Family Survivors Talkback

Rep. Terry Thompson supports tobacco industry

6/17/98

Second-term incumbent Oregon State Representative Terry Thompson is running for re-election against Republican businessman Alan Brown. A long time ago, it is said, Thompson decided business was more important to him than athletics and he made a hard personal choice to pass up a chance to try out for the US Olympic Team, and went fishing instead. Having prospered as a fisherman, Thompson now skippers The Olympic, one of the larger vessels putting out of Yaquina Bay.

Recently Rep. Thompson, a Democrat from Newport, has chosen to take another strongly pro-business position, but now, as a state legislator, he is not just choosing for himself. Also, this time the choice is not between athletics and the fishing business; it is between public health and the tobacco industry.

Thompson is quoted in The Oregonian (July 5, 1998) as supporting pro-tobacco legislation which would prohibit local communities from adopting their own regulations to control where and when smoking is allowed. Joining with Republican leaders, Thompson's proposal would outlaw municipal ordinances such as the Corvallis measure prohibiting smoking in bars and taverns and resturants. Corvallis adopted the strict regulation earlier this year out of concern for the health of employees who inhale the second-hand smoke for hours each day.

If Representative Thompson, who took a substantial contribution from the tobacco lobby, and his Republican colleagues succeed in protecting the tobacco industry from local regulations, they will have saved the industry from the expensive and difficult job of lobbying county and city governments. At the national level, the central legislature, The Congress, is so much under the influence of the tobacco industry that the McCain Tobacco Bill, sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain, was killed by the Senate Leadership. Now, it is primarily the state governments which are pressing the fight to regulate tobacco. Similarly, the 50 state legislatures are more central and can be more readily influenced than the thousands of county and municipal commissions and councils.

Proposing to take away city and county governments' option to regulate community affairs and to increase the power of the state government is a significant departure for Republicans, who have argued for years in favor of local control and against centralized government. It appears the tobacco industry money is sufficient to compromise even the most basic principles.

This tobacco proposal is not the first time Thompson has made a deal with the devil and joined with Republicans in pursuing a hard-line political agenda. Last session, Thompson was one of only three Democrats in the House to vote with the Republicans in passing Senate Bill 880, a teacher-bashing law. SB 880 discarded the "Fair Dismissal Law" which required a rigorous process of showing just cause before public school teachers could be fired. The replacement law,"Accountability for Schools for the 21st Century," ORS Chap.342.805 allows school boards and administrators far more lattitude to use subjective judgements in evaluating and firing teachers. The law also includes provisions which undercut the traditional practice of seniority or "first hired, last fired," for lay-offs and rehires.

Given a choice between the ultra-conservative Republican, Alan Brown, and the very conservative Democrat, Terry Thompson, moderate to liberal voters in Lincoln County may have to hold their noses and choose the lesser of two evils.