John Dingell

Early life, education, and early career

John David Dingell Jr. was born on July 8, 1926, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the son of Grace (née Bigler) and John D. Dingell Sr. (1894–1955). His father was of Austrian and Polish descent and his mother had Swiss and Scots-Irish ancestry. The Dingells were in Colorado in search of a cure for Dingell Sr.'s tuberculosis. (See Tuberculosis treatment in Colorado Springs). The Dingell surname had been Dzieglewicz, and was "Americanized" by John Dingell Sr's father. Dingell Sr. capitalized on the change in his first campaign for office with the slogan "Ring (in) with Dingell."

The family moved back to Michigan and, in 1932, Dingell Sr. was elected the first representative of Michigan's newly created 15th District. In Washington, D.C., John Jr. attended Georgetown Preparatory School and then the House Page School when he served as a page for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1938 to 1943. He was on the floor of the House when President Roosevelt gave his famous speech after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In 1944, at the age of 18, Dingell joined the United States Army. He rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant and received orders to take part in the first wave of a planned invasion of Japan in November 1945; the Congressman has said President Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb to end the war saved his life.

He then attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1949 and a J.D. in 1952. He was a lawyer in private practice, a research assistant to U.S. Circuit Court judge Theodore Levin, a Congressional employee, a forest ranger, and assistant prosecuting attorney for Wayne County until 1955.

Elections

In 1955, John Sr. died and John Jr. won a special election to succeed him. He won a full term in 1956 and was reelected 29 times, including runs in 1988 and 2006 with no Republican opponent. Dingell received less than 62% of the vote on only two occasions. In 1994 when the Republican Revolution swept the Republicans into the majority in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1954, Dingell received 59% of the vote. In 2010 when the Republicans re-took control of the House of Representatives, Dingell received 57% of the vote. Between them, he and his father represented the southeastern Michigan area for 80 years.

His district was numbered as the 15th District from 1955 to 1965, when redistricting merged it into the Dearborn-based 16th District; in the primary that year, he defeated 16th District incumbent John Lesinski Jr.

In 2002, redistricting merged Dingell's 16th District with the Washtenaw County and western Wayne County-based 13th District, represented by fellow Democratic Representative Lynn Rivers, whom Dingell also bested in the Democratic primary. The 15th District for the 109th Congress included Wayne County suburbs generally southwest of Detroit, the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti areas in Washtenaw County, and all of Monroe County. For many years, Dingell represented much of western Detroit itself, though Detroit's declining population and the growth of its suburbs has pushed all of Detroit into the districts of fellow Democratic representatives, including John Conyers. Dingell has always won re-election by double-digit margins, although the increasing conservatism of the white suburbs of Detroit since the 1970s led to several serious Republican challenges in the 1990s. With the retirement of Jamie L. Whitten, the death of William Natcher, and the defeat of Texas Representative Jack Brooks at the start of a new Congress in January 1995, he became the Dean of the United States House of Representatives. (Fellow Representative Sidney Yates had entered the House earlier and, at that time, had served almost five years longer than Dingell, but Yates's service had been interrupted when he ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 1962.) He is one of four people to serve in the House for 50 years, the others being Whitten, Carl Vinson, and Conyers, the latter of whom had worked in Dingell's congressional office.

Tenure

Dingell was generally classified as a moderately liberal member of the Democratic Party and throughout his career he was a leading Congressional supporter of organized labor, social welfare measures and traditional progressive policies. At the beginning of every Congress, Dingell introduced a bill providing for a national health insurance system, the same bill that his father proposed while he was in Congress. Dingell also strongly supported Bill Clinton's managed-care proposal early in his administration.

On some issues, though, he reflected the values of his largely Catholic and working-class district. He supported the Vietnam War until 1971. While he supported all of the civil rights bills, he opposed expanding school desegregation to Detroit suburbs via mandatory busing. He took a fairly moderate position on abortion. He worked to balance clean air legislation with the need to protect manufacturing jobs.

An avid sportsman and hunter, he strongly opposed gun control, and is a former board member of the National Rifle Association. For many years, Dingell has received an A+ rating from the NRA.

Michael Barone wrote of Dingell in 2002:

On December 15, 2005, on the floor of the House, Dingell read a poem sharply critical of, among other things, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and the so-called "War on Christmas".

Along with John Conyers, in April 2006, Dingell brought an action against George W. Bush and others alleging violations of the Constitution in the passing of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The case (Conyers v. Bush) was ultimately dismissed for lack of standing.

After winning re-election in 2008 for his 28th consecutive term, Dingell surpassed Whitten's record for having the longest tenure in the House on February 11, 2009. In honor of the record, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm declared February 11, 2009, to be John Dingell Day.

As of January 3, 2015, Dingell had served with 2,453 different U.S. Representatives in his career.

Energy and Commerce chairman

During his first stint as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Dingell was regarded by analysts as one of the four or five most powerful members of the House.

Dingell is well known for his approach to Congressional oversight of the executive branch. He subpoenaed numerous government officials to testify before the committee and grilled them for hours. He insisted that all who testified before his committee do so under oath, thus exposing them to perjury charges if they did not tell the truth. He and his committee have uncovered numerous instances of corruption and waste, such as the use of $600 toilet seats at the Pentagon. He also claims that the committee's work led to resignations of many Environmental Protection Agency officials, and uncovered information that led to legal proceedings that sent many Food and Drug Administration officials to jail.

After serving as the committee's ranking Democratic member for 12 years, Dingell regained the chairmanship in 2007. According to Newsweek, he had wanted to investigate the George W. Bush Administration's handling of port security, the Medicare prescription drug program and Dick Cheney's energy task force. Time magazine has stated that he had intended to oversee legislation that addresses global warming and climate change caused by carbon emissions from automobiles, energy companies and industry.

Dingell lost the chairmanship for the 111th Congress to Congressman Henry Waxman of California in a Democratic caucus meeting on November 20, 2008. Waxman mounted a challenge against Dingell on grounds that Dingell was stalling certain environmental legislation, which would have tightened vehicle emissions standards—something that could be detrimental to the Big Three automobile manufacturers that constitute a major source of employment in Dingell's district. Dingell was given the title of Chairman Emeritus in a token of appreciation of his years of service on the committee, and a portrait of him is in the House collection.

Baltimore case

In the 1980s, Dingell led a series of Congressional hearings to pursue alleged scientific fraud by Thereza Imanishi-Kari and Nobel Prize-winner David Baltimore. The NIH's fraud unit, then called the Office of Scientific Integrity, charged Imanishi-Kari in 1991 of falsifying data and recommended that she be barred from receiving research grants for 10 years. She appealed the decision and the Department of Health and Human Services appeals panel dismissed the charges against Imanishi-Kari and cleared her to receive grants. The findings and negative publicity surrounding them made David Baltimore decide to resign as president of Rockefeller University (after Imnashi-Kari was cleared he became president of the California Institute of Technology). The story of the case is described in Daniel Kevles' 1998 book The Baltimore Case, in a chapter of Horace Freeland Judson's 2004 book The Great Betrayal: Fraud In Science, and in a 1993 study by Serge Lang, updated and reprinted in his book Challenges (New York: Springer-Verlag; 1997).

Robert Gallo and the controversy on who discovered the AIDS virus

From 1991 to 1995 Dingell's staff investigated claims that Robert Gallo had used samples supplied to him by Luc Montagnier to fraudulently claim to have discovered the AIDS virus. The report concluded that Gallo had engaged in fraud and that the NIH covered up his misappropriation of work by the French team at the Institut Pasteur. The report contended that:

The report was never formally published as a subcommittee report because of the 1995 change in control of the House from Democratic to Republican. Other accusations against Gallo were dropped, and while Montagnier's group is considered to be the first to isolate the virus, Gallo's has been recognized as first to prove that this virus was the cause of AIDS.

Environment

For his conduct regarding environmental issues during the 109th Congress the lobby group League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has awarded Dingell its highest rating, 100%. According to the LCV, Dingell voted "pro-environment" on twelve out of twelve issues the group deemed critical; they also praised him for introducing, along with representatives James Oberstar and Jim Leach, an amendment compelling the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to rescind a directive issued in 2003 by the Bush Administration "requiring EPA staff to get permission from headquarters before protecting 'isolated' water bodies like vernal pools, prairie potholes, playa lakes and bogs," which provide "critical wildlife habitat, store flood water, and protect drinking water supplies." Dingell is also a member of the Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus.

Dingell has opposed raising mandatory automobile fuel efficiency standards, which he helped to write in the 1970s. Instead, he has indicated that he intends to pursue a regulatory structure that takes greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption into account. In a July 2007 interview with thehill.com, he said “I have made it very plain that I intend to see to it that CAFE is increased” and pointed out that his plan would have Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards increased tantamount to those in the Senate bill recently passed. In November 2007, working with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Dingell helped draft an energy bill that would mandate 40% increase in fuel efficiency standards.

In July 2007, Dingell indicated he planned to introduce a new tax on carbon usage in order to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. The policy has been criticized by some, as polling numbers show voters may be unwilling to pay for the changes. A Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that vehicle emissions standards that he supports will not yield any substantial greenhouse gas emissions savings.

Private sector ties

Dingell drew criticism for his ties to the automotive industry. The three largest contributors to his campaign for the 2006 election cycle are political action committees, employees, or other affiliates of General Motors, Ford Motor Company and DaimlerChrysler; 1989-2006, intermediaries for these corporations have contributed more than $600,000 to his campaigns. Dingell also held an unknown quantity, more than $US 1 million in 2005, in assets through General Motors stock options and savings-stock purchase programs; his wife, Debbie Dingell is a descendant of one of the Fisher brothers, founders of Fisher Body, a constituent part of General Motors. She worked as a lobbyist for the corporation until they married. She then moved to an administrative position there. As of June 2007, Mrs. Dingell was executive director of Global Community Relations and Government Relation at GM and vice chair of the General Motors Foundation.

Committee assignments

Caucus memberships

Personal life

In 1981, Dingell married Debbie Dingell, his second wife, who is 28 years his junior. He has four children from his first marriage to Helen Henebry, an airline flight attendant. Wed in 1952, they divorced in 1972.

Dingell's son Christopher D. Dingell served in the Michigan State Senate and is currently a judge on the Michigan Third Circuit Court.

Dingell's wife Debbie won the election to succeed him in November 2014 and took office in January 2015. She is the first non-widowed woman to immediately succeed her husband in Congress.