Bob Lorinser, the Democratic U.S. House of Representatives candidate for Michigan's 1st District, talks with district residents at the Portage Lake District Library Saturday. (Garrett Neese/ Daily Mining Gazette)

HOUGHTON — The Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives district representing the Upper Peninsula held a meet-and-greet event Saturday at the Portage Lake District Library.

Bob Lorinser, who is running against incumbent Republican Rep. Jack Bergman in the 1st District, spoke for more than an hour and half about how he would approach the job if elected and his positions on issues such as health care.

Lorinser, a longtime doctor in Marquette, currently works as the medical director for Marquette County. He said he had been motivated to run in part because of Bergman’s role in questioning the results of the 2020 election, including voting against the certification of the election and helping coordinate access to Dominion voting machines after a court order in Antrim County, where human error briefly led to county totals showing a lead for Joe Biden.

“Our representative will still not say that Biden was elected fairly,” Lorinser said. “Didn’t ask if he liked him, if he agreed with his policies, but (he should) support your vote.”

He also criticized Bergman for holding few public events, saying he would be “accessible and available.”

“I promise to come in the community and have an open public event,” he said. “If I have a private event, it only needs to be in conjunction with the open event. That’s where the citizens are.”

Lorinser said he would look for a way to put more money into Social Security, which he said is not providing enough assistance with fewer people having pensions or the circumstances to save enough money for retirement.

Lorinser did not back the forgiveness of student loans, which he said was a temporary band-aid on a flawed system.

“I don’t think that’s the solution to our problem, which is unaffordable education,” he said. “Within five years of paying off those student debts, we’re going to be right back where we started, another trillion dollars in the hole again.”

Lorinser said he would need to see facts about how a universal basic income would be workable before he could support it. However, he said, universal health care and other basic necessities should be available for anyone with a job.

“If you work, you should have heat, you should have water, you should have education,” he said.

Asked about immigration, Lorinser said legal immigration should be a net benefit to government revenues, and also demonstrates the country’s compassion and empathy. As for a wall on the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration, he said he could support it if it provided the political space to address systemic problems.

While that might reduce illegal immigration, it wouldn’t prevent people from overstaying their visas or being smuggled in another way, he said.

“As long as life in the United States offers potential migrants more opportunities and fewer perceived dangers than in their home countries, illegal immigration will likely persist,” he said.

While there’s no solid polling of the district, Lorinser said, he believed by last month the race had narrowed to a “near dead heat” of 52-48. He applied back-of-the-envelope math to a Cook Political Reports estimate last year that Bergman had a 13-point lead. A Monmouth poll showed a seven-point swing towards Democrats in similar districts after Roe v. Wade was overturned. After a Kansas vote against a state constitutional amendment to ban abortion, Lorinser revised that estimate towards the Democrats another two to three points.

Lorinser said he believed the law as it existed under Roe v. Wade was a good compromise. He said after the event he would not support a proposal by Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham to ban abortions nationwide after 16 weeks. On a personal level, he has a hard time with abortions after that period, he said. But they represent about 1% of total abortions, and often involve abnormalities that would be lethal to the child.

“These are really hard decisions, aren’t they?” he said after the event. “Why give them to the government? I want the government to stay in stuff that we talked about — medicare, health care, education. Stay out of my personal life.”