Give Lance a Chance

“Accessibility and accountability are the two most important things a Congressman can be, and my opponent is neither. You will never have to make a campaign contribution to get time with me. I have an obligation to the people, not the other way around.”

~ Lance Enderle

Sometimes I think it doesn’t really matter who represents me in Congress since the whole institution stinks. Sure, the right-wing fanatic who’s represented the more than 662,500 residents of  Michigan's eighth congressional district since 2001, Mike Rogers (R-Howell), makes me nauseous and the guy running against him this year, Lance Enderle (D-East Lansing), does not. But the older I get, the less convinced I am that any politician has what it takes or brings to the table what’s needed to solve our problems and enhance our quality of life.

I may be wrong about Enderle, though.

Lance Enderle

I met him in a local coffee shop a few months ago – an unscrupulous door-to-door canvasser had fraudulently added my name to a petition for one of Enderle’s challengers so I agreed to sign an affidavit to this effect (nothing came of it, thanks to lazy state bureaucrats) – and we’ve since sent e-mails and Facebook messages back and forth. Although I’ve met more elected officials and candidates than I can count in my 29 years in politics, few have impressed me as much as Enderle. Not only is he well-versed in the issues facing this district and the nation, but he seems to have the drive (aka “fire in the gut”) needed to tackle the challenges we face and the scruples needed to ensure that he remains committed to his constituents.

Rogers, a former G-Man who hails from Livingston County – where my first ex-wife is from – is a rabidly-partisan, solidly-conservative zealot who to my knowledge has never cast a vote with which I would agree. He co-sponsored the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, which seems stupid and invasive to me, voted against expanding embryonic stem cell research and voted to allow electronic surveillance without a warrant. He voted to terminate public funding for National Public Radio, supported building a fence along the Mexican border, opposed increasing the minimum wage and supported tax breaks for religious organizations.

Mike Rogers

A backer of Dubya and a staunch supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rogers opposed redeploying U.S. troops out of Iraq in May 2007 and voted against removing U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan in March of 2011 as well. Not only is he pro-military, pro-gun and pro-life, but he’s anti-civil rights, anti-Obamacare, anti-renewable energy and anti-union. I could go on but won’t; consider this quote from a fellow blogger instead:

Rogers is one of the most bought-off politicians by Big Business of any congressman in either party. And he serves their interests well – much to the detriment of his central Michigan constituents.

Even Republican Dick Chrysler, who represented me in Congress briefly in the mid-1990s and who wanted to make it harder to appeal the death penalty and easier to spend billions on defense, was more palatable than Rogers.

Enderle, on the other hand, refuses to accept corporate contributions, supports fair trade and not free trade, wants to spend more money on jobs and infrastructure, and opposes the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans.

A special education teacher, he wants to invest in our public schools and universities (he knows firsthand why we need to get away from teaching to the test and get back to teaching our students), opposes fracking, is anti-war, and wants to strengthen Medicare and Social Security, not privatize them. Enderle’s a charming but intense guy with a disc jockey’s voice who ran against Rogers in 2010 as a write-in candidate – and lost badly – but is running a spirited, cohesive, impressive campaign this time around.

He’s knocked on thousands of doors; has racked up a slew of endorsements, including the United Auto Workers, AFL-CIO, Michigan Nurses Association and National Organization for Women; and ran circles around Rogers when they debated in late September at Cleary University’s Johnson Center in Howell. (See this clip.)

Enderle’s no fan of the current Congress either. “We’ve had an obstructionist Congress bent on removing the President from office, not moving our country forward,” he told me. “When you are voting over and over to restrict women’s reproductive rights instead of trying to get people back to work, something is wrong with this picture. And Mike Rogers has been in the thick of this Republican obstructionism from the beginning.”

Partisan hacks like Rogers deserve the blame for the dysfunction in Washington. If he and Enderle were both in my backyard when a massive meteor plummeted to earth and I could only fit one more person in my meteor-proof bunker, guess who would get squished like a bug and who would live to see another legislative session?

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Sources: Ontheissues.org, votesmart.org, Lance Enderle.