Rep. Hansen Clarke gets the Newsweek star treatment

U.S. Representative Hansen Clarke's reach-across-the-aisle style has already raised eyebrows in Washington. This profile on the first-term elected official spends much time drawing contrasts between Clarke and another (in)famous Detroit politician, but it also raises interesting questions about who Clarke is, and the national implications of his victory.

Excerpt:

Our first stop was a mission where Clarke addressed a crowd of some 200 homeless Detroiters. Clarke said that he sees himself in the faces of the street people. His mother, who worked as a school crossing guard, sent him away to school with winnings from the street numbers. When she died, while he was at Cornell University, he left college and drifted, unemployed and living on food stamps. Eventually he pulled himself together, returned to Cornell and then went on to law school at Georgetown, but he says, "All my life I've been afraid that I'm going to wind up on the streets."

Read the profile here.
Enjoy this story? Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.