Tom Tancredo


Thomas Gerard Tancredo is an American politician from Colorado who represented the state's sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009 as a Republican. He ran for President of the United States during the 2008 election, and was the Constitution Party's unsuccessful nominee for Governor of Colorado in 2010.
Tancredo was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1976 and served two terms. After working in the United States Department of Education during the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, he was elected to the United States Congress, and served five terms. He decided to not seek re-election in 2008, instead running a presidential campaign, centered on the issues of illegal immigration and terrorism. He dropped out of the race in December 2007 to assist former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in his campaign for the nomination.
Tancredo announced on July 26, 2010, that he planned to change parties and run for Governor of Colorado on the American Constitution Party ticket. He received 617,030 votes, coming in second place, well ahead of the Republican Party nominee Dan Maes, who got about 11% of the vote.
Tancredo ran for governor in 2014, this time as a Republican, because of his opposition to Colorado governor John Hickenlooper's refusal to execute convicted murderer Nathan Dunlap, and because of Hickenlooper's attempts to pass gun control legislation. Tancredo competed for the Republican Party's nomination with Bob Beauprez, Steve House, Greg Brophy, Mike Kopp, and Scott Gessler. Tancredo lost the primary to Beauprez. He once again left the Republican Party in 2015, becoming an independent. Tancredo again ran as a Republican for governor in 2018, but withdrew from the race.

Early life, education and career

Tancredo was born in Denver, Colorado, the son of Adeline and Gerald Tancredo. All four of his grandparents emigrated from Italy. He grew up in the then-predominantly Italian neighborhood of North Denver, and attended St. Catherine's Elementary School and Holy Family High School. He graduated from the University of Northern Colorado with a degree in political science. Tancredo was active with the College Republicans and a conservative organization, Young Americans for Freedom.
As a Republican student activist Tancredo spoke in support of the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of Northern Colorado he became eligible to serve in Vietnam in June 1969. Tancredo has said he went for his physical, telling doctors he had been treated for depression, and eventually got a "1-Y" deferment.
In 1976, while teaching history at Drake Junior High School in Arvada, he ran for and won a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives. He served two terms and was one of the leaders of a vocal group of conservative legislators opposing the policies of Colorado Governor Dick Lamm. During the 1970s, Tancredo pioneered opposition to bilingual education, an issue that would remain a feature of his political orientation.
Tancredo was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to be the regional representative in Denver for the Department of Education in 1981. He stayed on through President George H. W. Bush's administration in 1992, and pared the office's staff from 225 to 60 employees. He became president of the Independence Institute in 1993, a conservative think tank based in Golden, Colorado, serving there until his election to Congress. He was a leader in the Colorado term limits movement.

U.S. House of Representatives

After Dan Schaefer decided not to run for a seventh full term in the 6th Congressional District in 1998, Tancredo narrowly won the five-way Republican primary, and the election in November. He was only the second person to represent the 6th District since its creation in 1983. Despite his promise to serve only three terms in Congress, he decided to run for a fourth term and won re-election.

Conflict with party leadership

Tancredo's outspoken advocacy for immigration reform, and particularly his criticism of President George W. Bush's border security controls, reportedly made him persona non grata in the Bush White House. According to Tancredo, he and Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove, got into a "screaming match" after Tancredo claimed that "if the nation suffered another attack at the hands of terrorists able to skirt immigration laws, the blood of the people killed" would be on Bush's and Congress' hands. Rove responded by calling Tancredo "a traitor to the party" and "a traitor to the president," and warned him to never "darken the doorstep of the White House."
In an interview, Tancredo said his falling out with the White House has lasted. "One reason I am persona non grata at the White House is not just because of immigration... but because I refuse to support him on his trade policy, his education policy, Medicare and prescription drugs initiatives.... Here was a Republican Congress increasing government to an extent larger than it had been increased since Medicare had come into existence." Tancredo reported that his career in Congress was threatened by the leadership because of his stances. "I was called into Tom DeLay's office because I was supporting Republican challengers to Republican incumbents. I had a group called Team America that went out and did that. He called me and said to me, 'You're jeopardizing your career in this place by doing these things.' And I said, 'Tom, out of all the things you can threaten me with that is the least effective because I do not look at this place as a career.'"

Committee assignments

Tancredo sponsored the Sudan Peace Act. The Sudan Peace Act says "A viable, comprehensive, and internationally sponsored peace process, protected from manipulation, presents the best chance for a permanent resolution of the war, protection of human rights, and a self-sustaining Sudan." The Act passed the House of Representatives with a 359–8 vote, was passed unanimously in the Senate without amendment seven days later, and was signed into law on November 21, 2002.
Tancredo introduced the Mass Immigration Reduction Act. The act would have imposed an indefinite moratorium on immigration to the United States. Under the act, only spouses and children of American citizens would be allowed to immigrate, which Tancredo estimated would amount to 300,000 immigrants annually. The moratorium would last for at least the first five years of the act and, after that, until such time as there were fewer than 10,000 illegal immigrants entering per year. When those conditions were met, immigration would only have been allowed at whatever level the president and both houses of Congress agreed would have no adverse impact on wages, housing, the environment, or schools. When last introduced in 2003, the bill had 11 cosponsors. Organizations that have endorsed Tancredo's bill include: NumbersUSA, Population-Environment Balance, Carrying Capacity Network, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Negative Population Growth, and the American Patrol. Tancredo introduced the bill in 2001 and 2003. Tancredo did not re-introduce the bill in 2005. In 2007, he proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to "establish English as the official language of the United States",.
In 2005, Tancredo introduced a resolution calling on the president to recognize the government of the Republic of China and to abandon the One-China policy. He has been critical of the People's Republic of China. This has since been modified and reintroduced as H. Con. Res. 73.

2008 presidential campaign

In February 2005, Tancredo announced he would seek the Republican nomination for president if all other candidates failed to address the illegal immigration problem.
On February 9, 2006, Tancredo addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual conference of the American Conservative Union. He scored 5% of the vote in the 2008 CPAC straw poll.
On January 16, 2007, Tancredo announced that he formed an exploratory committee on seeking the presidential nomination of the Republican Party. He said that the Republican Party needs someone who can offer America a "common sense agenda".
A spokesman for Tancredo's exploratory committee has confirmed that he would not run on a third party platform, and that "they've had no intention to run as a third-party candidate, ever, and we'll never consider that because he's a Republican, period."
On February 13, the American Conservative Union issued ratings for potential presidential candidates. Tancredo took first with a lifetime ranking of 99 out of 100. The website ConservativesBetrayed.com polled 525 people who attended CPAC 2007, and 88.1% believed that Tancredo would govern as a conservative. Newt Gingrich polled next at 87.9%.
At the 2007 CPAC conference, held March 1–3, Tancredo was ranked sixth in the CPAC straw poll, with 9%, when first and second choices were combined.
On April 2, 2007, Tancredo announced that he would run for president in the 2008 election. This announcement was made on 1040 WHO Talk Radio in Iowa. He denounced other Republican candidates for their lack of consistency on the illegal immigration issue, the issue on which Tancredo will run. In early April, he also participated in what was billed as the first online presidential debate, against fellow Republican and presidential candidate Duncan Hunter.
In his speech in 2007 to CPAC, Tancredo said:
If you want to call me a single-issue candidate, that's fine, just so long as you know that my single issue is the survival and the success of the conservative movement in America.

In a May 3, 2007, debate among the ten candidates for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, Tancredo was one of three who raised their hands when asked if anyone did not believe in the theory of evolution.
On August 10, 2007, Rep. Tom Tancredo's presidential campaign reportedly was the victim of an e-mail hoax on the eve of the Republican Party straw poll in Ames, Iowa. The Des Moines Register reports that a hoax e-mail sent on Friday to almost 500 Tancredo supporters told them—falsely—that chartered buses to ferry them to the daylong events had either been cancelled or delayed.
On September 5, 2007, during a visit to Concord, New Hampshire, Tancredo made it clear that he supports strictly enforcing immigration laws and deporting all illegal immigrants. He believes so-called sanctuary policies provide safe havens for criminals. Tancredo also mentioned his support of the building of a fence between Mexico and the United States, and that mayors and city council members who adopt sanctuary city policies should face criminal charges. He urged New Hampshire Governor John Lynch to veto an upcoming immigration bill and demanded the ouster of the bill's sponsors.
On November 13, 2007, the Tancredo campaign released an ad called "Tough on Terror" in which a hypothetical terrorist attack occurs in a shopping mall. The ad blames inept border security for the attack and flashes images of an injured child and a wrecked train. A voiceover comments, "There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs... the price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill."
On his 62nd birthday December 20, 2007, Tancredo ended his candidacy for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, and endorsed Mitt Romney.
Individual contributions made up most of the campaign cash that Tancredo had received, being about 97% of his total pocketbook. He granted himself $200 for his campaign and received no federal funding. $88,457 of his money came from interest from the campaign's bank accounts and loans from outside sources. The majority of Tancredo's funds were not disclosed.