2008 Presidential Election Coverage

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Tommy Thompson

Tommy George Thompson (born November 19, 1941), a United States politician, was the 7th U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and the 42nd Governor of Wisconsin. On April 1, 2007 he announced on This Week that he is a candidate for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.

Thompson was born in Elroy, Wisconsin, where his father, Allen Thompson, ran a gas station and country grocery store. His mother, Julia, was a schoolteacher. His brother, Ed Thompson, was the Libertarian Party candidate in the 2002 gubernatorial election.

Thompson began his career in politics in 1966 as a representative in the Wisconsin State Assembly, after earning his law degree at the University of Wisconsin Law School. He was elected assistant Assembly minority leader in 1973 and Assembly minority leader in 1981.[

From 1987 to 2001, Thompson served as the 42nd Governor of Wisconsin, having been elected to an unprecedented four terms.

Thompson's initiatives during his 13 years as governor of Wisconsin were his Wisconsin Works welfare reform and school choice programs. In 1990, Thompson pushed for the creation of the United States first parental school-choice program, allowing low-income Milwaukee families to send children to the private or public school of their choice at taxpayer expense. He also created the BadgerCare program, designed to provide health coverage to those families whose employers don't provide health insurance but make too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Through the federal waiver program, Thompson helped replicate this program in several states when he became Secretary of Health and Human Services.

From 1998 to 1999, he served as president of the CSG and, with the organization's chairman, Senator Kenneth McClintock, the nonvoting member from Puerto Rico, led a top-level delegation to the People's Republic of China. Thompson left office when he was appointed by President George W. Bush as HHS Secretary.

He announced his resignation from HHS on December 3, 2004, and served until January 26, 2005, when the Senate confirmed his successor, Michael O. Leavitt.

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