In 1992, Hoekstra ran for the U.S. House, defeating thirteen-term incumbent Guy Vander Jagt in the Republican primary and Democratic opponent John H. Miltner in the general election.
Hoekstra was also the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in 2012, losing to Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow in the general election.
[4] He received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Hope College in 1975 and an MBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business in 1977.
He then joined office furniture maker Herman Miller and remained there for 15 years, eventually becoming vice president of marketing.
The district, previously the 9th, had been represented for 26 years by Guy Vander Jagt, longtime chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
[9] In 2006, Hoekstra's Leadership PAC (the Mileage Fund) raised nearly $160,000 in Political Action Contributions from contributors including the Teamsters, Michigan Credit Union League, and Little Planet Books.
[10] Hoekstra faced no significant opposition in the Republican primary or in the general election (as in his previous five reelection campaigns) and went on to secure his seventh term.
[13] Hoekstra consistently opposed gun control during his tenure, earning an A rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund.
[17] Hoekstra's insistence that the Hussein regime possessed weapons of mass destruction were disputed by both Pentagon officials, the Duelfer Report, and the intelligence community.
[18][19][20] On November 3, 2006, The New York Times reported that a website created at the request of Hoekstra and Senator Pat Roberts was found to contain detailed information that could potentially be helpful to those seeking to produce nuclear weapons.
On April 18, 2006, about a month after the first documents were made public, Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, issued a news release acknowledging "minimal risks," but saying the site "will enable us to better understand information such as Saddam's links to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and violence against the Iraqi people."
Media reports stated that the website was taken offline because of security concerns regarding the posting of sophisticated diagrams and other information regarding nuclear weapon design prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
[29][30][31][32][33] Hoekstra was suggested as a possible challenger for Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow in the 2012 Senate election,[35] but he initially declined to run.
[40] Hoekstra targeted Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow with a television ad which ran statewide during the 2012 Super Bowl.
[41] The 30-second ad, created by Republican advertising consultant Fred Davis III, opened with the sound of a gong and the image of a Chinese woman (played by 2012 Miss Napa Valley Lisa Chan)[42] riding a bike alongside a rice paddy.
[43] The commercial included a link to a Hoekstra campaign website with statistics about federal spending, decorated with images of Chinese flags and currency and using a stereotypical Chinatown font.
[48] The ad was criticized by Michael Yaki, former aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and U.S.
[55] However, on February 10, 2012, Hoekstra shut down his controversial Chinese-themed website and phased in a new TV commercial in place of his original ad.
In February 2011, Hoekstra joined the government relations group and Washington, D.C. law firm Dickstein Shapiro,[60] and was named a visiting distinguished fellow at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, concentrating on education reform.
In an interview with NPR's Robert Siegel on December 10, 2014, Hoekstra said he disagreed with the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
[65] CNN also stated that Hoekstra was a frequent guest on a talk show hosted by Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist based in Washington.
[66] On March 11, 2017, Hoekstra said that Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and other leakers of government materials, having illegally released classified information, were traitors and should have taken their evidence to the intelligence committees of the U.S. Congress for proper investigations.
[74] Later that December, NOS U.S. correspondent Wouter Zwart questioned Hoekstra about inaccurate claims that he had made in November 2015 at a panel titled "Muslim Migration into Europe: Eurabia come True?"
hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center[75] that the Netherlands had "no-go zones" and that politicians and cars were being set on fire in the country due to radical Islam.
"[80] On December 23, Hoekstra issued an apology on Twitter, writing that he "made certain remarks in 2015 and regret[ted] the exchange during the Nieuwsuur interview".
[86] One day later, in an interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, Hoekstra finally retracted his statement about the presence of "no-go zones" in the Netherlands where cars and politicians are being set on fire, saying: "Looking back, I'm dismayed that I said it.