Politico might be writing John Conyers off a bit too soon. He has a lot of new territory in Oakland County to cover if the new Michigan congressional map holds up in court, but that territory is largely black, albeit suburban.
Looking at the map, what seems to have happened is that the downriver (southern blue collar suburbs) district of John Dingel got moved north to include Dearborn, the western Detroit black district got slid a bit to the east, and Dingle's eastern Detroit district snakes across the northern edge of Detroit to get Southfield (with a 70% black middle class cadre) and then up to Pontiac's more downscale blacks. The areas surrounding Pontiac are largely upscale, but Pontiac proper is a factory town that metro Detroit grew out to; the more upscale areas are put in other districts.
I haven't done any nitty-gritty analysis of the new seat, but it would seem to be a safe seat for Conyers barring a primary mugging. Upsets can happen, however, as we saw last year, when longtime congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick lost the western Detroit seat to state senator Hansen Clarke. Cheeks-Kilpatrick was likely hurt by her son Kwame's crash and burn as mayor.
Conyers' wife has had some legal issues, so a challenger from the new part of the district might be feasible, especially if they're black.
The people who will be really griping about the map are Sander Levin and Gary Peters; they got put into old Reagan Democrat territory together in the northeastern suburbs. The 2012 map doesn't add any new Republican seats like the 2002 map did, but it does take the one lost seat out on Democrats. Since the plan keeps two black districts, there doesn't seem to be any Voting Rights Act issues at play.
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