January 10, 2012
About three years before Mike Thompson made his first run for the California First District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, some Democrats in the 104th Congress formed a coalition they called “Blue Dogs,” to distinguish themselves from more liberal colleagues.
The term they used in 1995 to label themselves is believed to have come from Rep. Pete Geren, a Texan who said that left-wing Democrats were choking more moderate party members until they turned blue.
The label also refers to a series of “blue dog” paintings by George Rodrigue, a Cajun artist whose pictures hung in the offices of two Louisiana representatives, where the moderates would meet. The name also hints that moderates had been abandoned to the outside, where their party had left them to turn blue in the cold.
“I am a Blue Dog Democrat,” Thompson said last week in an exclusive interview with The Herald.
CONGRESSMAN MIKE THOMPSON. Keri Luiz/Staff
Running for re-election to what will be the Fifth District in the Nov. 6 race, the seven-term congressman may be Benicia’s next U.S. representative following redistricting that changed the political landscape of the city, which has had George Miller as its representative for 37 years.
Regarding his “Blue Dog” status, “we need to be fiscally responsible,” Thompson said. Congress should do its utmost “to watch taxpayer dollars.”
Blue Dogs also favor bipartisan cooperation, he said, and he’s hoping to see improvement in that area in Congress.
But he’s certainly not holding his breath in an election year.
“I had some conservative and moderate Democrats ask me, ‘Did you watch Iowa?’” he said, referring to a nationally televised Republican presidential forum prior to voting in that state’s caucuses.
“As long as all these people are in the race, it’s good for moderate Democrats. They’re finding out these guys don’t want to work with anyone. They just want to make (President Barack) Obama look bad.
“I’d be happy to meet these guys halfway,” he said. But he doesn’t see some of his Republican counterparts willing to do the same.
He said he has respect for House Speaker John Boehner, who is among those Republicans who is willing, in turn, to work with Democrats “and minimize the chaos.”
But Boehner has to deal with those who answer to the tea party as well as Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who himself has designs on the speakership, Thompson said. “Eric Cantor wants to be the Speaker, and he undercuts Boehner every step of the way. I’m hopeful the next 11 months will go quickly.”
Until 2012 is over, there may be little light at the end of the tunnel. “I don’t see it,” Thompson said.
An early clash, and lesson
One issue where Thompson had hoped to see collaboration was on Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense.
From 1962 to 1974, the Department of Defense conducted 46 chemical and biological tests on U.S. service members and civilians in projects called SHAD and “112.” The Cold War-era tests exposed the service members to nerve gas, sarin and other chemical warfare substances, as well as a variety of life-threatening bacteria.
Thompson learned about those tests as a House freshman in 1999, and met with both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to push for an investigation.
When Thompson wasn’t satisfied with the pace of the investigation, he introduced legislation to require DOD to make public information on all tests and provide veterans with health care they needed. That legislation would initiate a General Accounting Office investigation.
By 2008, the Institute of Medicine had completed the first of two studies to determine the long-term health effects of the exposures.
“It took years to say it existed,” Thompson said.
His battle began his first year in Congress, when Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican who now is a senator, was in the House. Tom DeLay was House Majority Leader at the time.
Both Moran, a subcommittee chairman who wouldn’t agree to the hearing Thompson had requested, and DeLay delayed progress on getting the veterans health care, he said.
DeLay even asked Thompson why he should help the new Democrat in his quest.
“My response was, ‘I lived in this district 50 years. You can’t beat me. This is about veterans and families.’”
Thompson challenged the Republican leaders, saying either he got his hearing, “or there will be a press conference.” The Republicans blinked, and Thompson got his hearing.
Partisan conflicts
Thompson said in this age ogf politcial rancor, bipartisanship is all but possible. He mentioned in particular the debt ceiling increase, saying President Obama should handle it without going through Congress.
Referring to another issue, Thompson said, “How many people want consumer protection on financial issues?” But Republicans had opposed appointing someone to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created in 2010.
Obama finally appointed Richard Cordray to head the agency Jan. 4, while the Senate was in recess.
Still, Thompson said, conflict in Congress is nothing new.
He said shortly after arriving as a freshman, someone showed him spots on steps that lead to the House chamber. It was blood from an earlier era. “Someone shot somebody,” Thompson said.
He suggested earlier styles of campaigning, starting at one end of a district and giving the same stumping speech all the way to the other, turned some political figures into characters — and caricatures.
In fact, in the early to mid-1800s, members of Congress frequently wore guns, sometimes drew on the floor, and occasionally fired them. Others carried and threatened to use Bowie knives.
In 1856, Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina used a cane to wallop Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts so thoroughly, Sumner had to be carried from the chamber, and didn’t return for three years.
“It’s never been an arena for ‘warm and fuzzy,’” Thompson said.
Tensions with Iran
Thompson was in Benicia before a U.S. Navy war ship rescued 13 Iranian fishermen who had been captured 40 days before by Somali pirates in the northern Arabian Sea.
Only days before the rescue, Iran had warned the United States to keep its ships out of the Persian Gulf amid tensions over Iran’s perceived threat to oil supply lines.
As a member of the House Intelligence Committee and others that involve sensitive information, Thompson said he couldn’t publicly address some of the Middle East issues.
However, he said, “I think we need to do everything possible to get (Iran) to become good neighbors and world partners,” whether by sanctions or by diplomatic conversation.
At the same time, the United States needs to “double down on renewable energy alternatives,” to reduce dependence on foreign oil. “We’ve been woefully slow.”
Thompson said, “You can’t do everything — you can’t do it all with solar or with wind, (but) you can make a significant dent. We’ve got to figure out how to get electricity from the windy and sunny parts into the grid. We need to encourage that.”
On PACE
How to accomplish that is one area in which he and the president disagree.
In fact, Thompson said, he’s fighting Obama on the decision to shut down the PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) program, by which a homeowner repays a loan for the up-front costs of installing solar or wind energy generators on private property through an annual addition to his or her property tax assessment.
“The FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency) shut down the program,” Thompson said.
Ironically, that’s one area he said is seeing bipartisanship. “I’ve got two GOP members who understand,” he said.
U.S. Reps. Dan Lungren, from California’s Third District, and Nan Hayworth, of New York’s 19th, are Republican co-authors of legislation Thompson hopes will restore the program.
Without PACE, homeowners face a stiff up-front cost to install solar or wind power generators. “It’s a deterrent,” Thompson said.
Besides encouraging renewable energy and making it affordable to homeowners, PACE also was putting people to work, he said. Sonoma County, which he currently represents, has been hit particularly hard by the recession, but construction workers had found jobs through opportunities opened up by the PACE program.
Thompson wants PACE back in place not only for that county, but for Solano County as well. “I want to get aggressive on solar power on Mare Island,” he said.
Partners with private industry
He also hopes private industry and other commercial interests will increase their participation in the “greening” of America. He said he he’s familiar with one success story that, for the most part, has blossomed out of the public eye.
A member of the Congressional Motorsports Caucus, Thompson is familiar with the many programs and partnerships NASCAR uses to make stock car racing more compatible with fans’ interest in sustainability.
One of the partners is Safety-Kleen, a company that mops up fluid spills after a track crash, then re-refines the petrochemicals to make them useful again. The company that began recycling leather tanning products in 1968 linked up with NASCAR years ago as a marketing venture.
Among other jobs, Safety-Kleen recycles air filters and used motor oil, not just from race tracks but from automotive stores, other major equipment companies, automobile manufacturers and many other sources.
“I’m a tractor mechanic,” Thompson said. When he was safety supervisor at Beringer’s Vineyards in Napa, he became familiar with Safety-Kleen and rented one of its shop cleaners. “It was a big deal,” he said.
At the time, the company used solutions to clean mechanical parts. The petrochemicals and other heavy contaminants would sink and get filtered out from processing and recycling.
But the cleaning solution could be harsh.
“Now they use an environmentally appropriate filtering system that doesn’t damage the environment.”
Bringing the boys home
A Vietnam War veteran, Thompson has been mindful of those serving in Afghanistan — and the lessons of past conflicts. “There are always lessons we haven’t learned,” he said. “We as Americans face a serious threat from those who want to harm our way of life. We need to be aggressive to protect the American people.”
He said America went into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, because the hijackers had been financed by terrorist interests in Afghanistan.
The origins of al-Qaeda go back to the Soviet Union’s invasion of that country in 1979, after which Osama bin Laden went there to organize resistance to the Soviets. But by 1996, he had turned his attention to American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and later to Americans elsewhere.
At first, bin Laden denied planning the Sept. 11 attacks, but by 2004 he had admitted his involvement.
Going into Afghanistan was one thing, “but we diverted,” Thompson said. The United States went to Iraq. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda spread, “to Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Virginia, Texas.”
To deal with this spread, Thompson said, America should focus less on invasions and more on counter-insurgency.
“We need to do counter-terrorism,” he said. “Bring the troops home.” Instead, the country should spend money on tracking down terrorists. “If they’re in New York, Times Square, or Maryland, go after them. We know how the model works. We killed bin Laden. We know we can be successful.”
Thompson called for the Central Intelligence Agency to provide Congress with a full report on the bin Laden raid. His provision to the Intelligence Authorization Act for 2012 has been signed by the president.
“As time passes, memories get clouded,” he said.
He explained he wanted history to be recorded correctly. “This is too big an issue to be misrepresented.”
