After nixing Nixon, Michigan’s Riegle became a lifelong progressive

Hundreds of American politicians have switched party affiliations during their careers, but when Donald W. Riegle Jr. went from Republican to Democrat in 1973, he was one of the first sitting members of the House to move across the aisle. The shift by the Michigan congressman and later senator was a dramatic one, too, given that the man who first encouraged him to run for office, Richard M. Nixon, became the main reason Riegle left the GOP. Nixon’s policies as president, including his conduct of the Vietnam War and his mixed record on civil rights, pushed Riegle into the Democratic Party, where he continued to champion progressive causes until he announced his retirement in 1994 under the cloud of a banking scandal. Riegle, a member of the House from 1967-76 and a senator from 1976-95, died at his home in San Diego on April 24 at age 88. Those who knew Riegle — I covered his last eight years in Congress for Michigan newspapers — remember a passionate, friendly and hard-charging man who, like all politicians, won some (he shepherded the Chrysler bailout through the Senate in 1979) and lost some (he opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement adopted