CQPolitics Examines Thompson’s ‘Key Votes’ in Senate

By Greg Giroux | 4:24 PM; Mar. 27, 2007 | Email This Article

Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who recently said he might seek the Republican presidential nomination, amassed a mostly conservative voting record during his eight full years in the Senate.

In light of a potential Thompson candidacy, CQPolitics.com senior writer Greg Giroux has constructed a chart that displays Thompson’s major votes during his Senate service. The votes listed are those that Congressional Quarterly identified as “key votes” — about a dozen each year.

The chart also compares Thompson’s key votes with those of Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Sam Brownback of Kansas, who are running for president, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who is still weighing a campaign. Thompson’s Senate tenure coincided with McCain’s 20-year Senate tenure; Hagel and Brownback were first elected to the Senate in 1996 and served six years with Thompson.

During the eight years that Thompson and McCain served together, they cast votes on 102 CQ-defined key votes and agreed on 83 of them — or 81.4 percent of the time.

Thompson showed a similar rate of agreement on key votes with Brownback and Hagel. Thompson and Brownback agreed on 57 of 70 key votes (81.4 percent) for which both senators participated. Thompson and Hagel voted the same way on 57 of 71 key votes (80.3 percent) during the six years they served together.

The four senators evince agreement on many legislative issues. Thompson joined McCain, Brownback and Hagel in voting to authorize the current war in Iraq, to cut taxes for married couples, to ban an abortion procedure opponents call “partial birth” abortion, to approve tax-sheltered education savings accounts, and to enact a balanced-budget constitutional amendment.

Among the instances in which Thompson and McCain differed were votes in 2002 to effectively extend a repeal of the estate tax beyond 2010, to authorize oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and to postpone tougher automobile fuel efficiency standards. Thompson voted “aye” and McCain voted “no” in all three cases.

Also in 2002, Thompson agreed with McCain but opposed Hagel and Brownback — and most Senate Republicans — in backing a rewrite of campaign finance laws that barred the national party committees and federal officeholders from raising the unlimited “soft money” dollars upon which the parties had come to rely. McCain was a chief sponsor of that law.

In 2001, Thompson opposed and McCain supported a Democratic bill to bolster the rights of patients in managed care plans. Hagel and Brownback joined Thompson in opposition.