Challengers on left and right vie to unseat Thompson

By DAVID RYAN
Register Staff Writer

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, is up for re-election this year and he has no shortage of challengers from the two major political parties.

Thompson first faces off against former newspaperman and activist Mitch Clogg in the June 3 Democratic primary, while Republicans Doug Pharr, a Napa criminal defense attorney and former gang prosecutor, and Zane Starkewolf, a Davis biotech businessman, compete for the votes of the GOP.

Although bred from many different political stripes, Thompson’s challengers have one thing in common: They all think they can do a better job than the veteran congressman who has held his post since 1998.

Thompson points to his accomplishments and positions on key Congressional committee assignments like the House Committee on Ways and Means and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that Washington newcomers can only dream of having.

Mike Thompson

A former state legislator before becoming a congressman, Thompson said he has learned through a decade of public service in Washington, D.C. that at the national level, there are many more moving pieces to getting laws passed than in Sacramento.

“I’ve learned you’ve got to be honest when you go to your colleagues when you’re trying to solve a problem,” he said. “If you abrogate your honesty your career is over.”

Thompson, a Vietnam War Army veteran, stirred controversy as an early critic of the Iraq War, but not from afar. Thompson has visited Iraq twice, once in 2002 during the run-up to the war and again in 2006.

In an October 4, 2002 op-ed in the Washington Post, Thompson envisioned a long, drawn out conflict with Iraq.

“An invasion could require a U.S. occupation force in Iraq for several years,” he wrote. “I needed to see how that force would be received by Iraqi civilians, who are living in a state of human crisis created by Saddam Hussein’s tyranny.”

Thompson has criticized the Bush administration for a lack of accountability in war spending. During the past three sessions of Congress, Thompson introduced the War Funding Accountability Act, which calls for independent analyses of military and other spending in Iraq.

Thompson also criticizes the Bush administration’s focus on Iraq.

“We probably need more troops in Afghanistan,” he said. “The truth is the Iraq war diverted our troops from Afghanistan.”

On health care, Thompson supported legislation that would have allowed the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada, without Bush administration approval, to ease the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. Thompson did not vote for President Bush’s prescription drug bill.

“I voted against the (Bush prescription drug benefit) bill, I’ve voted against (drug companies) many times in other legislation. I don’t necessarily think they’re evil ... but that doesn’t mean they should run rampant over the Congress and the American people.”

Thompson said he has a major goal to reform the tax code next term.

“I want to make sure that we have a fair and just tax policy that treats all Americans fairly,” he said. “I’ve been very involved in making sure the alternative minimum tax does not creep down and affect the middle class.”

Mitch Clogg

As a Democratic activist and Army veteran, Clogg has focused his campaign on the Iraq War, and he wastes no time coming out swinging against Thompson, who he calls a “closet Republican.”

Clogg charges Thompson hasn’t done enough to bring the troops home because, he claims, Thompson has supported war spending and hasn’t done enough to impeach President Bush.

Clogg says Thompson has a long way to go before he can properly represent the First Congressional District, which stretches from Yolo County to Napa Valley to the Oregon border and leans heavily Democratic.

“He’s brought home very little of the bacon that Congressmen are supposed to do,” Clogg said, accusing the St. Helena Democrat of not being familiar with the district outside of Napa Valley.

Clogg readily admits his campaign has a long way to go to beat Thompson, saying that it’s unlikely he’ll have more fundraising success than the congressman. That doesn’t mean he won’t try.

“If I have to raise a billion dollars to beat Mike Thompson in the next 90 days then I’ll break my neck to raise a billion dollars,” he said,  “but I don’t want to do it that way.”

Instead, Clogg said, he wants to make himself as “interesting” as possible to get free press coverage.

Clogg supports amnesty for illegal aliens similar to the 1986 Ronald Reagan amnesty, and a health care system modeled after the Veteran’s Administration. He also supports paying billions of dollars in reparations to Iraq for the damage he says Americans have created.

Clogg criticizes Thompson’s position on the House Select Committee on Intelligence for being out of touch with the congressional district.

“Yeah, we have a big terrorism problem here in the 1st District. This is ground zero,” Clogg jokes.

Doug Pharr

Pharr has been concerned about the direction of the congressional district for some time, and he’s not the sort to sit back and do nothing.

“I started to think since I was involved in little league and scouting there were always people who complained but were not willing to help out,” he said. “I realize I’d been complaining for years now.”

Pharr is a die-hard supporter of Sen. John McCain and just about everything he stands for, including continuing the war in Iraq.

“Whether you agree with how we got there or not the fact remains we are (in Iraq),” he said. “Democracy has to be built from the ground up. If you’re in survival mode just trying to get through the day without being blown up you don’t have time to build a democracy. But once security is established democracy has time to grow.”

Pharr said he is a Marine Corps veteran and former intelligence officer, which gives him perspective on the Iraq War and the conflict with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“I’m pretty familiar with that whole Afghanistan-Iraq area, because we had to be ready to go there if necessary,” he said. “As an intelligence guy it was my job to know to everything there was about that place.”

Pharr said he is against calls for taxing the rich, whom he views as investors in the American economy.

“Everybody needs to pay their fair share but we can’t try and blame the rich and make them the scapegoat any more than we can blame any other group,” he said.

On immigration, Pharr said he supported McCain’s vision of securing the border first, but then establishing a temporary work system for cross-border workers.

“It’s important that before we start cracking down on employers for having illegal workers that we just have for them a secure method for having workers,” he said.

On health care, Pharr said he supports McCain’s idea of a health care tax credit.

“This would go a way towards making that gap of uninsured people smaller,” he said. “ ... It would be an improvement for independent business people and it would be an improvement for people who can’t afford health care from their employer.”

Zane Starkewolf

Starkewolf, a St. Helena native and resident of Davis, is a biotech entrepreneur, hoping to develop a device that will diagnose upper respiratory ailments. He said his foray into the health care system convinced him to try to go into politics to fix the system.

Starkewolf considers himself a “green Republican” who views environmentalism and the business world as compatible if the right incentives are in place.

“We all want clean air and clean water but do we have to burn businesses to do that?” he said. “I don’t think we do. We can have responsible capitalism where we can provide incentives.”

Instead of providing universal health care, which he believes the country can’t afford, Starkewolf would support streamlining the health care process.

“Streamlining it makes sure its more effective for the patients,” he said. “There’s just a lot of sort of fat that needs to be trimmed and making sure there’s guaranteed eligibility.”

Starkewolf also wants to make sure there is a mandate for health care coverage for the nation’s children.

On immigration, Starkewolf wants to secure a labor supply for the nation’s agribusinesses by reforming the immigration process.

“(Hispanic immigrants) actually don’t want to immigrate to the U.S.,” he said. “They’re here for the money they’re here for the work, so they need a guest worker program, although different from Bush’s guest worker program.”

That difference is perspective, he said. Starkewolf said he believes President Bush’s program was aimed at businesses without addressing the needs of immigrant workers.

“It’s sort of not really addressing the truth, which is: We need the labor and they need to work temporarily,” he said.

On the Iraq War, Starkewolf said the country simply cannot afford the conflict any longer and needs to focus on Afghanistan.

 “From a financial perspective we can’t afford it,” he said. “Peace and stability is very important to me but the American people can’t afford to be there anymore. It’s not that we don’t need peace — we absolutely do — but we need an international force.”

Napa Valley Register Copyright © 2009