DETROIT – Michigan has had an African-American in Congress ever since Charles Diggs managed to win a seat in Detroit in 1954. When he got to Washington, there were only two other Black congressmen, one from New York and one from Illinois.
Ten years later, when John Conyers joined him, there were still only six Black members, and Michigan was the only state with two.
Michigan then continued to have two African-Americans in Congress for the next 52 years, until Conyers resigned after allegations that he had behaved badly with women.
The state has had only one Black member of Congress since 2017 — and it now seems possible that next year there won’t be any.
How did this happen?
Two major reasons: To some extent, it is a mark of African-American success. In 1980, the vast majority of Black citizens lived in Detroit, and it was relatively easy to carve out two overwhelmingly Black congressional districts. But that has become progressively harder, as the population has become more geographically diverse.
Today, almost two-thirds of all African-Americans in Michigan don’t live in the central city; like the white population, they’ve migrated to the suburbs, small towns and other cities.
While Detroit is still overwhelmingly African-American (78 percent), the city no longer has enough people to fill even a single Congressional district.
Carving out two majority-minority districts has become extremely difficult for those who draw new districts every ten years. For the first time in decades, no new district has a majority African-American population, though two are more than 40 percent Black.
That doesn’t mean African-Americans can’t get elected, said Robert Sedler, a distinguished professor emeritus of constitutional law at Wayne State University who has argued civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Black voters have been voting for white candidates for years, and millions of whites voted for President Obama,” Sedler said. “If you have a district that is 40 percent Black, it means a good African-American candidate can be very competitive.”
However, there’s another reason that Michigan may not elect a black congressman this year: “You get too many candidates, they split the vote, and the white candidate wins,” said Karen Morgan, a longtime aide to former congressman Conyers.
That’s exactly what happened four years ago, in the late John Conyers’ seat, then about 55 percent African-American. Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, was the early favorite.
Opposing her was Rashida Tlaib, a former state legislator who is a Muslim Palestinian-American, and who had a following among younger people because of her progressive politics and her record of constituent service. In a two-person race, she might not have had a chance. But Coleman Young, Jr., the legendary mayor’s son, got into the race. So did Ian Conyers, the late congressman’s nephew, and Shanelle Jackson, another legislator.
When the votes were counted, Tlaib had won with a mere 31 percent, just a few hundred ahead of Ms. Jones. Congresswoman Tlaib then went on to become nationally famous as a member of the “squad” and an enemy of President Trump.
Two years later, she was rolling in campaign cash, and spent $4 million to crush Jones in a rematch.
That left Brenda Lawrence, of suburban Southfield, as the state’s only African-American in Congress. But she decided to retire, and in the musical chairs that are Michigan politics, Tlaib decided to move to Lawrence’s old district, which has a little bit of Detroit, but is mostly suburban, includes most of Michigan’s Arab-American population, and is safely Democratic.
That left the 13th district without an incumbent. The somewhat anvil-shaped constituency includes the Grosse Pointes, sweeps west and south to take in most of Detroit, Hamtramck, Highland Park and a set of blue-collar suburbs out to the airport.
The district is now 45 percent African-American, 40 percent white, and nine percent Hispanic. The logical front-runner is probably Adam Hollier, a 36-year-old state senator who has degrees from Cornell and the University of Michigan and was a firefighter, U.S. Army officer, and worked for Detroit’s mayor.
Hollier is African-American and a Detroit native. But he will have to beat one of the most unusual people in Michigan politics, Shri Thanedar, a self-made 67-year-old Indian-American who is willing to spend enormous sums to try to get elected. Four years ago, he spent more than $10 million to try to win the Democratic nomination for governor.
He finished a bad third, but carried the city of Detroit. Two years ago, he spent a reported $439,000 to win a two-year term in the state legislature. Now, he has announced he is running for the congressional seat, and is willing to spend at least $5 million.
This district, by the way, is overwhelmingly Democratic, and the August primary is the only real election. Could Hollier prevail against that kind of money? Perhaps.
But once again, he is not the only African-American in the race. This time, the late congressman’s son, Ian Conyers, is running. So is Sharon McPhail, a former city councilwoman and mayoral candidate … and a former Detroit police chief, a member of the Detroit school board and the chief executive of Focus Hope, a job-training program.
It is possible that some of these may drop out before the April 22 deadline. But as of now, it seems likely that the African-American vote will be split several ways.
Meanwhile, the airwaves will be blanketed with ads for the man who encourages everyone to call him just “Shri.” It could be that next year, all Detroiters could be represented in Congress by a Palestinian-Muslim or a Hindu immigrant from India.
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