“How Fred Thompson’s Senate Record Stacks Up”

“How Fred Thompson’s Senate Record Stacks Up”
New York Times – 5/30/2007

Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson — now an all-but-announced candidate for the Republican presidential nomination — amassed a decidedly but not exclusively conservative voting record during his eight-year Senate tenure (1994-2003).

Earlier this year, when Thompson made it clear he was contemplating a 2008 White House bid, CQPolitics.com published a chart and analysis of Thompson’s positions on key votes. The chart, which can be accessed here, compares Thompson’s votes with those of three GOP senators who served with Thompson and who are running for president or weighing a bid — Sam Brownback of Kansas and John McCain of Arizona, who are announced candidates, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who is still considering a presidential bid, possibly as an independent.

The CQPolitics.com analysis found that Thompson and McCain voted the same way on 83 of 102 CQ-defined “key votes” (81.4 percent) during the eight years the two men served together. Thompson agreed with Brownback on 57 of 70 votes (81.4 percent) and with Hagel on 57 of 71 votes (80.3 percent).

Thompson amassed an average score of 86 percent (out of a maximum 100) from the American Conservative Union (ACU), with scores ranging from 83 percent in 1995 to 92 percent in 2000. His average score is lower than that of Brownback (94 percent) and slightly higher than that of Hagel (85 percent) and McCain (82 percent).

Thompson sided with conservative groups and with most Republican senators in voting to cut taxes and spending; remove barriers among banking, securities and insurance companies; drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; protect gun owners’ rights; and oppose abortion.

Pat Toomey, a former House member from Pennsylvania (1999-2005) who heads the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative group that promotes free trade and cutting taxes and spending, offered general praise for Thompson’s voting record. Toomey’s group will soon issue a detailed “white paper” analyzing Thompson’s record on economic issues, as it has done for McCain, Brownback, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

“As a general matter, I think Fred Thompson’s career in the Senate demonstrates a guy who does have a pretty strong commitment to limited government, free enterprise and particularly federalist principles,” Toomey told CQPolitics.com.

Thompson did occasionally depart from the majority GOP position. In March 2002, Thompson was one of 11 Republicans who voted for an overhaul of campaign finance laws — promoted by McCain and Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold — that banned “soft money” donations to the national political parties.

Brownback and Hagel voted against the campaign finance overhaul, which the ACU opposed on the grounds that it would unconstitutionally limit free-speech rights.

Thompson said at the time that the measure, while far from perfect, had “much more good in this than ill, and I think it will help this institution and ultimately this country.”

Thompson sometimes bucked the GOP line in some votes against limits to punitive damages in civil cases. In May 1995, as the Senate considered an overhaul of product liability laws, Thompson was one of seven Republicans who voted against an amendment to cap punitive damages in civil cases to two times the amount awarded for compensatory damages. McCain voted for the amendment. But Thompson ultimately joined McCain in voting for the final version of the bill.

In July 2002, as the Senate considered changes to drug patent laws, Thompson was one of just six Republicans who voted to kill an amendment — sponsored by Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, now the Senate Minority Leader — that would have limited punitive damages in medical malpractice cases to twice the sum of compensatory damages and also place limits on attorney’s fees.

Thompson said the amendment, which was tabled on a 57-42 vote, would have abrogated the prerogatives of state governments. He said at the time: “I am amazed to hear that we have a problem in a particular state and that the solution is for the citizens of the small town in that state maybe to drive past the courthouse and drive through the capital, past the statehouse, and get on an airplane and fly to Washington, D.C., to talk about a federal solution against their own state.”

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