Peters, Schauer turn Michigan’s congressional delegation blue

Congressmen-elect Mark Schauer and Gary Peters

Gary Peters took to the sunny streets of downtown Royal Oak on Wednesday to thank his new constituents for their support and ask for their input as he prepared to head to Washington as the new congressman for Michigan’s 9th District.

“What’s the major issue you want me to focus on when I go to Washington?” Peters asked passersby on Main Street as small army of media and campaign staff, weary but happy, followed behind him.

Peters’ first public foray after the election came just 12 hours after news that he’d defeated eight-term incumbent Republican Joe Knollenberg by at least 8 points in Tuesday’s election (thousands of Pontiac absentee ballots, which will likely favor Peters, remain uncounted).

“It feels great,” Peters, 49, said of his victory. “It was the end of a lot of work. It’s nice to see it all come together on Election Day. And Day One we’re on the ground talking to voters, ready to roll up our sleeves.”

Peters’ defeat of Knollenberg, 74, represents a sea change for Oakland County, which has been represented in Congress by a Republican since the Depression.

Knollenberg had won re-election handily each term until 2006, when his margin of victory was just 6 points over Democrat Nancy Skinner. Peters, a former state senator and lottery commissioner, brought experience and the support of the national Democratic Party, which kicked in $2 million of support, to the race.

Oakland County supported Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain for president, 56 to 42 percent, a near mirror of the split between Peters and Knollenberg. In his concession speech Tuesday, Knollenberg blamed a “perfect storm” of support for Obama and Democratic fund raising for his defeat.

But Peters disputed that view while walking in Royal Oak, pointing to victories by incumbent county Republicans like L. Brooks Patterson for executive and Mike Bouchard for sheriff as evidence that Democrats weren’t just riding Obama’s coattails.

“It was our message that resonated with voters,” Peters said. “It’s clear that voters were splitting their tickets. You have to ‘win’ your race. You cannot win a race against a 16-year entrenched incumbent by just expecting a wave to come through. A 16-year entrenched incumbent should be able to ride out any wave.”

The wave Peters rode, he said, was that his volunteers, who numbered 3,000, knocked on 250,000 doors and made 200,000 phone calls in the campaign’s final four days.

Peters will be joined in Washington by Democratic State Sen. Mark Schauer of Battle Creek, who defeated incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Walberg in the 7th District. Schauer, 47, outraised Walberg, $2 million to $1.7 million, and defeated him Tuesday, 48.8 percent to 46.5 percent, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Conservative Republicans ran Walberg against moderate Republican incumbent Joe Schwarz in 2006. Schwarz, a physician, went on to run the successful efforts to pass Proposal 2 in favor of stem-cell research. And Schauer made the argument that Walberg was too conservative for the changing district.

Both the Peters and Schauer victories were predicted as likely by political observers, due to the combined influx of Democratic resources into both campaigns with the pullout from Michigan by the McCain campaign. The day after McCain announced his withdrawal, state GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis sent out a fund-raising e-mail calling the pullout “a tough blow” that “leaves a tremendous hole in our ground campaign that we must now fill.”

Various polls leading up to the race gave both Democrats either a slight lead or placed them in a dead heat with their Republican opponents. State Democrats had also hoped that Bob Alexander would defeat Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan’s 8th District. But a lack of financial support from national Democrats combined with Republican Party support for Rogers — a major fund-raiser for the party — and a negative advertising blitz against Alexander won Rogers another term.

But even with Alexander’s defeat, Michigan’s U.S. House delegation now shifts to to majority of Democrats, from nine Republicans and six Democrats to eight Democrats and seven Republicans. The state’s governor and both U.S. senators are also Democrats.