LANSING, MI – The days of genial bipartisanship, when politicians could rail at each other on the floor and then share a drink afterwards, are long over, at both national and state levels.
Fraternization of any kind is often frowned upon in both parties. The atmosphere has been largely so frigid that it was big news last month when it was announced that Republican and Democratic lawmakers would play against each other in a charity softball game.
But one rather incredible young legislator has decided to ignore that. Heads turned in April when colleagues discovered an opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press, Michigan’s major newspaper, jointly written by Samantha Steckloff, a liberal Democrat from the Detroit suburbs, and Graham Filler, a conservative Republican from a mostly rural district outside Lansing.
The piece called on Michigan to expand nuclear energy options in the state. While that’s an intriguing idea, and not one Democrats have been inclined to support, it may be even more surprising, and encouraging, that the authors have developed a good working relationship. That is, unless you know Sam Steckloff.
State Rep. Angela Witwer (R-Lansing), the powerful chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said that the 39-year-old Steckloff “reaches across the aisle and develops relationships and then includes (Republicans) in committee meetings.”
That might sound like a natural thing to do, and it was, once. But these are different times, and this year, Democrats control all branches of Michigan government for the first time since 1983.
Since they took over in January, they’ve been passing and repealing legislation at a dizzying pace, and frequently not bothering to even consider the minority Republicans’ positions.
Turnabout is fair play, Democrats say, and note accurately that the GOP didn’t often include them in negotiations when they were passing legislation Democrats hated, such as right-to-work.
But that’s not Sam Steckloff. Though she comes from a staunch Democratic family; her mother, Vicki Barnett, the mayor of their home suburb of Farmington Hills, also served in the legislature.
Her daughter said “Every bill I put in is bipartisan. Every single bill I put in has a sponsor from the other side.”
Bipartisan cooperation is tough these days, said Witwer, who has been something of a mentor to the 39-year-old Steckloff, who was first elected in 2020. “Tough, but she manages to do it.
“You know, she is a very engaging human, a good kid,” said Witwer, who is old enough to be Steckloff’s mother. “It may be an odd thing to say, but her best quality is that she is real.” Those sentiments were seconded by Republican Graham Filler.
“Representative Steckloff has the same idea I have, that you should have the same personality in the minority as you do when you are in the majority,” he said. “We can disagree about an issue, and yet that’s okay, we are able to be colleagues and get along, and that’s what I think people want to see in their state representatives.”
Being bipartisan and likeable is nice, but not enough to get you noticed outside the Capitol Dome. Most state legislators are pretty anonymous, sometimes even inside their districts. Once, in a crowded restaurant, I offered to bet one lawmaker he couldn’t find three people in the place who could name their state representative.
He prudently declined the bet.
But this year, Samantha Steckloff did get some national notice when a former Michigan resident threatened to carry out “the punishment of death” to anyone in Michigan government who was Jewish, including her, she was told by the FBI.
That man, one Jack Eugene Carpenter III, was speedily apprehended and is now in jail, awaiting trial on federal hate crime charges. “It’s frustrating because there’s so much hate going on in the world right now,” she told me “As Jews we’ve always believed in making the world a better place, what we call tikkun olam.”
After he was arrested, Steckloff suddenly found herself in the spotlight, being interviewed on CNN. “Putting myself out there openly as a Jewish representative was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done,” especially knowing it might make her more of a target.
But though she has a bubbly, effervescent personality, she was no stranger to scary. When she was 31, she was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of breast cancer.
She managed to survive, after enduring horrible effects from intravenous chemotherapy. One of her main causes has been to change the law to require insurers to cover far less invasive oral chemotherapy treatments. In May, in riveting and painful testimony, she told the health policy committee what it had done to her:
“I looked in the mirror, and I started sobbing. My breasts had been removed. My fertility was gone, my hair and eyebrows were gone. My eyelashes were gone — my toenails, my fingernails — everything was gone. My teeth were destroyed and ruined.”
She began to cry as she said that, but so did some of her fellow lawmakers. Afterwards, two of her Republican colleagues told her “You changed our vote.” The oral chemo vote passed overwhelmingly.
Samantha Steckloff is recovered now, married and looking forward to starting a family — and analyzing various government budgets, a major passion of hers. “I have a chairmanship, an office in the capital, and am on the budget and higher education committees – what more could a girl ask for!” she said, laughing.
Somehow, I wonder if we might think better of government if we had more elected officials like her.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
