Posted on 10/30/2005 10:25:33 AM PST by calcowgirl
What kind of legacy will Kern County's longtime Republican congressman, Bill Thomas, leave behind?
There is no indication that retirement is in the near future for the volatile politician known for his razor-sharp intellect, temper tantrums and heavy-handed control of Kern County Republican politics.
Thomas declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this story.
But as Thomas approaches his 64th birthday, on Dec. 6, speculation about his place in the history of Kern County and the nation has gotten a jump-start.
It was prompted by the federal transportation spending bill, which was unveiled a few weeks ago and quickly passed by Congress. In behind-the-scenes negotiations, Thomas used his influence as a powerful committee chairman to lard the bill with a mind-boggling $726 million in highway projects for Kern County. That's far more money per capita than even traffic-congested Los Angeles County received.
Until then, Thomas had never been known as a big pork-barrel spender, although he periodically bailed out the financially ailing Kern Medical Center and provided enough money for the new terminal at Meadows Field that officials named it after him.
But a name on a plaque is no way to measure the contributions of an office-holder as productive and as complicated as Bill Thomas. His legacy will loom large over Kern County and the United States long after he is gone, but just what shape it will take is a matter of debate.
Razor sharp
From Bakersfield to Washington, D.C., Thomas is widely admired for his intellect and his work ethic.
Kevin McCarthy, who spent years on Thomas' staff before being elected to the state Assembly in 2002, tells stories of picking up Thomas at an airport in the evening, working together all night and putting him back on a plane to Washington, D.C., in the morning.
But Thomas is also feared by many for his irascible personality and hair-trigger temper.
He is also hated by many -- including conservative Republicans and much of the state Republican Party leadership for his heavy-handed control of the local party organization in Kern County and his constant efforts to ease the state party's hard-line stands on abortion and gun control.
But no one, not even his enemies, doubts Thomas' legacy.
"Bill Thomas' impact on our community and on the nation has been profound," said Republican state Sen. Roy Ashburn, once a Thomas aide but now one of the conservatives on the outs with the local Thomas political organization.
His allies were even more effusive.
"His intelligence and his grasp of the issues is amazing," said McCarthy. "He can deal with issues as complex as Medicare and still understand the needs of the freeway system of Bakersfield."
"He's by far the smartest guy in Congress," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, also a Thomas protege. "He's a guy who puts policy first, but also knows how to do the politics and make it work."
Bucking his party
Nationally, experts say Thomas will probably be remembered longest for his role in launching the drug-prescription benefit under the Medicare program for low-income senior citizens that is just now going into full effect.
He was the chief architect of the legislation, overriding objections from many in his own party that it was too expensive.
"The president's tax cuts also went through his committee. Social Security is the one that got away," said John J. Pitney, a government professor and congressional analyst at Claremont McKenna College.
Despite Thomas' vows to implement President Bush's plan to overhaul the financially troubled Social Security system, there is growing doubt in Washington that it can be done any time soon. Most agreed that 2005 was the best window of opportunity, a nonelection year and the first year of Bush's lame-duck second term. But there hasn't been any movement on Social Security, and the year is slipping away.
Neither Thomas nor his office would respond to this issue.
By the time the next nonelection year rolls around, in 2007, Thomas will have left the Ways and Means chairmanship under Congress' internal term-limit rules. That he served at all on such a high post was a major accomplishment for a congressman from a rural area.
Bringing home the bacon
In Kern County, Thomas' impact has been far more indelible.
The freeway and highway projects to be built with the federal funding obtained by Thomas this year will take years to complete, but they will be around long after he and most people who voted for him are gone. In one bill, Thomas obtained more money from the federal government than Kern County could have expected in decades from Sacramento.
"Thank God for Bill Thomas," said Trice Harvey, an aide to Kern County Supervisor Ray Watson and a former supervisor and state assemblyman. Harvey spent decades fighting the tendency of both Sacramento and Washington to shower politically powerful Los Angeles and San Francisco with money at the expense of the Central Valley.
"It's about time we in this area get something," Harvey said.
But Thomas' impact on Kern County goes far beyond concrete and asphalt.
He and his inner circle of political operatives have been the dominant presence in Kern County politics for nearly three decades.
Ruthless winner
Thomas' political career began in 1974. He was then a young political science instructor at Bakersfield College who had become increasingly active in local politics and was expected to try to unseat Democratic Sen. Walter Stiern. At the last minute, however, Thomas decided to challenge Democratic Assemblyman Ray Gonzales.
It was a move that established Thomas' reputation for ruthlessness and arrogance, a reputation he has done little to discourage since.
In those days, Democrats held sizeable majorities in voter registration and elected officials in Kern County, the legacy of the Southern Democrats who migrated to Kern County during the Dust Bowl era.
Gonzales, the first major Latino elected official in the county's history, had also been a Bakersfield College teacher and close friend of Thomas and his family. Thomas had supported him in his first Assembly campaign in 1972. Many saw him as the political point man for the county's growing Latino population.
"Our wives exchanged maternity clothes," said Gonzales, now a professor at California State University, Monterey Bay. "I used to take his kids to day care."
In a nasty campaign, Thomas ousted Gonzales. Four years later, the county's congressman, Bill Ketchum, died in office and Thomas was the logical candidate to replace him. Though he admires Thomas' intellect, Gonzales admits he's still bitter about the campaign.
The rise of the machine
But Thomas was met with surprisingly stiff resistance from local conservative Republicans who felt he was not one of them. They said they wanted a representative who was a proven conservative on issues such as abortion, gun control and smaller government and weren't sure Thomas fit that bill.
Thomas prevailed, but launched a series of moves that put his people in control of the Kern County Republican Central Committee and erected a strong barrier to participation in mainstream local politics at all levels by social conservatives.
That set the stage for the dominant theme of Kern County politics to this day: the struggle of conservatives to penetrate the local political machinery and the efforts of the Thomas people, as they are known, to exclude them.
For example, the Thomas-led local GOP for years has refused to recognize or cooperate with a group of conservatives known as the Young Republican Federation of California.
Inside the circle
The barrier has not been totally impenetrable. Former Supervisor Mary K. Shell and District Attorney Ed Jagels managed to win and keep office independent of the Thomas machine.
But over the years, people who sought and won the support of Thomas and his inner circle have found it much easier to win elections to local offices than those who bucked the machine.
They include Bakersfield council members Jacquie Sullivan and Zack Scrivner, former council members Kevin McDermott, Pat Smith and Conni Brunni, former mayors Robert Price and Clarence Medders and Supervisor Ray Watson.
Some people have left the Thomas organization and at least one has been able to move out and back in again.
Ashburn was once a loyal Thomas aide. He managed the central committee election immediately after Thomas' first congressional nomination, putting Thomas allies in control.
But years later, when Ashburn wanted to move up from the Board of Supervisors to the Assembly, he broke with the machine.
"I desired to be independent and so I went my own way," Ashburn said. However, many said he made the move because he could have faced hostility from the conservative Assembly leadership if he had arrived in Sacramento with close ties to Thomas.
Back in the fold
That's exactly what happened to Harvey years earlier.
Assembly GOP leaders initially supported Harvey's first campaign for the Assembly, but turned on him two weeks before the primary election and supported his Republican opponent because they feared he was too close to Thomas.
Thomas and his people jumped in with major financial and political support and pushed Harvey to victory.
Harvey, too, eventually wanted to declare his independence and became a pariah to the Thomas people. However, they eventually buried the hatchet and he now works for Watson, who was supported by the machine.
"Bill and I have had our disagreements," Harvey said. "But you can't agree with everybody all the time."
The Thomas-led local party played a major role in the shift of Kern County from a Democratic majority in voter registration to the Republican column in the early 1990s with an aggressive voter-registration campaign.
The central committee has long had one of the most successful voter-registration programs in the state.
However, many people said the transition would have happened anyway.
"That was the Dixiecrats," said Gonzales. "The same thing happened to the Democratic Party in the South. When Lyndon Johnson proposed the civil rights act and the voting rights act, he said it may be the end of the Democratic Party as we know it."
No room for compromise
The major contradiction of the Thomas era is its dominance despite the presence of large numbers of conservative Republicans who think he is not with them solidly enough on the hot-button issues of abortions and guns. Bakersfield was voted the eighth most conservative city in the country, according to a recent study by the Bay Area Center for Voting Research.
Theories on that vary.
"I think it boils down the fact that he's a hell of a lot smarter than they are," said Gonzales.
Harvey said Thomas claims sufficient GOP loyalty with his conservative record on fiscal issues, but there is no room for compromise among hard-line abortion opponents.
"I was opposed to abortion except in the case of rape, incest or the life of the mother," Harvey said. "I always voted against funding for abortions, but they still called me a liberal."
Thomas has never taken an anti-abortion stance. And he has not openly opposed government funding for birth control and abortion as conservatives would like.
Others think Thomas has less to do with the moderate reputation of the local party organization than his chief local operatives.
"It seems like Mark Abernathy is behind everything," said Duane Moore, chairman of the Kern Democratic Party. "We don't see much of Bill Thomas."
Thomas' inner circle includes Abernathy, the longtime campaign consultant for Thomas and his allies in city and county government; Abernathy's wife, Cathy, a former Thomas staffer and now a lobbyist in Washington and Sacramento; as well as McCarthy.
It was the Abernathys who spearheaded a drive a few years ago to change the wording of the party platform on abortion and gun control and put a slate of moderates into state party offices.
But Thomas has made it clear that he supports such reforms, including Proposition 77 on the Nov. 8 ballot. It would take the redrawing of legislative and congressional districts out of the hands of politicians and turn it over to a nonpartisan panel of retired judges, a move reformers hope will make it easier to elect moderates from both parties.
Fiery temper
Thomas may or may not be long remembered for his mercurial personality and his legendary temper tantrums.
A couple of years ago, he apologized tearfully on the House floor for calling police to throw Democratic members of his committee out of a congressional library room, where they had gathered to protest one of his actions.
The Democrats' designated sparring partner for Thomas is liberal Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. He is the ranking minority member and vice chairman of Ways and Means -- and one of those Thomas tried to evict in the committee blowup.
But Rangel, who did not respond to a request for comment for this article, can do little but rail at Thomas, who seldom allows significant input from the Democrats on the panel.
In a typical rant this week, Rangel lambasted Thomas and the committee Republicans for what Democrats said was cutting money for services to poor people to keep from raising taxes on the wealthy.
According to a statement issued by his office, Rangel told Thomas, "Today's vote will be recorded, and I just hope when people ask why we did it, that you guys are prepared to give some reason so that the shame that is on the Congress will not spill over to those on the minority."
However, many think that Thomas' hot temper has helped him more than it has hurt him.
"You can't be in a position to get taken advantage of in Washington," said Nunes.
Added Pitney, "It alienates Democrats and even some Republicans. But it has probably also gotten him a lot of peremptory concessions from people who didn't want to endure a tongue-lashing."
Thomas' reputation suffered a blow in 2000 when reported that he had had a romantic relationship with a major pharmaceutical industry lobbyist and Republican political adviser, Deborah Steelman.
At the time, Thomas was writing a Medicare overhaul bill that could have meant billions to the drug companies that were her clients if it had passed. It didn't. And Thomas received more drug industry campaign contributions than any other member of Congress that year.
The report was decried by Thomas, his wife, Sharon, as well as Steelman, but none denied its accuracy.
Steelman soon closed her high-profile Washington lobbying office and became the top lobbyist for the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical firm. However, she resigned that post in 2003, saying she wanted to spend more time with her family.
The Thomases have two children. Daughter Amelia Minaberrigarai is general counsel to the Kern County Water Agency. His other child is not in public service.
No matter how he is remembered when he leaves office, it is clear that he will not soon be forgotten.
"He's been a very vivid presence in Washington," said Pitney. "He's hard to miss."
• "Thomas used his influence as a powerful committee chairman to lard the bill with a mind-boggling $726 million in highway projects for Kern County"• "...his constant efforts to ease the state party's hard-line stands on abortion and gun control. "
• "Thomas will probably be remembered longest for his role in launching the drug-prescription benefit under the Medicare program ... He was the chief architect of the legislation, overriding objections from many in his own party that it was too expensive. "
Don't let your curly tail get caught in the door.
Ah, yes, another RINO. Good riddance to him.
What a joke. He is NOT a FISCAL conservative either. From the same article:
In behind-the-scenes negotiations, Thomas used his influence as a powerful committee chairman to lard the bill with a mind-boggling $726 million in highway projects for Kern County.
and
Nationally, experts say Thomas will probably be remembered longest for his role in launching the drug-prescription benefit under the Medicare program for low-income senior citizens that is just now going into full effect.
Massive pork and huge new federal entitlements are not what I would categorize as "fiscal conservatism."
Forget it's dictionary meaning. Whenever you hear the term "fiscal conservative" in the press it means the person is a Republican who is pro abortion and pro gay and fiscal issues have nothing to do with it.
Exactly correct. They are often not conservative at all. IIRC, John Kerry also called himself a fiscal conservative.
I agree, and I live in Kern County. Thomas has fits like a little kid when he does not get his way. Can't stand him.
Is Bill Thomas behind Prop 78 too?
I hadn't heard that.
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