Perhaps one of the most infuriating comments I’ve made and continue to make is:
“If Republican A. Hitler ran against Democrat J. Christ in a West Michigan political contest, A. Hitler would win.”
Many have found this assertion offensive and have profusely offered their rebuttals, saying such a comment is preposterous.
Though I suspected I was right for a long time, I began making this assertion in the fall of 1992 while covering the 3rd District congressional race between incumbent Republican Paul B. Henry and Democrat Carol Kooistra. I attended a candidate forum one October Monday night and was surprised to see Henry absent.
When I inquired as to why, it was Kooistra herself who told me that the congressman, then only 50 years old, had suffered massive headaches over the previous weekend and was rushed to Spectrum Butterworth Hospital. Ms. Kooistra told me the prognosis was not good.
Indeed, the Grand Rapids Press, back when it published every day, had a huge front page story announcing Henry had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Even worse, it reported the grim outlook that less than 5 percent of victims of this kind of cancer survived as much as a year.
Kooistra did not take advantage of the situation and for the rest of the campaign passed out Henry’s literature besides making her appearances and she refused to attack his voting record. The Henry campaign gratefully called her “a class act.”
It didn’t matter. Voters resoundingly voted for a dying man to continue serving, with the customary more than 60 percent re-electing him. Henry served only one day in his last term, flying in to Washington D.C. in January to be sworn in. He died on July 31, 1993.
There were questions raised about whether he should resign because of his dangerously poor health and inability to be in Washington, but some insiders reported that resignation would be Henry’s signal of giving up on fighting cancer.
Mike Maxfield, chairman of the GOP Congressional District, rejected any notions of scouring the district for successors in the wake of the understanding that constituents were being left without representation for essentially seven months.
Maxfield and six others later that year tossed their hats into the ring to succeed Henry in a special election primary won by Vern Ehlers, who like Henry was a former Calvin College professor and former State Senator.
Perhaps most folks these days know about Henry because M-6 is named after him. I remember him as being a solid example of a political animal now extinct — a Republican moderate, who like former State Rep. Paul Hillegonds, even had my vote.
At the risk of enraging many Republicans, I insist that Henry, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Hillegonds and Gerald Ford would have no place in today’s GOP. Henry was too willing to work with the other side of the aisle to get things done. I even watched and heard him praise Democrat Howard Wolpe for his integrity at a Republican Party fund-raising dinner.
As Ranger Rick so often says, “The rotting of America from within continues…”
PHOTOS: Paul B. Henry Carol Kooistra
