Deborah Dingell

Deborah Ann Dingell (/ˈdɪŋɡəl/; née Insley; November 23, 1953) is an American Democratic Party politician who has been the U.S. Representative for Michigan's 12th congressional district since 2015. She is the widow of John Dingell, who was the longest-serving U.S. congressman. She worked as a consultant to the American Automobile Policy Council. She was a superdelegate for the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

She is active in several Michigan and Washington, D.C., charities and serves on a number of charitable boards.She is a founder and past chair of the National Women's Health Resource Center and the Children's Inn at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is also a member of the Board of Directors for Vital Voices Global Partnership. She is a 1975 graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Descended from one of the Fisher brothers, owners of Fisher Body, from 1919 a part of General Motors, she has served as presidentof the General Motors Foundation and as executive director of Global Community Relations and Government Relations at GM.

She married Michigan Congressman John Dingell, 27 years her senior, in 1981; she was Dingell's second wife. She had grown up as a Republican, but became a Democrat soon after marrying Dingell. Their marriage lasted 38 years until her husband's death on February 7, 2019 at the age of 92.

She is a member of the Democratic National Committee from Michigan and chaired Vice President Al Gore’s campaign in Michigan in 2000. In 2004, she also helped secure the Michigan Democratic primary and general election vote for John Kerry in Michigan.

In November 2006, Dingell was elected to the Board of Governors of Wayne State University in Detroit.

Dingell and U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D – MI) were the proponents of moving up Michigan's presidential primary before February 5, to attempt to garner greater political influence for Michigan during the 2008 Democratic primaries. This resulted in Michigan almost losing its delegates' votes in the Democratic National Convention.

John Dingell became the longest-serving member of the United States House of Representatives in June 2013 and continued serving up until the end of the 113th Congress in January 2015.

When Carl Levin announced his retirement from the U.S. Senate at the end of his term in 2015, Dingell indicated that she was interested in running for his seat. When former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm declined to run for the seat, a Politico writer declared Dingell to be one of the front-runners for the Democratic nomination, alongside Representative Gary Peters. However, she chose not to run, and Peters was elected to Levin's seat.

In 2018, Dingell introduced a law that would give the Consumer Product Safety Commission the authority to recall defective firearms. Her husband, John Dingell, was a key lawmaker that initially granted the firearms industry this exemption from the 1972 Consumer Product Safety Act that created the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In July 2019, Dingell voted against a House resolution introduced by Congressman Brad Schneider (D-IL) opposing efforts to boycott the State of Israel and the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel for its continued occupation of Palestine. The resolution passed 398-17.

2014 election

Dingell indicated that she planned to run for her husband's congressional seat after he announced his retirement. On August 5, she won the Democratic primary. On November 4, she won the general election, defeating Republican Terry Bowman.When Dingell was sworn in, she became the first U.S. non-widowed woman in Congress to succeed her husband – who was the longest-serving member of Congress in history with 59 years served. His father, John Dingell Sr., held Michigan's 12th district for 22 years before his son won it. All together the Dingells have represented this district and its predecessors for 86 consecutive years as of 2019. The district was numbered as the 15th from 1933 to 1965, the 16th from 1965 to 2003, the 15th again from 2003 to 2013, and has been the 12th since 2013.

Committee assignments

• Committee on Energy and Commerce
  • Subcommittee on Health
  • Subcommittee on Communications & Technology
  • Subcommittee on Consumer Protection & Commerce
  • Subcommittee on the Environment & Climate Change
• Committee on Natural Resources
  • Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public lands
  • Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations

She is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Arts Caucus., and the Congressional Caucus on Macedonia and Macedonian-Americans

Trump impeachment

After the House’s approval of articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, Trump attacked Dingell during his speech at a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, because of her vote for impeachment.Trump conjectured that her husband, longtime congressman, John Dingell, might be in hell. “Maybe he’s looking up, I don't know, I don't know, maybe, maybe.But let's assume he's looking down,” Trump said. Debbie Dingell was attending a bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus gathering when she was told of Trump's remarks. Numerous members of both parties came to Dingell's support. In her response to the incident, Dingell called for a return to civility, saying "some things should be off-limits."