PASSINGS / Carl Pursell

Carl Pursell, 76, a Michigan Republican who served in the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993, died of heart disease Thursday at his home in Plymouth, Mich.

Pursell represented Michigan’s lower peninsula, including the Detroit suburbs and Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located. During his career in the House, Pursell served on the Appropriations Committee and was the ranking Republican on the education subcommittee. He also won a seat on the Committee on Committees, the panel that makes assignments for House Republicans.

While serving on the Appropriations Committee in 1981, he became a leader of the “Gypsy Moths,” a group of moderate and liberal Republicans who opposed the Reagan administration’s budget cuts for social programs.

After a 1982 redistricting that gave him a constituency that was largely Republican and more conservative than his previous district, he changed tactics, opting to pursue bipartisan compromise.

In 1990, his concern over the deficit prompted him to remove from a spending bill a $3-million Army Corps of Engineers project in his district; he urged colleagues to do the same.

Carl Duane Pursell was born Dec. 19, 1932, in Imlay City, Mich. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1957 and a master’s degree in education in 1962, both from Eastern Michigan University.

He served in the Army in the late 1950s and then worked as a teacher and a publisher and ran a real estate firm before going into politics. He served on the Wayne County Board of Commissioners and in the Michigan Senate before winning his U.S. House seat. He did not seek reelection in the U.S. House in 1992.

Pursell served on Eastern Michigan’s board of regents from 1993 to 2000.