For more than two decades, Congressman Mike Thompson has represented this district as an entrenched incumbent Democrat. He has cultivated the image of a steady hand, a moderate voice, and a reliable vote for “responsible governance.”
But let’s be honest: that brand of neoliberal centrism has hollowed out America’s middle class, driven millions into precarity, and sown the discontent that produced Trumpism.
Thompson may not shout about it, but his record speaks loudly enough.
During his tenure, inequality has reached levels not seen since the Gilded Age. Sixty percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. Young people forgo families because debt bars them from housing. Families ration care for fear of ruin. Rent eats half a paycheck. One ER visit can erase entire savings. Veterans return from wars Thompson funded, only to face a VA strained by privatization and shortfalls. That’s the predictable result when Congress greenlights ever-larger defense budgets while steering VA care toward contractors instead of strengthening VA clinics.
We are told to be grateful for “stability.” But what kind of stability is it when rent rises 10% a year while wages stagnate? When premiums outpace paychecks? When loans exceed mortgages? When jobs offer no pension or path to retire? That is not stability. That is managed decline, packaged in calm tones and corporate talking points.
At every turn, Thompson had a choice: to stand with ordinary people or to side with corporate power and austerity politics. Time and again, he put entrenched interests ahead of working families.
Nowhere is that clearer than in his support for the deeply immoral “defense” industry, where the U.S. spends more than the next 10 nations combined and profits as the world’s largest arms dealer. Thompson has backed nearly every major NDAA, authorizing record sums for the war machine while domestic needs went unmet. This month he voted yea again, steering tax dollars into tanks and jets instead of housing, health care, or education.
A government that funds bombs while people can’t afford a doctor serves corporations, not families — and Thompson has kept it running smoothly.
And look at who bankrolls him. His donors include insurers that deny care, Wall Street speculators, and oil giants like Chevron and Exxon. In the last cycle, over 60% of his money came from PACs and corporate sources, not small donors at home.
Every dollar from Chevron, Pfizer, or Citigroup reminds us whose voice gets amplified in Washington — not the single mother or veteran waiting months for care.
Defenders will say, “But he’s done some good things.” That’s fair. After the devastating wildfires, he secured federal disaster aid and championed recovery efforts that brought real relief to our communities. That mattered. But leadership is measured not just by crisis response — it is in the everyday choices that determine whether families can live with dignity.
And on those questions — budgets, defense, inequality — Thompson has repeatedly sided with corporate power. Strip away the press releases, and the reality is this: he has been part of the bipartisan machine that destroyed the promise of a fair America.
Where is Thompson on ending mass incarceration, canceling student debt, fighting for housing, or closing tax loopholes? He may nod at them, but he has not made them his cause.
Those silences speak as loudly as his votes for austerity and war. And this matters not just for economics, but for democracy itself. People don’t turn to authoritarian strongmen when they feel secure, when their kids are thriving, when they believe the system is fair. They turn to them when establishment politicians — Republican and Democrat alike — betray them year after year.
Thompson may decry Trump, but his votes and his ideology helped create the desperation that fueled Trump’s rise. He has never taken responsibility for that.
The truth is simple: Mike Thompson is not a progressive. He is not even a genuine moderate. Economically, he has voted more like a Republican — by defending corporate power, austerity, and the war machine — than like a Democrat committed to working families.
His corporatist, Blue Dog ideology is a relic of a failed era that has decimated our communities and eroded our democracy. It is time to turn the page.
The alternative is clear: Eric Jones, a more progressive Democrat running in the 2026 primary, pledges to reject corporate money, fight for universal care for children and elders, and demand that Congress finally put people before profit. Those ideas show what representation could look like. Thompson has had 20 years. He has shown us who he is, and he will not change.
The choice is ours: settle for empty centrism or demand better.
It is time to retire Mike Thompson and elect leadership that fights for us, not for donors and lobbyists. Enough is enough.
Laurence Koross
Napa
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