David Bonior's Democratic Soul

...Bonior's district has very few Jews and-surprisingly for metropolitan Detroit-a negligible number of Arabs...

...These remarks are typical, but there's also a hard side to Bonior, and those who cross him encounter it...

...Sources close to Gephardt say he is aware he shut moderate Democrats out in the past and is trying to make amends...

...police raids and murdered relatives...

...Far from being dispirited over the electoral success of the Contract with America last November, Bonior thinks it's going to be a bonanza for Democrats...

...During the Kennedy administration it was the most Democratic suburban county in the United States, but Republicans have won every presidential race there since 1972...

...Bonior is like the leader of some fifth party in a European parliament who winds up running the country by accident...

...Bonior is certainly much more liberal than his constituents...

...He still votes for the war-on-poverty programs his constituents deplore, but he never has to dedicate housing projects during election season or court black leaders...

...And while he voted for the House bill banning "partial birth" abortions, he says, "I will not vote for it when it comes back here [for final passage] if it doesn't take care of the life of the mother...

...Michigan Republicans realize as much, and that's why they've been seeking a social conservative to run against Bonior...

...And regardless of the other merits of the book complaint, Gingrich's $4.5 million deal (the result of an auction in which the second-highest bid was $4.1 million) cannot be likened to Jim Wright's vanity press arrangement...

...Most people in Bonior's district don't view him as a liberal," says Michigan secretary of state Candice Miller, a Republican and a former Macomb County treasurer...

...The upshot: The archetypal Reagan Democrat stronghold should not be confused with a Republican district...

...Bonior has called the 104th Congress "the most hardhearted, shortsighted, suck-up-to-the-rich-and-soak-the-middle-class Congress in history...

...And Bonior does win...

...Hackel senior, who describes Bonior as a friend ("We're both jocks"), has decided not to run...

...Michigan Republicans claim Bonior's local political organization will stop at nothing to win, and several of his recent campaigns have been rich in negative ads...

...We're most effective," says Listing, "when we offer a clear-cut choice...

...Now, of course, it's harder for Israel's supporters to hammer a candidate for supporting Palestinian self-rule when the Israeli government is doing the same...

...At a time when most politicians want to talk, he can sit quietly and listen, and if he nods yes, you can take it to the bank, which is not the case with Gephardt...

...That's not where I want to see the party...

...Gary Maccagnone, a local self-made millionaire whom one Republican operative refers to as "McUnknown," was the early favorite to get the Republican nomination, but he quit in a huff over state-party efforts to micromanage his campaign, and what he saw as faithlessness on the part of his Republican recruiters...

...We haven't done enough of that...

...He's not one to whine about how he doesn't like fund raising or how "uncivil" politics is becoming: When the stakes are this high, you do the work, you raise the money, and you win...

...in Kentucky, moderate lieutenant governor Paul Patton narrowly defeated Republican opponent Larry Forgy for governor after casting the race as a referendum on "Gingrichism...

...One of the questions he asked was, 'Who do the Democrats represent?'" The poll gave a list of three or four economic classes, Bonior says, "and the category that had the highest level of support was 'the rich.' Most people thought that Democrats represented the rich...

...Republican focus groups in the district show a high level of support for welfare reform and many of the other items in the Contract with America...

...And since those bolting the congressional Democrats thus far have been his outspoken foes, Bonior's power within the caucus rises as its membership atrophies...

...But that's not what he remembers most about that day...

...That doesn't explain David Bonior...

...In 1984, after Ronald Reagan destroyed union candidate Walter Mondale in this union district, taking 67 percent of the vote, Democrats invited Stanley Green-berg (now President Clinton's pollster) to find out why...

...Big television buys pinning Bonior to the status quo on Medicare have backfired...

...Asked if Democratic outrage played any role in the younger Hackel's defeat, Bonior says, "I certainly hope not...

...Bruce Cameron, a Washington lobbyist, was a longtime ally of Bonior's on Central America who found himself banned from the congressman's offices after he worked briefly to ease aid to the Contras...

...He is a master at getting voters to choose him over opponents whose ideas they tell pollsters they like better...

...Yet Bonior has linked himself to Muslim causes in a way that has set him against Israel's interests...

...The Sweeney election is going to be a milestone," Bonior says, "with a tremendous effect on the whole politics of the country...

...One potential challenger mulled not running in 1996 solely because he had forgotten to vote in a few elections...

...The stalwart support of such Jewish congressional allies as Levin, Connecticut's Sam Gejdenson, and now-agriculture secretary Dan Glickman of Kansas bears him out...

...Even as they presented Maccagnone to the public, the Republicans were secretly trying to get Macomb County sheriff Bill Hackel, a conservative Democrat, to switch parties and run...

...Macomb has scarcely any black residents...

...Basically, if your girlfriend broke up with you, he's the guy in Congress you'd want to discuss it over a beer with...

...Bonior was Congress's fourth-leading recipient of PAC money in the last election cycle, helped by contributions from 281 different organizations...

...On Medicare and Social Security, Bonior not only disagrees with Republican strategies for fixing them-he doesn't even think they're broke...

...That's fine for now, but in the aftermath of November's government shutdown, President Clinton is going to wind up signing a lot of those "suck-up" measures...

...He brought with him an enthusiasm for the Catholic left, including liberation theology, and a canny understanding of the union movement, which has dominated his district for more than half a century...

...There isn't a snobbish bone in his body...

...Gephardt follows in his wake...

...Joel Kotkin, a contributing editor to the New Democrat and no Gingrich fan, calls Bonior a representative of "maybe the most fringe political tendency that's ever been represented in the House leadership-on either side...

...if those low ratings are the result of an attack campaign, then Bonior can claim the credit...

...Those auto workers have boats," Bonior notes-65,000 of them, in fact, more than in any other district in the country...

...The loyalty shows in Bonior's zeal to give Gingrich a taste of his own medicine...

...Pro-choice candidates (national and local) have a hard time winning in Macomb, and Bonior's pro-life stance-which has long set him apart from the rest of the Democratic left-has shown some signs of weakening since his elevation to the Democratic leadership...

...Three Michigan Democrats-Bart Stupak, James Barcia, and Dale Kildee-scored 100...

...For all his pragmatic organization-building, Bonior's leftism is of the kind that used to be called idealistic...

...Probably as a result, a solid third of his individual contributions in the last election cycle came from Muslim Americans...

...But the charges have severely hampered Gingrich and even limit his options as a potential presidential candidate...

...New Mexico Democrat Bill Richardson, speaking a few years back at a Princeton conference on the Nicaraguan civil war, admitted that most Democratic congressmen opposed to the Reagan policy in Central America had been interested primarily in scoring against the president...

...In backing every single redistributive initiative that makes its way through Congress, Bonior believes he's simply standing up for the working man, who, through no fault of his own, is getting less and less...

...An October poll taken in Macomb showed 17 percent of voters saying Bonior's attacks on Gingrich made it less likely they'd vote for him-and 18 percent saying more likely...

...Either way, the episode is proving to be a triumph for Bonior...

...Bonior saw union power in suburban Detroit shifting away from the United Auto Workers and toward public-employee unions...

...A Michigan Republican explains, "Bill Frist got away with that in Tennessee...

...The Clean Air Act is a lot more tricky...

...So it's not that difficult to convince them environmental regulations are good for them...

...Barney Frank has described Bonior as "the best combination of high intelligence and low ego...

...Macomb County- almost all of it in Bonior's district except the liberal city of Warren, which is in Levin's-has been the most studied constituency in American politics for the last decade...

...According to Barbara Listing, the organization's president, Bonior scored only 63 on an index of pro-life votes in 1995...

...Bonior doesn't hide his ideology...

...He raised $1.1 million in all...

...In 1986, just before Gingrich began his campaign to drive Speaker Jim Wright from office with allegations of personal corruption, Wright promoted Bonior to the post of deputy majority whip at the height of the great congressional battle over the Sandinista government in Nicaragua...

...If we lost it- and we clearly did-we had to get back to it...

...Bonior has always been well liked by his colleagues...

...This reactionary streak is not as problematic for a liberal like Bonior as it might at first appear...

...Mississippi representative Mike Parker last week became the fourth congressional Democrat to cross over to the GOP, and all four have blamed Bonior at least in part for a take-no-prisoners leftism that froze them out...

...It's the NAFTA debate all over again," he admits...

...But the latter have always been Bonior's base, and with the election of John Sweeney to the leadership of the AFL-CIO, the public-employee tendency has won the day...

...That's just one more thing that sets him apart from those Democrats a top Clinton aide, speaking privately, calls "the pussies"-the Laodicean organization men who have made up most of the Democratic delegation since 1974...

...Oh, gosh . . . some of the things they're saying about personal responsibility...

...Bonior is now the most loathed Democrat among Republicans, and his strategy has been divisive even among Democrats...

...I have a very strong appreciation for what the Jewish people have gone through, particularly this century," he says...

...On health care, he consistently favored the most socialist approaches under discussion...

...In an election year, Bonior could find himself clashing with a president who needs to peddle his economic successes...

...Miller notes that all Macomb's countywide elected officials are still Democrats...

...I can't imagine he'd ever pull rank on anyone," says a longtime union lobbyist...

...He offered us anything we wanted...

...That's the dream: Get yourself a nice home and car and boat...

...Democrats think Bonior's Gingrich-baiting is hunky-dory...

...There's an energy and a passion in these people that the country is going to discover shortly...

...The Wall Street Journal's Phil Kuntz describes Bonior's office as "a clearinghouse for anti-Newt information," and there is no disagreement that Bonior is the general in the long march through Gingrich's political organization...

...Gephardt was, verbally at least, very conciliatory," says a recent party switcher...

...Conservatives have answers for many of the others: If accepting free air time is an ethics violation, Dick Armey has argued, then weekend talk show guests should be sanctioned...

...But he has taken risks before...

...She blames Republican candidates (including herself-she ran against Bonior in 1986) for their failure to bring out the contradictions between the incumbent's Washington and Macomb personas...

...Then there is Gingrich's $4.5 million contract with the Murdoch-owned publishing house HarperCollins...

...Republicans have sought to use foreign policy against Bonior, notably in the aftermath of the Contra war, to no avail...

...Gingrich's press secretary Tony Blankley describes Bonior as practicing a "particularly vile sort of leadership...

...Bonior's strategy of short-term sacrifices for long-term party coherence is fraught with risk...

...In the 1992 campaign, "Wanted" posters appeared all over the district within hours of the revelation that Bonior's opponent had failed to pay taxes for some of his employees...

...Former AIPAC executive director Morrie Amitay will not confirm or deny the meeting, but he does describe Bonior as having "one of the worst records on Israel in the whole Congress...

...Even the long-standing tension between laborites and the environmentalists whose regulations threaten jobs is not such an issue for Macomb voters...

...Then-whip Tony Coelho admired it so much that he modeled his own office's task forces on Bonior's...

...On two separate trips to Washington, Hackel met with Republican strategists, including Gingrich and Michigan Republican senator Spencer Abraham...

...It's going to take an awfully strong candidate to unseat Bonior...

...Sources close to Gephardt-quick to liken the relationship to that between whip Newt Gingrich and minority leader Robert Michel-say that strains between the two have been exaggerated...

...So Bonior is not down-the-line pro-life, but he's probably pro-life enough for his district...

...It is this side that Bonior has turned against Newt Gingrich, and it's the reason some Republicans describe him as a "hater...

...Those Democrats who hope Bonior will bring back the old-time religion forget that the Democratic party has never been purely a party of the left...

...Bonior himself charged that Gingrich publicized his course on the House floor by giving its toll-free number, and Bonior has joined with Ben Jones (who opposed Gingrich for his House seat in 1994) in suing to open the records of GOPAC, Gingrich's political action committee...

...Bonior describes his relationship with Gephardt as "complementary...

...He failed to get the UAW endorsement in the primary but won it in the general and has since built one of the country's great political organizations...

...Bonior has spent the last year driving the Democrats hard to the left, even as President Clinton has tacked back to the rightward-moving center of American politics...

...That has led some to speculate that Bonior is positioning himself for Gephardt's job...

...Ten years ago, it might have been possible to drive a wedge between the heavy-industry unions, traditionally social conservatives angry at seeing their paychecks eroded by taxes, and the growing public-employee unions, traditionally social liberals whose salaries rise only when taxes do...

...Like Helms's detractors, Bonior's congratulate themselves every election cycle that voters have grown tired of atavistic politics and are now sensible enough to send their incumbent back to his district...

...He has also looked after his constituents' practical needs...

...One of the unsung reasons Macomb has been so intensely studied by liberal social scientists is that it provides a picture of a successful New Deal liberal/labor coalition undisturbed by roiling questions of race...

...both Bonior and Sander Levin deny the story...

...Bonior's natural ability to play hardball politics has dovetailed with a fierce loyalty to produce the vendetta of his political life...

...The other option is to forget that heritage and to blend into the more conservative, vague, bland philosophy of some Democrats, which is very similar to the Republicans...

...What is the sense of being here and struggling and fighting for people and having them not understand that that's what we're doing...

...Bonior was glad to see us go...

...he'll seek re-election for sheriff next fall as a Democrat...

...second, angry assertions that the economic policies of both parties are wreaking havoc on the poor...

...If there were a credible candidate running against him, I'd have no hesitation in backing him...

...But he doesn't wear it on his sleeve either...

...There will be plenty to discuss before the ethics committee for months or years to come-and not all Republicans are certain Gingrich will escape censure...

...If Gingrich's low ratings come because voters find him unsympathetic, then Bonior has his finger on the public mood...

...Bonior was not just an enemy of Contra aid...

...And just like Helms, Bonior always winds up on the winning end of a "seriousness gap...

...Bonior supported busing in the 70s, but busing is finished...

...David Bonior's Democratic Soul By Christopher Caldwell House Democratic whip David Bonior of Michigan woke up the morning after last November's elections and learned that he would serve his tenth term in Congress as a member of the minority for the first time...

...That explains Tony Coelho," Richardson said...

...Meanwhile, few Democrats dispute privately that Bonior has eclipsed Gephardt as the standard-bearer of the party...

...It's not my intention to alienate [moderate Democrats], but it is my intention to give the party the characterization it has always stood for: the party of working and middle-income people...

...He built his campaign organization around the fledgling Michigan Education Association, a highly ideological teacher's union that vociferously opposed the Vietnam war...

...It may come from a deep and intimate involvement with the cold war, for Bonior, like Helms, has the sense of the gravity of politics that one gets from opening one's office to foreigners bearing tales of 3 a.m...

...It is the Middle East that has caused him trouble in his own party...

...When all you can point to is a mixed voting record, it's not much of an issue...

...Is it fair to draw this distinction between Gephardt the conciliator and Bonior the firebrand...

...Pat Schroeder of Colorado, Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, and Harry Johnston of Florida have charged that Gingrich accepted a gift by taking advantage of free air time when a college course he taught appeared on a cable network...

...Wright received 55 percent royalties for a book peddled primarily in bulk to lobbyists...

...The evening after a local paper reported the sheriff's movements, Bonior called Hackel from his Virginia home to ask what was going on...

...The contrast with Minority Leader Richard Gephardt is striking...

...Similarly, Bonior supported gays in the military, but in a district without a big gay population, he hasn't had to make any of the public appearances at gay events that turn gay rights into a front-burner issue...

...Shortly after Bonior's ascension to the whip post, a delegation from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) met with Gephardt, who personally reassured them that Bonior would "cool it...

...Nonetheless, the strategy of using Gingrich as a foil for Democratic candidates appeared to work in this month's state elections...

...When Greenberg read focus groups a statement by Robert Kennedy on the country's special obligations to blacks, the locals responded, "That's bullshit," and, "No wonder they killed him...

...Bonior believes in it from the bottom of his heart...

...Bonior's colleague and Michigan neighbor Sander Levin is right when he says, "There's a near-universal feeling among Democrats that Gingrich should be held to the same standards he established for Speaker Wright...

...Even Gingrich aide Tony Blankley grants that he's top dog...

...To understand why Bonior thinks the welfare state has anything left to offer working Americans, it's necessary to look at his district...

...Finding a candidate is only one problem for Republicans...

...In 1991 along with only 41 other congressmen, he supported the Bryant amendment to cut aid to Israel unless it could prove it had halted settlement on the West Bank...

...The populist economics is a different matter...

...While some Republicans, such as Oklahoma's Mickey Edwards, praised Bonior as a "true gentleman," others continue to describe his frequent contacts with Daniel Ortega and other Sandinista leaders as "close to treason...

...And Bonior has managed to yoke the anti-Gingrich appeal so tightly to his own populist message that he may yet bring about a leftward shift in the Democratic party at the very moment one expected it least...

...Some of these complaints are de minimis, such as repeating a phone number on the House floor...

...AVietnam veteran who played quarterback on scholarship at the University of Iowa and studied in a seminary for a year, son of a onetime mayor of East Detroit, Bonior came to Washington in 1976 after four years in the Michigan legislature...

...Undisturbed because its residents have fled the very problems they bewail...

...In 1994, Republican governor John Engler got 70 percent of the vote, and Republican senator Spencer Abraham took 56 percent...

...But opposition to NAFTA is even higher: While attacking the pro-tariff Pat Buchanan might hurt Bonior, attacking Gingrich-whose futuristic vision is easily caricatured as one of relentless competition and robot-manned assembly lines-will not...

...But a "Bounce Bonior" campaign recently announced with much fanfare has come apart...

...It's not unfair," Bonior says...

...Bonior has taken the public leadership of his party away from Gephardt," Blankley says...

...Whether he succeeds in resuscitating the Democratic party as a hard-line organization or allows it to evaporate through defections, Bonior has taken on an almost mystical role as opponent in the minds of Republicans, a role analogous to that of Jesse Helms for Democrats...

...even George Bush took Macomb twice...

...Michigan Right to Life has withheld its endorsement for the last two elections, after supporting Bonior throughout his career...

...As a result, Bonior has found it easy over the years to play a double game as a New Deal local politician and a Great Society proponent on the national scene...

...And on NAFTA, he was merciless in his criticism, attacking the president's "bad jobs bill" on Meet the Press...

...I like Mark...

...That was our heritage...

...It was not misplaced: The ability was apparent in Bonior's coordination of Democratic opposition to Contra aid...

...Meanwhile, Maccagnone has not fired his campaign staff, breeding speculation that he'll split the anti-Bonior vote next November with an independent challenge...

...None of this has hurt him among individual Jewish donors, and Bonior says that's because his focus has always been on human rights...

...Asked to name any New Democrat proposals he admires, Bonior sighs...

...Bonior voted to permit fetal-tissue research...

...There was a poll done by Mark Melman," Bonior says...

...A variety of ideological and union PACs-the Committee to Preserve Social Security, the Electricians, the Coal Miners, the Sierra Club, the Seafarers, the Steelworkers-regularly give over $5,000 to his campaign, often maxing out at $10,000...

...he was a friend to the Sandinistas...

...More than Bonior seems to realize, he is steering his party into uncharted waters...

...Just last month, he was one of only 37 members to vote against moving the U.S...

...no one gets away with that against David Bonior...

...For all his politeness, he has little patience with compromisers or reformists...

...At such a time, Wright's promotion of Bonior was an extraordinary gesture of confidence in Bonior's abilities and loyalty...

...the closer they look, the harder it seems to defeat Bonior on the issues...

...Bonior asks...

...Bonior says that voters are reacting against Gingrich because "there's an extremism there that they're not comfortable with...

...By some accounts, Bonior even enlisted President Clinton to call...

...Always a hard-line liberal, who made his name opposing aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and vilifying the North American Free Trade Agreement, Bonior has used two maneuvers to revitalize his party: first, ideological and personal denunciations of Newt Gingrich...

...Hackel's son Mark, a Democrat who was favored to win a seat on the city council in the city of Warren, found his name taken off the lists of precinct captains and ward activists, according to Republican sources...

...It was shocking-the most shocking poll number I've seen for the Democratic party...

...One Clinton administration economist says, "Gephardt likes this class warfare business because he thinks it's good politics...

...But then he paused...

...He can be both the champion PAC recipient and a caring chatter-with-widows and attender-of-graduations...

...embassy to Jerusalem...

...There's a political explanation for Bonior's relentlessness...