Brothers Levin Near The End Of A 32-Year Congressional Partnership
At tonight's State of the Union address, Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin will be doing the same thing he's done for decades — he'll be sitting with his older brother Sandy, who's a House Democrat from Michigan.
No two siblings in the nation's history have served longer than the 32 years the brothers Levin have been together in Congress. Both have held powerful committee chairmanships.
But this will be their last State of the Union together. Carl, who was first elected to Congress four years before his brother, has decided to retire at the end of the year.
When Sandy Levin shows up at his younger brother Carl's Senate office — a suite of high-ceilinged rooms next to Harry Truman's old Senate digs — Carl protectively steers him toward a cozy alcove at the end of a long meeting room.
"I think we're going to go in here," he says, "because it's too cold in my office."
Carl is the 79-year-old brother with the gold rimmed reading glasses permanently perched at the end of his nose. It's an image Comedy Central's Jon Stewart once described as "this kindly old shoemaker."
Sandy, who's 82, sports a halo of snowy white hair. Being in Congress with his brother, he says, has been a good thing.
"People like brothers, when they do their own thing, together," he says
Which is, adds Carl, what they've always done.
"We spent most of our lives together, including as kids, in the same bedroom together, including law school and about 30,000 games of squash that we've played together," Carl says. "Both of us will tell you we don't have any idea who won more of those games, we have the same line."
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