Conservative Rep. Siljander Loses to Ex-U.S. Budget Aide in Primary

DETROIT —  Conservative GOP firebrand Rep. Mark D. Siljander congratulated his opponent Wednesday after becoming the first House incumbent to lose in this year’s primaries.

“I am not bitter,” Siljander said of his loss in Tuesday’s primary to former federal budget aide Fred Upton, who was making his first campaign for elective office. “I have to move on in my life.”

Siljander, a fundamentalist Christian and passionate defender of the GOP’s New Right, will have served 5 1/2 years in Congress when his term ends in December.

Siljander and Upton said negative reaction to a last-minute campaign tape, in which Siljander asked local clergymen to help “break the back of Satan” by supporting him, played a part in the outcome.

His defeat, he warned on the tape, “would send a shock wave across America that Christians can be defeated in Congress by impugning their integrity and smear tactics.”

Upton, 33, now faces Democrat Daniel Roche, a retired professor, in the general election. The heavily Republican, rural 4th District in southwestern Michigan has not sent a Democrat to Washington since 1932.