see what the problem would be.
It's an issue for the states. Hillary wants inmate voting nationwide. As it is only Maine legally allows prison inmates to vote. Hillarys true goal is to get rid of the electoral college and she can't do it with individual states holding separate elections.
Her goals are far wider than inmate voting.
Yes .. I can see that!
Looking at it from 1963-on, there were roughly between 6-8 Detroit or partial Wayne County seats.
District #1 (pre-1965) was represented by (Caucasian Pole) liberal 'Rat Lucien Nedzi, that district was the north/south sliver of east of Downtown straight out to 8-Mile, encompassing Hamtramck.
District #13 (pre-'65) was represented by (Black) 'Rat Charles C. Diggs, then the lone African-American from Michigan (first elected in 1954), and his district was central downtown, in the same sliver north/south shape as the 1st, also taking in Highland Park on its way up to 8-mile.
District #14 (pre-'65) was represented by centrist 'Rat(Caucasian) Harold Ryan. His district was everything east of the 1st, to the river and the Grosse Points, obviously upper-crust.
District #15 (pre-'65) was Dingell's bailiwick. Then it was also the similar-shaped sliver virtually identical to the 1st & 13th, running along the west side of downtown up to 8-Mile. It did not even go as far as Dearborn, yet.
District #16 (pre-'65) was John Lesinski's district (a Caucasian Polish 'Rat, and fairly Conservative), then encompassing all of southern Wayne County including Dearborn.
District #17 (pre-'65) was Martha Griffiths' (lib 'Rat) district, encompassing west of the city to the northwest corner of Wayne County.
Due to the CRA as well as Baker v. Carr, the state was forced to redraw the lines for the '64 elections. In doing so, despite an obvious decline in population for the city, increased the number of districts touching the city and county from 6 to 9 !
The 1st district had its southern half chopped off above downtown and was merged with most of the upper half of the 13th, creating John Conyers' district (Conyers had narrowly beaten the more moderate Richard Austin in the primary. Austin later became the first African-American elected statewide in MI 6 years later). That new district had everything north of downtown to 8-Mile. Lucien Nedzi had to move east to run in the 14th where Harold Ryan was.
The 2nd, which had previously been not in the city, but in the far distant suburbs (and a heavily GOP seat), was moved into a semi-circle around Wayne County, going so far into Martha Griffiths' 17th into NW Wayne, and the seat flipped to a 'Rat in that election, Weston Vivian.
The 12th, which had previously the district for the Western UP (!) was shifted to the Detroit area. The previous 7th district liberal 'Rat incumbent, James O'Hara, represented the Thumb, was forced south into compact Macomb County, and as far down into Wayne County as Harper Woods !
The 13th was designed to encompass all of the central downtown now, merging the old 1st, 13th, 14th, & 15th southern halves into one. Charles Diggs no longer had to worry about representing the Polish or Caucasian sections of the city anymore.
The 14th saw a brutal primary between Nedzi and Harold Ryan, with Nedzi prevailing, taking the redrawn 14th, now including his old area near Hamtramck and all of the Grosse Pointes (save for Harper Woods).
Dingell's 15th was eliminated completely, now it was apart of 3 separate districts, the 1st, 16th, and 17th. He chose to move south into the 16th. The new 15th was now in southwest-central Wayne Co, west of Dearborn. That was won by liberal 'Rat William D. Ford.
The new 16th was downriver Detroit, above Monroe County (cutting off the Western half, which became the new 15th). This was the seat Dingell carpetbagged into and he unexpectedly knocked off John Lesinski, Jr., who represented the bulk of the seat.
The new 17th was the result of the old one being chopped up into 3 parts. Martha Griffiths remained in the seat, but the new district centered on west of Conyers district, including Southfield.
The new 19th was the central part of the old 17th, essentially all of Livonia, and that seat also fell to a 'Rat named Billie Farnum.
With unchanged lines, LBJ tidalwave winners in the 2nd and 19th districts fell to Republicans, Marvin Esch (a liberal RINO) and Jack McDonald (a moderate).
After redistricting in 1972, with the rapidly declining population, the number of districts abutting the city and county went from 9 to 7.
The 1st, Conyers's seat, was forced to expand slightly east and west to more Caucasian/Polish areas (and also had to allow for the Diggs' 13th to expand as well).
The 2nd, still in the hands of RINO Marvin Esch, saw it expand within Wayne to encompass both it and the old 19th in the NW end. Previous 19th incumbent, GOPer Jack McDonald moved into Oakland County and lost to old 18th district GOPer incumbent William Broomfield in the new 19th.
The 13th, still remained in Charles Diggs's hands, with only minor modifications and expansions (into the 1st and 14th, north and east).
The 14th, Nedzi's seat, remained largely the same, though taking back the Harper Woods section and slightly inching up into Macomb County.
The 15th remained in Bill Ford's hands, though rejiggered slightly, now having to reach into Monroe County and partially along downriver.
The 16th under Dingell stayed mostly the same, save for shedding part of downriver to Ford.
The 17th under Griffiths also remained largely the same, although having to inch slightly westward.
The only changeover in 1974 was Griffiths' retirement and replacement by another liberal 'Rat, Bill Brodhead (who barely beat a Conservative in the primary).
In 1976, the changeover was in the 2nd, when RINO Esch ran against ex-RINO turned 'Rat Don Riegle, losing 53-47%. He was replaced by another liberal RINO, Carl Pursell.
No changeover occurred again until the indicted Charles Diggs resigned and was succeed by elderly radical Commie George Crockett, Jr. in the 13th in 1980.
Later that year, liberal 'Rat Dennis Hertel succeeded Lucien Nedzi in the 14th (Eastern Detroit/Grosse Pointes) seat, who had seen his career descend downwards after missteps.
After the 1982 redistricting, we begin to see where the ridiculous Justice Dept.-ordered gerrymandering to preserve Black districts begins. Still holding onto the same 7 districts, despite jaw-dropping population declines, the districts still reelected 6 of 7 incumbents.
Conyers's 1st now had to dramatically expand outward, gobbling up 1/3rd of Hertel's old 14th, and most dramatically, more than 1/2 (!) of Brodhead's 17th, with a tentacle reaching down into Dingell's 16th.
Pursell's 2nd also similarly expanded westward, although still encompassing the last vestigates of substantial Republican strength in NW Wayne, the bulk of his district went as far west as the Indiana border !
Crockett's 13th also had to increase dramatically in size, now expanding partly more into the 14th and downriver into Dingell's seat.
Hertel's 14th was forced to move further into Oakland, though still hanging onto what was left of extreme NE Wayne.
Bill Ford's 15th was forced to cede sections on the NE and SE sides to the 16th and 17th districts respectively, and forced westward towards Ann Arbor to take up the slack.
Dingell's 16th was also similarly shifted, though maintaining the sliver between the river, Ford's and Crockett 'n Conyers's districts, was forced to expand dramatically southward into Monroe County, and into Pursell's GOP areas in the previous 2nd.
The big surprise was in the 17th, where Bill Brodhead was expected to remain, he chose to retire out of the blue, and the seat was halved and expanded (in a sliver) southward into Ford's 15th and into Oakland County. Forced out because of the division of the 14th, 17th, and 18th districts was then-Rep. Jim Blanchard, who vacated his seat for the successful Governor's race that year. The new 17th would now be represented by our friend, the obnoxious liberal 'Rat, Sandy Levin.
And, of course, things remained the same in all the districts for the next 8 years until Barbara Rose-Collins succeeded Crockett in the 13th.
When the '92 redistricting came, the number of districts abutting Detroit/Wayne was reduced from 7 to 6.
What was formerly Conyers's 1st was "moved" to the Upper Peninsula.
Pursell's 2nd, too, was "moved" to the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, hundreds of miles away.
In their places now were the new 11th, while mostly in Oakland County, took in Livonia and Redford Twp, now mostly what was left of Pursell's chunk of the old 2nd and Broomfield's 18th (both leaving Congress that year), with the new Conservative GOPer, Joe Knollenberg, taking the seat.
The 12th was now what remained of the old 17th and parts of what was left of the old 14th, now mostly (barely) anything left in Wayne, and that was what Sandy Levin held onto, now mostly in Oakland County.
The new 13th was essentially all of the old 15th, still represented by Bill Ford, though taking part's of Pursell's old 2nd (and Pursell opted to retire rather than take on Ford).
The new 14th was Conyers's newly-drawn district, taking in all of the old 1st and expanding it mostly into Dennis Hertel's old 14th and most of the Grosse Pointe areas. No doubt had you told many residents there in the 1960s that Conyers would be their Rep. within 25 years, they'd have thought it insane.
The new 15th, still with Barbara Rose-Collins was also similarly expanded, originally the old 13th, now had to expand westward into what Conyers didn't have in the Grosses and southward further along the river into Dingell's realm.
Dingell's 16th still was largely the same shape, though having to lose some to Collins, but he was further and further away from the seat he originally represented, now entirely gobbled up within the Conyers district years beforehand.
After Ford's retirement in the 13th and replacement by the leftist 'Rat, Lynn Nancy Rivers in '94, and Collins's primary defeat in '96 by Carolyn Kilpatrick, there were no changes until the '02 redistricting.
Since I have not seen the new maps for '02, yet, I don't know how many of the seats were changed around and still take in Wayne County anymore. I know that Rivers and Dingell were forced into an Ann Arbor-area seat (which would've been quite the shock to Dingell's old man).
In any event, that's pretty much the history of Detroit's/Wayne County seats from 1963-2003.
It's actually not easy to remove that right. Sometimes even mortally challenged people don't have their voting rights removed.
You always hear about those people that voted Republican until the day they died.....then they vote DemonRat.
I don't know what it is about death that changes their politics like that.
Great info, DJ!
In 2002, Conyers' district (now the 14th) got half of Dearborn and also extended all the way Downriver to Grosse Ile. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Congress_14_30530_7.pdf
Kilpatrick's CD (now the 13th) took the Gorsse Pointes and Harper Woods and extended Downriver until just north of Grosse Ile (Wyandotte). http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Congress_13_30528_7.pdf
Knollenberg's new 9th CD was placed entirely within Oakland County, and many of Knollenberg's NW Wayne suburbs, along with some of Rivers', were included in the new 11th CD (half of which is in Oakland), where McCotter won. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Congress_11_30523_7.pdf
Dingell lost many of his Downriver precincts, and his district (now the 15th) extended to Ann Arbor, and of course he beat Rivers in the primary. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Congress_15_30533_7.pdf
As I've written before, I think the GOP could have done an even better job at redistricting. First of all, instead of adding the Grosse Pointes and working-class white Downriver townships to the two black-majority districts, they could have added the two Ypsilantis, Superior, Romulus, and Inkster to Kilpatrick's CD (making it well over 60% black) and most of Southfield plus the other black parts of Oakland to Conyers' CD (making it well over 70% black). Dingell could have gotten a district encompassing Dearborn, the white Downriver towns that are heavily Democrat, Democrat parts of Monroe, and Ann Arbor, and Rivers probably wouldn't have even tried to run in such a district, 65% of which had been represented by Dingell. Republican parts of Monroe could then be added to Smith's 7th CD in order to make it more Republican.
The Grosse Pointes could have been connected to eastern Macomb and Rochester, Rochester Hills, Troy and Clawson in Oakland to make a suburban, comfortably Republican (53% for Bush in 2000) district for Candice Miller centered around her hometown of Harrison. This would allow a separate comfortably Republican (53% for Bush in 2000) Thumb district to be drawn comprising Huron, Sanilac, Tuscola, Lapeer, St. Clair, northern Macomb and northern Oakland, as well as a few townships in Saginaw and Genesee and one township in Bay. Knollenberg could have been given a district similar to the one from the 1990s, but comfortably Republican (53% for Bush in 2000), which would exclude heavily Jewish and Democrat eastern West Bloomfield and heavily black and Democrat Pontiac. Pontiac and esatern West Bloomfield would join white Democrat parts of south Oakland, SW Macomb and NNW Wayne in an overwhelmingly Democrat district where Sander Levin would almost certainly win. Some of western Oakland and NW Wayne would be appended to Livingston and parts of the Ingham, Eaton and and Clinton counties to create a comfortably Republican (53% for Bush in 2000) district for Rogers. Lansing and East Lansing would be removed from Rogers' and Smith's CDs and attached (by a sliver of towns) to Bay City, Saginaw, Flint and other heavily Democrat areas to form an overwhelmingly Democrat district where conservative Democrat Jim Barcia would have had the edge.
Smith's 7th CD would be made more Republican (53% for Bush in 2000) by also taking out Battle Creek, and moving the CD north. Upton's CD would be made comfortably Republican (54% for Bush in 2000) by taking out Kalamazoo City and adding most of Allegan County, although it would have to take in Battle Creek. K-zoo City would be attached to most of Kent County for a still very Republican CD for Ehlers (over 56% for Bush in 2000). Hoekstra's CD would exclude most of Allegan County and add several Dem-leaning counties from Camp's 4th CD and would remain a heavily GOP district (like 58% for Bush in 2000). Camp's CD would take in part of Kent County and surrounding Dutch areas and even with parts of Barcia's CD added it would still be comfortably Republican (over 54% for Bush in 2000). Finally, Democrat Stupak's 1st CD would be extended a bit south and would be about as Republican as before (around 54% for Bush in 2000), making it winnable in the short-run and a likely GOP pick-up when he retired.
Had the GOP adopted a plan like the one I described, it would have created 9 safe Republican districts, 5 safe Democrat districts and 1 district that would be very competitive as long as the incumbent Democrat ran but would probably go Republican when he retired. This would be a far better plan than the one adopted by the GOP, which also created 5 safe Democrat seats, but gives the Democrats takeover opportunities in the Knollenberg (just 51% for Bush in 2000), McCotter (51%), Smith (51%), Upton (52%), and Rogers (52%), and which gave Stupak a district that is safe for him and very competitive for a Democrat when he retires (52% for Bush in 2000).
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Excellent article! But it failed to mention Mr. Conyer's blossoming