To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never have so many cared so much about so few. Those districts are concentrated in California and the Northeast, with other battlegrounds scattered through the border South and the Midwest. They tend to be suburban areas, filled with ticket-splitters who vote for the person, not the party. Especially competitive are the open seats, where the incumbent is retiring or, as is the case here in Michigan's 8th, seeking higher office. No wonder that record sums and efforts are being poured into these handful of House races deemed likely to determine which party wins.
Voters here seem blissfully unaware of the high-stakes battle to come.
Neither has hit the airwaves or begun mass mailings. But in 1996, Chrysler found himself saddled with the controversial record of Newt Gingrich's first Congress and facing in Democrat Deborah Ann Stabenow a popular former state senator who had gained high name familiarity in an unsuccessful run for governor. She defeated him by 25,000 votes and almost doubled that margin in winning reelection in 1998. While the parties are sharply polarized in the House, the swing districts tend to elect centrist candidates whose personal backgrounds blend well with those of their neighbors. The youngest of five sons of an industrial arts teacher, he was introduced to politics by his mother, the executive director of the Brighton Chamber of Commerce and a longtime community activist.