Lansing — Former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz, who served in the military, became Battle Creek’s mayor and was a fabled figure in Michigan politics for decades, died Wednesday, May 27, 2026.
Schwarz was 88 years old.
He was viewed as a moderate Republican. He criticized term limits, gerrymandering and the influence of money in politics. He was also a doctor, a Vietnam veteran, and a longtime lecturer at the University of Michigan. He was a member of the Michigan Senate from 1987 until 2002.
Republican former Gov. John Engler, who was involved in recruiting Schwarz for the Legislature, described the former congressman as a “wickedly smart man.”
He was a dedicated and principled public servant, Engler said, from his service as an elected official to his time teaching at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
“He’s a good teacher and a better man, and a great doctor, too,” Engler said. “We need more people like Joe in public service, I’ll tell you that. They’re hard to get these days.”
Schwarz was an ear, nose, and throat specialist who maintained his medical practice in Battle Creek while serving in the Legislature and Congress. Earlier in his life, he treated wounded troops on the battlefield in Vietnam and served in the Central Intelligence Agency as a machine gun-toting spy in Southeast Asia.
“He was one of my closest friends and buddy to the very end. Very sad,” said former U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph. “I spoke to his classes at the Ford School, where he taught following his congressional tenure. He never lost his Battle Creek enthusiasm.”
Schwarz ran for governor in 2002, losing to then-Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus in the Republican primary. Two years later, he won Michigan’s 7th District seat in the U.S. House after winning a six-man GOP primary. At the time, the Associated Press described Schwarz as “a maverick who supports abortion rights.”
Schwarz was a friend and longtime supporter of former U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a Republican who also served in Vietnam and also was known as a maverick. When McCain came to Lansing in late 1999 to speak, Engler and other Republican officials staged a boycott, but Schwartz left the Capitol to attend.
In a rebuke to George W. Bush, Schwarz soon after signed on to chair McCain’s 2000 presidential primary campaign in Michigan, which McCain won in an upset.
“I consider it one of the great privileges of my life to have known John, to have been close to him during my time in the Congress and during the time he was running for president in 2000 and 2008,” Schwarz told a radio station in 2018.
In 2006, conservative Republican challenger Tim Walberg of Tipton unseated Schwarz in a two-way primary. Walberg continues to serve in the U.S. House.
“I am saddened to hear of the passing of former Rep. Joe Schwarz who served our nation as a member of the Navy and served Michigan as a member of Congress,” Walberg said Wednesday. “My prayers are with his family during this difficult time.”
Schwarz stayed heavily involved in Michigan politics. He worked on an initiative to promote safe voting ahead of the 2020 election and endorsed Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s reelection in 2022.
Democratic former Michigan state Rep. Lynn Jondahl remembered Schwarz as a great person to work with.
“He wanted to understand and take on issues in a way that made sense,” Jondahl said.
Patrick Anderson, founder of the Anderson Economic Group, described Schwarz as one of the smartest and most confident Michigan lawmakers in recent state history.
“Every debate I had with him involved well-founded facts and a strongly focused argument,” Anderson said.
He added, “I always had a huge respect for Joe Schwarz. He was one of the best senators in the past 50 years, and I will miss him.”
Born John J.H. “Joe” Schwarz on Nov. 15, 1937, he spent part of his childhood living on the campus of the Battle Creek VA Medical Center when his father was chief of psychiatry at the hospital.
He went on to earn a degree in history from the University of Michigan in 1959 and a medical degree from Wayne State University in 1964. He completed his residency in otolaryngology at Harvard University.
He served in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam starting in 1965, then as an assistant naval attaché for the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta in Indonesia before serving with the Central Intelligence Agency in Laos and in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970.
His clandestine assignments with the CIA included missions to locate U.S. prisoners of war in Southeast Asia, The Detroit News reported when Swartz was running for governor.
Schwarz’s public service began as a city commissioner and then mayor of Battle Creek from 1979 until 1986. He was elected to the Michigan Senate as a Republican from 1987 until 2002, including as Senate president pro tempore for about a decade.
During an interview for the Michigan Political History Society in 2016, Schwarz bashed the state’s legislative term limits.
“I believe it’s the worst thing the voters of this good state have inflicted on themselves ever,” Schwarz said.
Some political observers who tracked his campaigns blamed his unsuccessful bids for governor in part on Schwarz’s distaste for fundraising, noting he found it “awkward” to ask friends and strangers for money. He touted his background in medicine as a boon for his approach to public policy.
“A physician is trained to deal in fact,” he told an audience at a Birmingham fundraiser in 2002.
“We don’t deal in ideology. We don’t deal in hearsay. Physicians have to make decisions and make them rapidly.”
On the down side, he added, physicians are “very impatient” people; however, he maintained that his years in elected office tempered that tendency.
Schwarz loved opera, museums, the symphony, biographies and University of Michigan football “and is just as likely to quote Shakespeare or speak Latin as he is to unleash mild profanity,” according to a 2002 profile in The Detroit News.
In the years after he lost his seat in Congress, Schwarz became estranged from the GOP, joining a coalition of Republicans who backed Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s reelection in 2022.
In 2023, Schwarz was involved in an effort to form a new third-party called the Common Sense Party.
“The traditional Republican Party, as it existed prior to President Trump, doesn’t exist anymore,” Schwarz said in a May 19, 2023 episode of WKAR-TV’s “Off The Record.” “And many traditional Republicans, myself included, have, not happily, said we can’t really be supportive of the party as it now exists.”
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz, longtime public servant, has died
Reporting by Craig Mauger, Beth LeBlanc and Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
