When did a House member from Michigan last lose a general election?

a) 2006

b) 2002

c) 1996

d) 1984

Answer: c) The last House incumbent from Michigan who was unseated in a general election was one-term Republican Dick Chrysler. He lost to Democrat Debbie Stabenow, who in turn was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000 and re-elected in 2006.

Chrysler, a wealthy businessman, had lost a 1992 House race to Democratic incumbent Bob Carr in Michigan’s 8th District. But in 1994, Chrysler, buoyed by that year’s Republican upswing, won the open-seat race to succeed Carr, who ran for the Senate but lost to Republican Spencer Abraham.

Despite Chrysler’s win, the 8th District, as then drawn, had at least a slight Democratic lean, and Stabenow, a longtime local and state officeholder, pounded him for voting strongly with the conservative leadership of the new congressional Republican majority. She won the 1996 race by 54 percent to 44 percent, was re-elected easily in 1998, then avenged Carr’s 1994 Senate loss by unseating Abraham in 2000.

To find the previous Michigan House incumbent who lost a general election, you have to go back to 1984, when Republican Bill Schuette unseated Democratic Rep. Donald J. Albosta.

But in the period since 1996, three Michigan incumbents lost their seats in primaries, making it a rare state in which primary defeats of incumbents exceed those who lost in general elections.

The most recent came in 2006, when Republican Joe Schwarz lost his 7th District primary to current incumbent Tim Walberg. In 2002, Rep. Lynn Rivers lost her 15th District primary to fellow Democrat John D. Dingell, the current longest-serving House member, in an incumbent matchup forced by redistricting. And in 1996, the same year Chrysler lost in the general, Democratic Rep. Barbara Rose-Collins was defeated in her primary by Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.

Kilpatrick herself survived a very close call in this year’s 13th District Democratic primary, held Tuesday, in which she took 39.5 percent of the vote in a three-candidate contest and defeated her closest competitor by just 2 percentage points.