Hoekstra wants presidential candidates' citizenship verified
Hoekstra wants presidential candidates' citizenship verified
By Kathleen Gray, Detroit Free Press Updated 1h 11m ago
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. – A Senate candidate whose campaign Web address is petespenditnot.com says he would like to create a federal office to verify that presidential candidates meet minimum requirements to hold office, including citizenship.
Former congressman Pete Hoekstra, who represented Michigan's 2nd District from 1993 to 2011 and now is challenging Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, floated the idea at a tea party gathering last month in Lapeer, Mich., when someone in the audience asked about President Obama's citizenship.
"This is not brain surgery. It should be an FBI person, maybe a CIA person," Hoekstra said. "If you want to run for president, you've got to go with the proper documentation and get it certified that you meet the qualifications to be the president of the United States."
Obama was born in Hawaii of a U.S. citizen mother and a Kenyan father. Hawaii's secretary of state has certified his birth certificate. Obama also has released his long-form birth certificate.
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Hoekstra said the issue in 2008 became moot when Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee for president four years ago, declined to turn it into a campaign issue. McCain was born outside the U.S. in the Panama Canal Zone, then under U.S. jurisdiction, of two U.S.-citizen parents.
"I'd love to give you an answer and say I'm going to fight it and beat it and win it. But it wasn't fought in 2008 and we lost," he said.
Democrats jumped on the comments as being out of touch and out of the mainstream.
"You can't get much further outside the mainstream than calling for the creation of a birther office staffed by the CIA and FBI," said Mark Brewer, Michigan Democratic Party chairman. "Our leaders should be focused on creating jobs, not on creating a new federal bureaucracy to comb through birth certificates."
On Wednesday, the Hoekstra campaign said Hoekstra believes that Obama is a U.S. citizen.
The most recent poll for the race, released Wednesday from Public Policy Polling of Raleigh, N.C., shows Stabenow ahead of Hoekstra 53% to 37% with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. Hoekstra is overwhelmingly favored to win the GOP primary Aug. 7, according to the poll.
Hoekstra wants presidential candidates' citizenship verified
