RIP Pete Stark, the first Congressmember to declare him/herself an atheist

[lpetrich]

 Pete Stark, In Memoriam: Pete Stark, 1931-2020 - TheHumanist.com (November 11, 1931 – January 24, 2020)

1953: BS in general engineering from MIT
1955-1957: US Air Force
1960: MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley
1963: Founded Security National Bank, a small bank in Walnut Creek. Within 10 years it grew into a wealthy company with branches across Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
1971: Elected to the Common Cause National Governing Board.

In 1972, he ran against 14-term octogenerian Representative George Paul Miller in the Democratic primary, claiming that GPM had been in office for too long. He won with 56% of the vote, a 34-point margin. In the general election, he defeated Republican Lew Warden with 53% of the vote.

He stayed in the House until 2012, when he barely lost to someone 50 years younger, Dublin city councilmember Eric Swalwell.

He supported healthcare expansion. From Wikipedia:

Over the years, Stark worked with others (notably his Republican counterpart, Bill Gradison (Ohio), and Representatives Henry Waxman, George Miller, and Senator Ted Kennedy) to advance health improvement ideas. Stark led in introducing bills to allow more people to buy into Medicare at an earlier age, to expand Medicare by allowing all infants to enroll in Medicare, and to provide a prescription drug benefit in Medicare. In his work on the Clinton health insurance proposals of 1993, Stark developed, and continued to promote the basic ideas now seen in the Affordable Care Act and in various Medicare for Americans ideas: all Americans should have good, basic health insurance; if they don't have such coverage, they should buy it, and if they can't afford it, they should get help to make it affordable. The ideas he advanced are at the core of the on-going health debate in America.

In 2002, he opposed a resolution authorizing military force in Iraq, saying:

Well then, who will pay? School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind—way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war. Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.

In 2008, he rejected a bank-bailout bill, saying:

President Bush tells us that we face unparalleled financial doom if this $700 billion bailout is not approved today. He and his Treasury Secretary—a former Wall Street fat cat—tell us that we have reached the point of 'crisis.' That is a familiar line from this President. It sounds like the disastrous rush to war in Iraq and the subsequent stampede to enact the Patriot Act. As I opposed the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, I stand in opposition to his latest rush to judgment.

 

[lpetrich]

From the AHA announcement,

In the fall of 2006 the Secular Coalition for America announced that they would award $1,000 to the person who identified the highest-level atheist, humanist, freethinker, or other nontheist currently holding elected public office in the United States. SCA Advisory Board Chairman Woody Kaplan, a civil liberties activist and former member of the ACLU’s National Board of Directors, took some of the suggested names and interviewed close to sixty members of the US House and Senate. “At the time, twenty-two of them told me they didn’t believe in a god,” Kaplan recalled. “Twenty-one of them said, ‘You can’t tell anybody.’ One of them said you could: Congressman Pete Stark.”

On March 12, 2007, he became the first Congressmember to go on record as being a nontheist.

In 2008, he was named Humanist of the Year for his support of religious freedom and church-state separation. He described his career in The Accidental Atheist: From Hippie to Humanist in Half a Century - TheHumanist.com


In his Congressional career, PS ended up a ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee and head of its Health Subcommittee.

In the later part of his career, he mainly lived in Maryland, though he maintained a home in Fremont to claim residence there.

He made a lot of controversial statements, like this one in 2007 on the House floor:

Republicans sure don't care about funding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement.

After some initial criticism he said about whether he would retract his statement "Absolutely not. I may have dishonored the Commander-in-Chief, but I think he's done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me." and

I have nothing but respect for our brave men and women in uniform and wish them the very best. But I respect neither the Commander-in-Chief who keeps them in harms [sic] way nor the chickenhawks in Congress who vote to deny children health care.

House Minority Leader John Boehner introduced a censure resolution, though it was defeated.

 

[lpetrich]

From Wikipedia,

Other controversies include singling out "Jewish colleagues" for blame for the Persian Gulf War and referring to Congressman Stephen Solarz of New York (who co-sponsored the Gulf War Authorization Act) as "Field Marshal Solarz in the pro-Israel forces." in 1991.[50] In 1995, during a private meeting with Congresswoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, he called Johnson a "whore for the insurance industry" and suggested that her knowledge of health care came solely from "pillow talk" with her husband, a physician. His press secretary, Caleb Marshall, defended him in saying, "He didn't call her a 'whore,' he called her a 'whore of the insurance industry.'"[50] In a 2001 Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health hearing on abstinence promotion, he referred to Congressman J. C. Watts of Oklahoma as "the current Republican Conference Chairman, whose children were all born out of wedlock."[50] In 2003, when Stark was told to "shut up" by Congressman Scott McInnis of Colorado during a Ways and Means Committee meeting due to Stark's belittling of the chairman, Bill Thomas of California, he replied, "You think you are big enough to make me, you little wimp? Come on. Come over here and make me, I dare you. You little fruitcake."[50]

In a 2008 videotaped interview with documentarian Jan Helfeld concerning the size of the national debt, Stark stated that the size of the national debt is a reflection of the nation's wealth. When pressed if the nation should take on more debt in order to have more wealth, Stark threatened Helfeld: "You get the fuck out of here or I'll throw you out the window."[51]

On August 27, 2009, Stark suggested that his moderate Democratic colleagues were "brain dead" for proposing changes to the health care reform bill being considered by Congress. During a conference call, Stark claimed that they:

... just want to cause trouble ... they're for the most part, I hate to say, brain dead, but they're just looking to raise money from insurance companies and promote a right-wing agenda that is not really very useful in this whole process.[52]

During a town hall meeting in 2009, a constituent who opposed President Barack Obama's health care plan told Stark, "Mr. Congressman, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining." Stark responded with, "I wouldn't dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn't be worth wasting the urine."[53]

Reminds me of Maxine Waters.