OPINION

The Detroit Free Press Editorial Board | Detroit Free Press

Mike Thompson, Detroit Free Press

Submitted

Emails that have surfaced in a League of Women Voters lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Michigan's congressional boundaries leave no doubt about the intentions of Republican lawmakers who redrew our state's political map after the 2010 U.S. Census.

"We've spent a lot of time providing options to ensure we have a solid 9-5 [Republican] delegation in 2012 and beyond," Robert LaBrant, the chief strategist behind the GOP's redistricting efforts, wrote in a 2011 memo made public this week by Bridge Magazine..

In a second email, a Republican staffer boasts that his party's redistricting plan will shoehorn most "Dem garbage" into just four of the state's congressional districts, leaving just one of the remaining 10 districts vulnerable to Democratic competition.

In hindsight, both emails are prescient as well as incriminating: Just as their authors predicted, the political boundaries GOP legislators adopted in 2011 have secured a 9-5 Republican advantage in every Michigan congressional election since, even when a majority of the state's voters cast their ballots for Democratic congressional candidates.

But the midterm congressional elections scheduled to take place this November will reveal whether Republicans were too greedy when they spread their party's faithful voters among two Southeast Michigan congressional districts.

Once upon a time, Michigan's Eighth Congressional District was among the most competitive in the nation. In 2000, when then-Congresswoman Debbie Stabenow relinquished her seat there to run for the U.S. Senate, her would-be Democratic successor lost by just 10 votes.

But in 2011 Republicans solidified their hold on the district, which encompasses all of Ingham and Livingston counties, by reconfiguring it to incorporate the reliably Republican voter base in northern Oakland County. The district's current Republican incumbent, Mike Bishop, coasted to easy re-election victories in 2014 and 2016.

The 11th Congressional District, which coils around Democratic Pontiac to link Livonia and Plymouth with the GOP strongholds of Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, has been only slightly more competitive than the Eighth -- although incumbent Rep David Trott beat Democratic challengers in the last two election cycles by smaller margins than than most of his Republican predecessors.

In previous years, Democratic voters in the 8th and 11th would have been well-advised to vote in the Republican congressional primary, on the grounds that whoever won the GOP nomination was virtually certain to prevail in that fall's general election.

But shifting demographic trends, coupled with the unpredictable blowback from Donald Trump's narrow win in Michigan's 2016, have put both districts in play for Democrats this year. If there's a blue wave in the U.S. House in November, it's likely to crash ashore in the 8th and 11th.

8th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

ELISSA SLOTKIN is among the most well-qualified newcomers running in any congressional contest this year, and we recommend her enthusiastically to Democratic primary voters in Michigan's Eighth Congressional District.

Gillis Benedict/Livingston Daily

An Oakland County native of Holly whose grandfather founded the Livonia-based company that gave America Ball Park Franks, the 42-year-old Slotkin enlisted in the CIA after the 9/11 attacks. She served three tours of duty as an intelligence officer in Iraq, where she met her husband, a U.S. Army colonel. After returning to Washington, she served in the National Security Council under then-president George Bush, then became acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Affairs under Bush's successor, Barack Obama.

Slotkin's expertise in foreign policy and national security is deep, but she says she was moved to run for office when her district's incumbent congressman, Republican Mike Bishop, voted to repeal Obamacare without proposing an alternative for covering the hundreds of thousands of Michiganders who obtained health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Brilliant, energetic, and focused like a laser on the concerns of her sprawling district, she has outraised her incumbent Republican opponent as well as Chris Smith, an MSU professor who is Slotkin's lone, under-funded challenger for the Democratic nomination.

Like Slotkin, incumbent Bishop faces only nominal competition from Republican challenger Lokesh Kumar and should easily advance to the November general election.

11th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Democrats

Democratic primary voters face a far more difficult choice in the 11th Congressional, where three exceptionally qualified candidates have made credible claims to their party's nomination.

Tim Greimel, the capable and experienced lawmaker who currently serves as the Democratic Minority leader in the Republican-led state House of Representatives, is a charter member of Lansing's grown-up caucus, the dwindling but critical group of lawmakers who do the thankless work of governing when their colleagues become ensnared in partisan sniping.

Suneel Gupta, a brilliant entrepreneur brimming with practical ideas for enlisting digital technology in the service of more efficient, lower-cost health care, is the charismatic brother of surgeon and CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, and a novice politician marked for superstardom in his party.

Either Griemel or Gupta would serve capably serve the 11th, whose voters (the most educated among Michigan's 14 congressional districts) have buttressed winning coalitions for both Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.

But our choice in this unreasonably talented field goes is HALEY STEVENS, the 35-year-old Birmingham native and manufacturing expert who served as chief of staff to the presidential task force Barack Obama established to oversee the federal auto bailout.

Haley Stevens

Besides giving her operational experience in what she describes as one of the most important federal initiatives ever undertaken in Michigan, Stevens says her work for the auto task force gave her a deep understanding of the complex web of manufacturing and engineering resources that undergirds her district's economy. In interviews, she reveals a sophisticated understanding of the issues confronting employers of all sizes and the workers they depend on.

But it was the Trump administration's determination to dismantle or disable the Affordable Care Act that prompted Stevens, who now lives in Rochester Hills, to challenge Republican Rep. David Trott.

Trott, who reclaimed the 11th District for establishment Republicans after the flukey two-year-tenure of Tea Party phenomenon Kerry Bentivolio, seemed on his way to a third term in the Republican-leaning 11th until the prospect of an anti-Trump backlash led him to call it quits last September.

Stevens, who says she'll enthusiastically support whichever Democrat prevails in the Aug. 7 primary, doesn't claim credit for driving Trott from the race. But her early candidacy galvanized Democrats and independents alarmed by their government's trajectory, and she has sustained her intensity and fund-raising prowess for more than a year. Unlike some of her more strident Democratic rivals, she promises to be a useful contributor in the pragmatic, problem-solving mold of Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, even if her party fails to win a majority in the House.

A fourth candidate, Fayrouz Saad, was recruited to serve as the city of Detroit's first director of immigrant affairs after a two year-stint in President Barack Obama's Department of Homeland Security. Impressively prepared and passionate, she is well-suited to public service and destined to succeed in future outings.

Nancy Skinner, a former talk radio host and climate change activist making her fourth bid for congressional office, was a late entry who seems unlikely to be competitive in this year's crowded field.

11th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Republicans

Although it includes four candidates with legislative experience, the stampede of Republican congressional candidates precipitated by the unexepected withdrawal of incumbent Trott is somewhat less inspiring than the Democratic field.

The most credible candidate in this five-way race is state Sen. MIKE KOWALL of White Lake. Kowall is the sort of small-government, regulation-averse Republican Oakland County residents used to send to the U.S. Congress before the party's right wing began shrieking about Barack Obama's birth certificate and the perils of Sharia law.

Michigan House Republicans

Kowall, 66, is a former carpenter who began his political career as supervisor of White Lake Township and served two terms in the state House before winning election to the state Senate in 2010. He is currently the Majority Floor Leader in Republican-led Senate, where he will conclude his second four-year term in December.

Never a maverick, the low-key Kowall is the most pragmatic candidate in the GOP field, and can point to successful legislative effiorts to promote the development of an autonomous vehicle industry in Michigan.

Another former state legislator, Andy "Rocky" Raczkowski, is making his third congressional run after unsuccessful bids for the U.S. Senate (2002), state Republican Party chairman (2005), and state Senate (2014). Affable and persistent, Raczkowski has grown more polished but remains out of step with the moderate 11th.

Three other candidates have significant name recognition but little else to recommend them.

The iconoclastic Kerry Bentivolio won a single term as his district's man in Washington in 2012 after the Republican incumbent, former U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter, was unexpectedly disqualified. But Republicans primary voters rejected Bentivolio at their first opportunity two years later.

Klint Kesto is in his third term as the state representative from Walled Lake, but still struggles to master the details of legislation or articulate coherent policy views. And Lena Epstein, a business owner who co-chaired Donald Trump's Michigan campaign, is the sort of candidate former Republican House Speaker John Boehner had in mind when he complained, in a recent appearance in Michigan, that the GOP has devolved into a personality cult with few coherent principles.

Mike Kowall is the Republicans' best bet to retain their tenuous hold on the seat Trott is surrendering.