Marcinkowski: Not Afraid to Fight

Jim Marcinkowski’s battle is all the more difficult because, he said, the Democrats have abandoned him.

By MARK LEIBOVICH
Published: October 7, 2006

BRIGHTON, Mich. — Implausible pursuits can be humbling.
Jim Marcinkowski, a Democrat, discovers this every day in his bid to
dislodge Representative Mike Rogers, a three-term Republican, from the
United States Congress.

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Jim Marcinkowski, at the Brighton Senior Center last month wooing
voters, most of whom had never heard of him but knew his rival’s name.   

“Hi, Jim Marcinkowski,” he says to an elderly man in a recent visit to a senior center.

“What?” The man is having trouble hearing over the accordion.

“I’m Jim, running for Congress.”

“Oh.”

The candidate pivots, approaches an elderly woman.

“Hi, Jim Marcinkowski.”

“Who?”

“Jim Marcinkowski.”

“Sounds Polish.”

“It is Polish.” He has a little Polish flag on his lapel.

“I’m
German,” says the woman, Lieselotta Olsen. She thinks she has heard of
him, or maybe not. She knows of his opponent, Mr. Rogers, who clearly
holds a big advantage in name recognition.

And money,
organization, experience, knowledge of the district, and everything
else that make incumbency such a near-invincible force in Congressional
elections. It is easy to overlook this in an environment that many
predict will be hostile to sitting members of Congress, especially Republicans.
But 98 percent of incumbents have been re-elected in House contests
since 1998, and even when Republicans took control of Congress in 1994
in a seismic realignment, 91 percent of incumbents still won.

Mr.
Marcinkowski, 51, personifies the thankless underdog. He is a probable
loser (some say surefire) who is unknown to most voters in this
district northwest of Detroit and irrelevant to the national party
officials who recruited him — and, in his telling, then abandoned him —
as they focused on 50 or so “battleground” contests. The news media
ignore him, too. When told Mr. Marcinkowski was a candidate, Chuck
Todd, editor of Hotline, the online political tip-sheet, asked whether
he was “that guy who played quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons in the
1980’s.” (No, that was Steve Bartkowski.)

Jim Marcinkowski is
the deputy city attorney for Royal Oak, Mich. He has three teenage
children whom he used to see after work, and a Hobie Cat sailboat he
used to float around on, on weekends.

Mr. Marcinkowski, a crisply groomed former C.I.A.
operations officer, could represent a tougher-than-usual test for Mr.
Rogers, who was re-elected by a margin of 37 percentage points in 2002
and 24 percentage points in 2004. A former Republican, Mr. Marcinkowski
has a tough-guy résumé — Navy, C.I.A., teamster — and the
silvery-haired presence of a Famous Guy you would swear you had seen
before, maybe on television.

He drew national attention in 2003 and 2005 when he testified before Congress about his friend and former C.I.A. classmate Valerie Wilson.
The story of Ms. Wilson, the agent whose identity was leaked by Bush
administration officials, sealed Mr. Marcinkowski’s divorce from the
Republicans. He had been active in the party from the time he organized
the Michigan State University campus for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1980 but had gradually become disenchanted, particularly during the George W. Bush years.

His
story — former C.I.A. officer, disaffected Republican — had great
appeal to Democratic bigwigs seeking Congressional candidates. He
talked to Representatives Nancy Pelosi,
the House Democratic leader; Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip; and Rahm
Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
All urged him to run, especially Mr. Emanuel, who called several times,
and even shipped him a thank-you cheesecake after he had agreed to run.

Mr. Marcinkowski says everyone promised their full support.

“That
and a buck-seventy will get you a nice cup of coffee at Starbucks,” he
said, adding that if he could do it again, he would have sought
assurances that the campaign committee would devote ample “resources” —
also known as money — to his race.

He says many of the Democrats
who enticed him to run abandoned him after his fund-raising lagged and
they deemed other races to be more winnable. “Sometimes I feel like the
marine who they sent charging up a hill,” he said. “Then the marine
looks back over his shoulder and wonders, ‘Hey, where’d everyone go?’ ”

This
is a recurring lament among challengers. “You hear a lot of long-shot
candidates around this time who will feel used by their committees,”
said Nathan Gonzales, political editor for Rothenberg Political Report.

Mr. Marcinkowski said he spent virtually all his campaign time
on fund-raising earlier this year. He devoted every weekend, lunch hour
and weeknight to calling lists of past Democratic donors. He has used
up six weeks of vacation time, burned through two cellphones and made
about 15,000 calls, nearly all to raise money.

Mr. Emanuel’s
deputies from his committee phoned him relentlessly, he said, asking
“how many calls I made, how many people I contacted, whether I’d hit up
all my relatives, neighbors, friends from high school.”

He
raised more than $130,000 in the first quarter of 2006. Not bad, except
that Mr. Rogers had about $1 million in the bank from past campaigns.
Mr. Marcinkowski hired a small staff, recruited volunteers and bought
local television, cable and radio advertisements. In June,
Congressional Quarterly even moved Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District to the Republican Favored category from Safe Republican.

But
eventually, Mr. Marcinkowski said, the calls reaped less and less
money. His donors focused on higher-profile races. The calls from the
Congressional committee’s officials pretty much stopped. “I fell off
way their radar,” he said, adding that he “really misses those phone
calls.”

The sudden silence left him “scarred,” he said, and
added that no one at the committee even sent him flowers to say
goodbye. He suggested that his story could be called “The Spy Left Out
in the Cold.”

When did he last hear from Rahm Emanuel?

“Rahm who?”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Emanuel and the Congressional committee declined to comment.

For
all his disappointment, Mr. Marcinkowski said he has no regrets about
running and keeps thinking of the strangers who have encouraged him. He
carries in his wallet a laminated copy of a $10 donation from a
92-year-old man. He said he loved meeting voters, “getting out in front
of people.” That can include polka dancing with elderly strangers
before noon, as he did on that recent day at the Brighton Senior
Center.

Mr. Marcinkowski calls himself a sleeper on the
national map, saying he operates beyond the purview of the party
apparatus and the narrow definitions of what constitutes “in play.” He
believes the dynamics in Michigan — the depth of voter agitation,
concern about job losses and opposition to the Iraq war — have been
underestimated outside the state.

“I don’t think the people who
read the political tea leaves are reading the real tea leaves,” Mr.
Marcinkowski said. He added that he has a prediction for how much he
will win by on Election Day, but does not want to jinx anything by
sharing it.