Tim Walberg

Tim Walberg , a former one-term House Republican, confirmed Tuesday that he will try to reclaim Michigan’s 7th District seat that he lost to Democrat Mark Schauer in 2008.

Walberg’s decision to run in 2010 — which he had signaled was likely — will be one of the key rematches in districts that the Democrats captured from the Republicans last year, expanding the House majority they claimed in the 2006 elections.  

Schauer won by just more than 2 percentage points, and Democrat Barack Obama won the presidential vote by 6 points in the largely rural 7th District, where the biggest city is the cereal-making capital of Battle Creek. But the south-central Michigan district has a heritage as GOP turf that dates way back to the 1850s, when one of the founding meetings of the Republican Party was held in the city of Jackson.