A former General Motors lobbyist and longtime executive for the corporation, granddaughter of one of the men instrumental in creating the once internationally dominant automaker, and wife of Congress’ most vocal and insistent advocate for the U.S. auto industry, is leaving the recently bankrupt GM after 32 years.
Debbie Dingell has been downsized.
The Detroit News reported Tuesday that Dingell has chosen to take a buyout, effective Oct. 1, as GM cuts its executive rolls by 35 percent in meeting the requirements of its Washington bailout. She is to head an undisclosed project for American carmakers.
GM spokesman Greg Martin told The News that Dingell has been “a passionate voice and the face of GM in many communities. We wish her continued success and expect her to continue as a champion in a new, expanded role for the industry.”
She leaves GM as its executive director of global community and government relations, and has served as vice-chair of the General Motors Foundation.
She started with the company in 1977 as a lobbyist, but moved to an administrative role when she married Rep. John D. Dingell four years later. In a Huffington Post blog entry in September 2007, she wrote, “I worked for GM before I met my husband and I have stayed here so no one could ever say I was hired because of who I married.”
She went on to defend her husband as an environmentalist: “Since I won’t allow myself to pontificate on this subject again for a long time, let me also say I deeply resent those that take cheap shots at my husband (and believe me I don’t always agree with him on a number of subjects) but his love of the environment and his long history of action and not just words shows his commitment to this issue.”
Dean of the U.S. House, John Dingell lost his chairmanship of the potent House Energy and Commerce Committee late last year in a squeeze play by California Rep. Henry Waxman.
There, John Dingell had long fought lower emissions standards and other Big Three causes, but Salon reported last December that he also had his own interests to protect:
On his latest financial disclosure form, Dingell listed GM stock worth up to $300,000, between $500,001 and $1,000,000 in stock options, a vested GM pension and his wife’s GM salary, the value of which was undeclared. On top of that, CBS News reports, the Dingells had GM options worth up to $5 million as recently as 2000, and in 1998, they sold options worth as much as $1 million.
Salon also noted that Rep. Dingell had accepted almost $1 million in campaign contributions from the automaker.
Debbie Dingell was wealthy in her own right before marrying the congressman, as granddaughter of one of Fisher Body’s founding brothers, and an heir to the family fortune.
She has long been a heavy hitter for the Democratic Party as a member of its national committee, head of Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 Michigan campaign, and one of the strategists given most credit for delivering Michigan to John Kerry in 2004.
But she also teamed with Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin in a misguided attempt to move up the date of Michigan’s 2008 presidential primary, nearly losing the state’s crucial votes for Barack Obama.
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