Rivers running for fourth term

By Hanna LoPatin

Daily Staff Reporter

The fight to represent Michigan's 13th District in the U.S. House of Representatives is between two candidates with a vast amount of experience under their belts.

Democrat Lynn Rivers of Ann Arbor is running for her fourth term in Congress, where she has served on the budget and science committees.

Republican Carl Berry is a retired Plymouth police chief and has completed several political stints on the local level, including serving on the Plymouth-Canton School Board.

The 13th District stretches from Ann Arbor east into western Wayne County, where Berry said he thinks he can pick up significant support from Republican voters. Admitting that the largely Democratic Ann Arbor area is unlikely to choose him over Rivers, Berry said he primarily is running to raise the issues in the minds of voters.

"There always needs to be competition out there so you can get a lot of opinion as to what's going on," he said.

Rivers puts higher education within her list of priorities of things she wants to change.

"It is far too expensive," she said. "Many students are living with a debt load that's so great that they can't lead a normal life after they graduate."

But Berry says he is happy with the current system. "I don't see any problems with it," he said.

Sixty percent of a college student's tuition is professor's salary, Berry said. "Who wants to take the pay cut?" he asked. "There's only so much money to go around."

On the matter of primary and secondary education, Berry is a strong advocate of vouchers and charter schools. He serves on the school board of a charter school in the area. "A good (public school) system is going to depend on competition," he said.

Rivers opposes vouchers and charter schools.

Health care is another important issue to both candidates.

A wife and mother of two by the age of 21, Rivers said she knows what it is like to struggle without health care.

"Far too many of the people who are making these decisons have never been there," she said.

Berry said he believes everyone should have access to health care but he does not believe in "socialist medicine."

Campaign finance reform is a critical issue for Rivers, who said she would like to see all campaigns publicly financed. "I want to see elections where the race is about ideas rather than money," she said.

Berry would like to see gun laws enforced more strictly nationwide. "We have to close the loophole on gun shows," he said, adding that Michigan has a state law that does just that.

Otherwise, Berry said he does not believe in an increase in gun laws. Enforcement of current laws, he said, is the key to being safe.

Accessibility to constituents is more difficult for federal lawmakers than local officials, but Rivers said she has maintained contact with those who elected her as their representative.

She promised to be available when she was first elected to Congress in 1994. "I have certainly done that," she said, estimating that in six years she has held more than 300 events like coffee hours where constituents are able to voice their concerns.