70 Facts About Tommy Thompson

Tommy George Thompson was born on November 19,1941 and is an American politician who served as the 19th United States secretary of Health and Human Services from 2001 to 2005 in the cabinet of President George W Bush.

Tommy Thompson was chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 1991 and 1992, and the National Governors Association in 1995 and 1996.

Tommy Thompson has served on the boards of 22 other organizations.

Tommy Thompson was a candidate for President of the United States, running in the 2008 Republican Party presidential primaries, but withdrew from the race before voting began.

Tommy Thompson was the Republican nominee for United States Senate in Wisconsin in the 2012 election, vying to replace retiring senator Herb Kohl, but was defeated by Democrat Tammy Baldwin in what was his only statewide election loss.

Tommy Thompson's mother, Julie, was a teacher, and his father, Allan Thompson, owned and ran a gas station and country grocery store.

Tommy Thompson's brother, the late Ed Thompson, was a mayor of Tomah, Wisconsin, and was the Libertarian Party nominee for governor of Wisconsin in 2002.

Tommy Thompson has a daughter, Kelli Thompson, who was Wisconsin's state public defender until she stepped down in 2023.

Tommy Thompson held a student deferment from military service during the Vietnam War until he completed law school in June 1966.

Immediately after completing law school in 1966, Tommy Thompson ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly.

In 1973, Tommy Thompson became the Assembly's assistant minority leader and its minority leader in 1981.

Tommy Thompson aggressively used parliamentary procedure to block bills favored by the Democratic majority and stop legislative progress, earning him the nickname "Dr No" by the frustrated majority.

Tommy Thompson was one of seven Republican candidates who ran to replace Steiger in the special election in 1979.

Tommy Thompson served as the 42nd Governor of Wisconsin, having been elected to an unprecedented four terms.

Tommy Thompson decided to run for Governor of Wisconsin in 1986 against incumbent Democrat Anthony Earl.

Tommy Thompson won every county in the state except Menominee County.

Tommy Thompson is best known nationally for changes in Wisconsin's welfare system, which was radically downsized, before similar ideas were adopted nationally.

Tommy Thompson was called a "pioneer" for two key initiatives of his governorship, the Wisconsin Works welfare reform and school vouchers.

In 1990 Tommy Thompson pushed for the creation of the country's first parental school-choice program, which provided Milwaukee families with a voucher to send children to the private or public school of their choice.

Tommy Thompson created the BadgerCare program, designed to provide health coverage to those families whose employers don't provide health insurance but make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.

Tommy Thompson was well known for his extensive use of the veto, particularly his sweeping line-item veto powers.

Tommy Thompson is a rail enthusiast, and was a supporter of mass transit, which earned him distrust on the issue from other Republicans.

In 1999, Tommy Thompson proposed a modernization and extension of the Hiawatha rail service, extending to beyond Milwaukee to serve Madison, Wisconsin and Minnesota's Twin Cities.

Tommy Thompson was promoting the "Midwest Rail Initiative" in his capacity as Amtrak's chairman, which included a proposal for a line connecting these cities.

In 1996, Tommy Thompson bragged that he never raised taxes in Wisconsin.

When Tommy Thompson made the same claim, in 2012, that he "never raised taxes", he earned a rating of "False" from PolitiFact-Wisconsin.

Two of the tax increases that Tommy Thompson did fight, using the Wisconsin governor's partial-veto power, were taxes on the state's wealthiest residents.

Tommy Thompson had two other acts overturned by the courts as unconstitutional.

Tommy Thompson insisted on keeping Good Friday as a half-holiday for state workers, "despite a clear ruling" from the Seventh Circuit, earning a rebuke from the court.

Tommy Thompson's campaign accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and trips from Philip Morris.

Once in office, Tommy Thompson called on two Ojibwa tribes to sell their treaty-guaranteed rights: the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, for $42 million, and the Mole Lake Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, for $10 million.

Tommy Thompson's administration tried an unsuccessful legal challenge to the "Voigt Decision".

On May 20,1991, the Tommy Thompson administration declared it would no longer attempt to appeal the 1983 Voight Decision.

Tommy Thompson's name had been in the press as a possible vice presidential pick during several election seasons.

However, Tommy Thompson was forced to fight off perceptions of being someone to "bluster through a speech, turn bombastic during public statements", and have difficulty thinking on his feet.

In 2000, Thompson was mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for George W Bush.

Tommy Thompson was confirmed by the Senate on January 24,2001.

Tommy Thompson announced his resignation from HHS on December 3,2004, and served until January 26,2005, when the Senate confirmed his successor, Michael O Leavitt.

Tommy Thompson approved 1,400 state plans and waiver requests, thereby providing health insurance to 1.8 million lower-income Americans.

Tommy Thompson was one of the key architects of the 2003 passage of Bush's Medicare Modernization Act, which was slated to provide public funding for prescription drugs for Medicare recipients starting in 2006.

Early in his term, Tommy Thompson faced an emergency situation with the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Tommy Thompson was given poor marks for seeming "utterly overtaken by events" and issuing "early statements that the government was prepared to deal with any biological emergency [that] never squared with the facts".

At a White House briefing following the first anthrax death of the scare, Tommy Thompson made a statement to the press that "would be cited for years afterward as a historic blunder in crisis communication".

Tommy Thompson offered the media a "far-fetched" suggestion that the individual who died had come into contact with anthrax from drinking water from a creek.

Tommy Thompson's words were criticized by a range of experts as unwarranted, as potentially undermining public confidence, and as the "kind of statements that lead to mistrust of officials and experts".

Tommy Thompson was faulted for positioning himself as the voice of the Administration to the public on this issue, having had no formal training in medicine or public health.

In 2001, early in his term as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson's office rejected 19 of 26 people, including a Nobel laureate, recommended for seats on the advisory board for the NIH developing nations unit by the unit's director.

Tommy Thompson resigned on December 3,2004, in a press conference at which he issued warnings over the dangers of avian flu and the poisoning of US food supplies by terrorists.

Tommy Thompson stated that he had attempted to resign in 2003, but remained until after the President's reelection at the administration's request.

Tommy Thompson joined the board of about two dozen private companies and nonprofit groups.

Tommy Thompson became a partner at law firm Akin Gump, a Washington, DC, law firm that engages in federal lobbying.

Tommy Thompson became a senior advisor at the professional services firm Deloitte and became Independent Chairman of its Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.

Tommy Thompson was no longer associated with Deloitte by October 2011.

However, critics claimed many changes would benefit companies Tommy Thompson owned or had a financial stake in.

Tommy Thompson spoke as a panelist at a 2005 Harvard Kennedy School conference on global poverty, where he discussed medical diplomacy.

One of the nonprofit organizations that Tommy Thompson joined the board of, Medical Missions for Children, recruited Tommy Thompson to co-host a number of episodes of one of its health instructional series, Plain Talk about Health.

Tommy Thompson made a variety of other lesser gaffes, including referring to the Anti Defamation League as the fringe Jewish Defense League, and to Israel bonds as "Jewish bonds".

Tommy Thompson discussed his connections to politically conservative Israeli and Jewish leaders while speaking to the mostly liberal leaning group.

Journalists believed that Tommy Thompson had instead failed to prepare for the event, acquaint himself beforehand with the likely audience, and recruit an adviser to properly brief him before the event.

Tommy Thompson had stated he would drop out of the race if he did not finish either first or second in the Ames straw poll on August 11,2007.

On September 19,2011, Tommy Thompson announced he would run in 2012 for the seat vacated by Herb Kohl.

The attacks against Tommy Thompson led to Mike Huckabee offering a defense and endorsement of Tommy Thompson.

Tommy Thompson faced Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin in the general election.

In March 2016, Tommy Thompson endorsed the campaign of John Kasich and became chair of Kasich's Wisconsin state campaign operation.

In early July, Tommy Thompson, endorsed Donald Trump and served as a delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Tommy Thompson considered running for Wisconsin governor again in 2022, which would mean challenging incumbent Democrat Tony Evers.

Tommy Thompson claimed that he had received encouragement from Trump, but was ultimately dissuaded from running by objections from his own immediate family.

Tommy Thompson served as a delegate to the 2024 Republican National Convention, and delivered a speech at the convention.

Tommy Thompson claimed that it was the twelfth consecutive Republican convention to which he had been a delegate.

Tommy Thompson served nearly two years as interim president before announcing in January 2022 that he would step down, effective March 18,2022.