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Mike Thompson and Gary Lewis: The Backrub Club?

By Philip Murphy 3/24/06

 

Mike Thompson is an unusual figure in Lake county politics, as for the most part he's considered to be a sort of non-partisan bureaucratic version of Santa Claus, and only the hard-core GOP true believers even make an attempt to find fault with the congressman‚s doings. Most locals know of Mike mainly from the endless photo-ops in the Record-bee, where the beaming Thompson is consistently featured unloading another truckload of pork into the hands of a grateful constituency, but big Mike has another less appealing side as well.

 

Thompson has always had an almost instinctive urge to fundraise, a task which he handles quite effectively. Why a politician would take money from defense contractors, booze and drug companies when they could win year after year without even running a campaign is one of the great mysteries of Mr. Thompson. Thompson‚s Republican opponent has roughly 1/40th the cash on hand that Thompson has in his warchest, but even if Mike ran his campaign on his challenger‚s paltry $25,000 he‚d still be an easy winner in this heavily Democratic/liberal district-the Republicans only throw sacrificial lambs and token amounts of money into the fight as a face-saving measure that has no hope of succeeding. But what is more obvious and logical than the constant scramble for the bigshot‚s cash is how Thompson‚s local fundraising efforts that focus on the "little" contributors are structured. First comes the build-up process, which comes in two parts, starting with the photo-op event spotlighting the Mike‚s latest haul retrieved from the nation‚s lenders. Then comes the slick, mostly useless flyer which shows up in your mailbox, reminding you once again how hard Mike is toiling away on our behalf. This flyer (which is paid for by the taxpayers) is sent out at the same time the local party faithful get their "Come to Mike‚s ravioli feed " fundraiser invites, the perfect timing of the media events and flyer effectively turning them into promotional tools for the fundraiser.

 

As far as actual accomplishments go, Thompson is probably best known locally for his determined efforts to expand the wilderness areas in five of his district‚s counties, a complex plan that took years to carefully craft but only a short time to die in the GOP controlled congress. Why Mike was so clueless that he couldn‚t figure out that his bill wouldn‚t even get through the committee hearings let alone ever get voted on is hard to say, since objective observers pointed out the futility of the effort in the early stages of the process. But while the party faithful didn‚t seem to mind that Mike‚s biggest legislative project had come to naught, they did get more than a bit riled-up when they found out what had transpired behind the scenes during the local debate over the wilderness area bill.

 

Thompson knew that support from the BOS of all five counties would be a big plus in selling the plan to congress, so the Lake chapter of the Sierra Club was deployed in full force to spearhead the local effort to build support, an effort which all came to a head last summer. With three conservative Republicans on the Lake County BOS Thompson had his work cut out for him, as he desperately needed one of the GOP gang to jump ship and give him that winning third vote. Knee-jerk anti-environment supervisor Brown wouldn‚t budge if a gun were put to his head, and supervisor Smith seemed like a longshot as well. That left Gary Lewis as the perfect man for the situation, which Lewis had concluded called for some high-level horsetrading. Supervisor Lewis has always been the wild card on the BOS, oftentimes astonishing colleagues with his turn-on-a-dime decision making processes, as well as his sometimes bizarre justifications for his positions. Lewis is also well known for his shocking levels of ignorance and rudeness displayed during board meetings, one of the best examples being his public proclamation that he "didn‚t give a rat‚s ass" about what the local Native American community thought about his "No" vote on a proposal that would have increased protection of Native American historical sites and artifacts. Lewis has been a remarkably bad supervisor, with a closet-full of mistakes and skeletons constantly spilling it‚s contents into the public eye.

 

Lewis was the bagman when LAFCO executive director and Gary attempted to rob the treasurer‚s office in person under threat of a lawsuit (County of Lake vs. County of Lake?), all because the county wanted LAFCO board members (like Lewis) to stop spending thousands of general fund tax dollars each year on lavish vacations for LAFCO board members among other wasteful excesses, like board member stipends on top of their other county paychecks. Lewis is also currently under investigation for extensive illegal use of his county supplied cellphone for personal calls, which numbered in the hundreds-per-month at times. Lewis was also the swing vote when the BOS gave itself a 40% pay raise at the same time it was cutting deputy sheriff positions, a wildly unpopular plan that had over 5,000 residents signing protest petitions.

 

Shortly before the last election Lewis had applied for another cushy, do-nothing county job, so he asked his at-the-time planning commissioner (Al Maschek) to run for the BOS seat in his place. But the job didnŒt come through for the hapless Lewis, so he asked Maschek to un-declare his candidacy, which Maschek had no intention of doing at that late stage of the campaign. Come election day the voters decided to return Lewis to his post by only a small margin in a race that didn‚t seem to have any issues and generated little interest, mostly due to the underwhelming nature of the two visionless and uninspiring candidates. So in short Lewis was the whole package, an obnoxious, ignorant boob who was always willing to lean in a direction that would help his own political fortune, and a perfect potential ally for Thompson.

 

All that Thompson really needed to do was to negotiate the price, since knowledgeable BOS observers had already early-on figured out a deal was in the offing that would hinge on weak-link Lewis. Eventually a deal was struck between the two that got Thompson his third vote, and got Lewis what he wanted as well. What Lewis valued was Thompson‚s endorsement for this year‚s district three supervisor‚s race, as it would cost him few GOP votes and would surely help him considerably with the many Democrats in his district that had plenty of reservations about backing a conservative Republican doofus.

 

The problem was that when the news quietly broke recently that Lewis had gotten the "thumbs-up" from Thompson, the local Sierra Club gang went nuts, as they already had a dog in the district three fight. That "dog" was Denise Rushing, an extremely well qualified and dead-serious candidate who had been a long-time active Democratic party and Sierra club supporter who needed all the help she could get to beat back her incumbent opponent. The first reaction from the local party faithful/Sierra Clubbers (same thing, in reality), was anger directed mainly at Thompson, who‚s spokespeople confirmed that a deal had been done by Lewis and big Mike last summer, long before Thompson even had any idea of who would be running in district three. The word was sent out on the Sierra Club list serve that fundraiser ticket envelopes for the upcoming ravioli feed were to be returned with a note explaining why the recipient was boycotting the event and sending their contributions elsewhere, and members were to contact Thompson and directly express their discontent with his clumsy and unhelpful meddling in local political contests.

 

But then the call came down from above for the troops to all fallback in line, and like the obedient dupes they are, the local Democrats and Sierra Clubbers backed down and bit their tongues. Denise Rushing even went as far as to volunteer to help ladle out pasta for Thompson at the event, since she figured that it was just best to move on and make the best of the situation, in spite of the huge betrayal. There‚s been a lot of that "let's just move on" mentality here, unfortunately even in the local media, which has been aware of the situation for the last two weeks. As of Thursday the Record-Bee has been unable to get Thompson‚s people to confirm what they had said to the local Sierra Club Chair Victoria Brandon regarding the endorsement , which is extremely unusual for the typically very accessible and talkative Thompson staff/spokespeople.

 

The Record-Bee is in a touchy position with Thompson obviously stonewalling, while on the other side the Sierra Club/Democrats are begging them to drop the story, a goal that highlights their stupidity since it ignores the fact that the news will harm the already wobbly Lewis far more than the bullet-proof Thompson. Since the Record-Bee is essentially run by liberal Democrats, the idea of pissing off Thompson and the Sierra Club/democrat base is a bit like eating their young, it just seems wrong to them somehow. Of course if you only wore the hat of journalist the decision making process would be much simplified, and today the public would know how their elected officials trade personal career enhancement for county policy. One can only hope that somehow the story will get around before Thompson‚s next fundraiser here this week, and certainly before voters go to the polls in June.

 

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