DETROIT – Should Michigan congressional candidates live in the district they're vying to represent?
Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution includes the requirements that members of the U.S. House of Representatives be 25 years of age or older, be citizens for at least the past seven years and inhabit the respective states they represent.
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The Constitution does not, however, go so far as to require representatives to live in the district they represent, and some Michigan candidates for the U.S. House don’t.
Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, a Democratic candidate running for John Conyers’ former seat in the 13th Congressional District, lives in the 14th District. Businesswoman Lena Epstein, a Republican candidate running to represent the 11th District, was pressed on her residency in a debate on Monday.
“I live right next to the 11th,” she responded.
Jones and Epstein are just two examples of candidates running to represent districts in which they do not live. Campaigns such as theirs raise the larger question of whether residency matters to Michigan voters.
Technically, a representative of Michigan’s 1st Congressional District, which includes the Upper Peninsula in addition to 16 counties of northern Michigan, could reside in Detroit. In fact, 2016 Democratic nominee for the 1st District Lon Johnson was accused of just this by the National Republican Congressional Committee.
California and Colorado have tried to institute residency requirements for their representatives, but federal courts subsequently struck down these state laws because they are superseded by the Constitution.
What do you think? Can members of Congress effectively represent their constituents if they do not reside in the same district as them? Or is it unfair to accuse candidates of carpetbagging when they are abiding by the Constitution?