Joseph Mack — you either loved or hated him. Mining and timber lobbyists loved him. Environmentalists hated him.
Born to a mining family, Mack was one of 10 children. After graduating high school, he attended the Milwaukee Vocational School where he studied steel fabrication. During World War II, Joseph S. Mack worked on the Manhattan Project in development of the A-bomb. He returned to Ironwood in 1946 and soon after became active in elective politics. He was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives in 1960 and served two terms, and, with his election to the Senate in 1964, went on to serve a total of 30 years in the Michigan Legislature. Highlights of his career in the Senate included his chairmanship of the Upper Peninsula Industrial and Economic Affairs Committee and his service as a member of the Senate Appropriations and Retirement Committee. His efforts on behalf of natural resources, outdoor recreation, economic development, and the rights of the individual earned the respect of his peers, and, above all, the deep and sincere gratitude of the working men and women of the Upper Peninsula. Or so says Senate Resolution No. 28 offered up after his death.
However, not everyone was so generous with their praise. In the 1970s Joe Mack emerged as the nemesis of the blossoming environmental movement in Michigan. The Ironwood Democratic hated the thought that on the doorstep of his hometown was the Porcupine Mountains, a wilderness state park full of 300-year-old hemlocks that his logging buddies couldn’t touch. So he once proposed transferring the park from the state’s Department of Natural Resources to the Forestry Department of Michigan Tech University so the trees could be harvested for “research.” When somebody asked Mack about all the backpackers who journey to the Lake Superior wilderness for its undeveloped and pristine nature, he gave the most famous quote of his 30-year political career. Backpackers, Mack retorted, arrive “with a five dollar bill and one pair of underwear and don’t change either one of them.”
Mr. Mack was an easily identifiable figure in the Senate, where he spent 26 of his years in Lansing, clad in checkered sport jackets that became a trademark and dark-tinted glasses. He was the last surviving member of a group of Upper Peninsula legislators who wielded extraordinary power in the 1960s and 1970s.
He railed against “environmental whackos” and downstate newspapers as he fought a series of battles to address the economic woes of the U.P. as the mining and forestry industries fell into decline.
Mr. Mack resigned from the Senate in July 1990 after reaching an agreement with the attorney general over padded travel expenses. He reimbursed the state $6,200, but did not face trial on the charges and was allowed to retire and retain his pension. At issue were payments he received for four trips back to his district at times when he was actually in Florida and claimed reimbursement from a separate officeholder fund containing privately-raised money.
Details. Details. Details.
Sources:
Senate Resolution No. 28. A resolution offered as a memorial (2005-2006)
Backpackers? Who Needs Their Tourism Dollars? from the Trail Talk Blog.
“Joe Mack, Controversial U.P. Icon, Dies at 85”, Gongwer News Service, April 21, 2005.
Emily Lawler, “Death, Drugs, and Skullduggery: A Brief History of Michigan Political Scandals“, MLive, August 21, 2015; updated August 24, 2015.