Томас Танкредо: Американ саяхатшысының өмірбаяны

American politician (born 1945)

Thomas Gerard Tancredo (/t//æ//ŋ/'/k//r//eɪ//d//oʊ/; born December 20, 1945) 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 (36.7%), 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.

Tancredo was born in Denver, Colorado, the son of Adeline (née Lombardi) 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 (YAF). 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 (1977–1981) 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.

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 (former astronaut Jack Swigert was elected as the district's first congressman in 1982, but died before taking office). Despite his promise to serve only three terms in Congress, he decided to run for a fourth term and won re election.

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 (H. R. 2712) and 2003 (H. R. 946). 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", (H. R. 19). In 2005, Tancredo introduced a resolution calling on the president to recognize the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) 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.

After he ended his run for president, Tancredo decided against running for reelection. Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez said he spoke to Tancredo about possible runs for governor or Senate in 2010. Tancredo spoke at the Constitution Party's national committee meeting on October 23, 2009. In July 2010, Tancredo warned the two Republican candidates for governor, Scott McInnis and Dan Maes, that he would launch a third party bid as candidate of the Constitution Party's Colorado branch if the Republican primary winner was behind in general election polling and did not drop out. Tancredo felt that McInnis was unelectable because his plagiarism scandal had exposed him as "basically a fraud," while Maes' campaign finance violations likewise made him unelectable. Tancredo subsequently announced that he was going ahead with plans to run as a Constitution Party candidate. Tancredo selected Pat Miller as his running mate. Tancredo placed second in the election with 36.5 percent of the vote, well ahead of Maes, the Republican Party candidate. In January 2011 Tancredo re registered as a Republican, saying it is the "only game in town".

Tancredo announced he would run for governor again in 2014. He was angry at Colorado governor John Hickenlooper because Hickenlooper had passed gun restrictions, and because Hickenlooper had granted a stay of execution for Nathan Dunlap, the man responsible for the 1993 Aurora, Colorado shooting that killed 4. He lost the Republican primary to Bob Beauprez, who went on to lose the general election to Hickenlooper.

On October 31, 2017, Tancredo announced he would run for Governor of Colorado a third time. His bid was fueled in part by Republican politicians' reluctance to criticize the cancellation of an April 2018 VDARE event where Tancredo was scheduled to speak. A central theme of his campaign is strong opposition to illegal immigration, and he vowed to defund the city of Denver due to its status as a sanctuary city. On January 30, 2018, Tancredo announced he was withdrawing from the race.

Tancredo founded the Team America political action committee in 2004 in order to raise contributions for congressional candidates who opposed illegal immigration. Campaign laws forced Tancredo to resign from Team America PAC. The PAC was noted for targeting incumbent Congressman Chris Cannon in the 2006 Republican primary. In 2009, reporters discovered that Marcus Epstein, the executive director of Team America, had assaulted an African American woman in 2007, and had used a racial epithet. Tancredo kept Epstein on his staff despite the guilty plea.

Tancredo traces his interest in politics to the eighth grade, when he played Fidel Castro in a class assignment. Tancredo urges America to reject "the siren song of multiculturalism" and depicts Islam as "a civilization bent on destroying ours". In July 2005, Tancredo proposed that America respond to any future terrorist attack by bombing Mecca and other holy sites. In September 2006, when Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor who said the prophet Mohammed had brought "things only evil and inhuman", sparking Muslim anger throughout the world, Tancredo urged him not to apologize.

Tancredo has said that abortion "compromises the sanctity of life" and "attacks the most vulnerable among us: unborn boys and girls". He does not support the granting of federal funds to "any organization that promotes abortion". He voted in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, and in favor of legislation requiring parental notification when a minor seeks an abortion. He received an "A" on the National Right to Life Committee report card, indicating that he votes in Congress on the anti abortion side of this issue. In the first Republican debate held on May 3, 2007, Tancredo agreed that the U. S. Supreme Court should overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, adding that it would be "the greatest day in this country's history". Tancredo was criticized by anti abortion forces for accepting over $20,000 in donations from John Tanton, founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform and a founder of a Planned Parenthood chapter.

He was one of 33 congressmen to vote against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act because he asserted that its requirement of multilingual ballots would result in a costly unfunded mandate. He was one of a handful of Republicans who voted for an amendment proposed by Maurice Hinchey and Dana Rohrabacher to stop the Department of Justice from raiding medical marijuana patients and caregivers in states where medical marijuana is legal, citing states' rights concerns. On the other hand, Tancredo supports Federal action in what he considers its proper sphere. He has suggested state legislators and 'sanctuary city' mayors should be imprisoned for passing laws contrary to federal immigration law. He also supports the Federal Marriage Amendment to ban gay marriage nationally, and defended this position by stating a constitutional amendment is the "last resort" to neutralize judicial activism that would legalize gay marriage in courts, against the wishes of voters. The amendment would also use Constitutional means to prevent voters and legislators from legalizing gay marriage in their states.

The National Taxpayers Union awarded Tancredo a grade of A for each year he has served in Congress. Tancredo was awarded a grade of A for votes he cast in 1999 to 2007 inclusively. Additionally, Tancredo received the National Taxpayers Union's "Taxpayers' Friend Award" in 1999 to 2006 inclusively as well
The award is given by the NTU to those members of Congress that are among "the strongest supporters of responsible tax and spending policies". He is also a strong supporter of the FairTax and advocates the repeal of the 16th Amendment. He is also against raising minimum wage.

Tancredo's position on Iraq is, "America's noble sacrifice has purchased Iraqis a precious opportunity for democratic change; it is now up to them to ensure success. Setting the President's 'November benchmark for shifting control' as an actual timetable for disengagement will let regional powers and Iraqi factions cooperate to forge a new balance of power." Fellow Republican state treasurer Mike Coffman refused to share the stage with Tancredo at a pro war rally for the Iraq war in 2003 because of Tancredo's failure to serve in the Vietnam War. In 1970 Tancredo appealed his 1 A draft status, which would have put him at the top of the list for draft eligibility during the Vietnam War. Tancredo said he was diagnosed with depression when he was 16 or 17 and received medication for five years for panic attacks and bouts of anxiety and depression. During a 2005 radio interview on Orlando talk radio station WFLA AM 540, Tancredo responded to a questioner asking about the hypothetical U. S. response to a nuclear attack on U. S. cities by al Qaeda, by saying that one possible response would be to retaliate by "taking out" Muslim holy sites (specifically, Mecca) if it were clearly proven that Islamic terrorists were behind such an attack. Several days later, in an interview on CNN together with James Zogby, Tancredo said that the attack was mentioned merely as a hypothetical response and insisted that there was nothing for which he should apologize. During the Republican Presidential Debate broadcast on Fox on May 15, 2007, Tancredo made a statement in passing that the root cause of Islamic terrorism is "a dictate of their religion". In September 2007 Tancredo defended his remarks: "I still believe it is something we must consider as a possible deterrent because at the present time there are no negative consequences that would accrue to the people who commit a crime such as a nuclear, chemical or biological attack." During a July 31, 2007 townhall meeting in Iowa, Tancredo said that a threat to bomb Mecca and Medina was "the only thing I can think of" that could deter a nuclear terrorist attack. This statement drew substantial criticism from the Council on American Islamic Relations, as well as State Department spokesman Tom Casey, who stated that "To somehow suggest that an appropriate response to terrorism would be to attack sites that are holy and sacred to more than a billion people throughout the world is just absolutely crazy."

Tancredo became one of the outspoken conservative opponents to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. On May 28, 2009, he made an appearance on CNN to voice his opposition and claimed that Sotomayor was a racist. When CNN's Rick Sanchez asked him if Sotomayor was a racist, Tancredo replied "certainly her words would indicate that that is the truth." He then compared the Hispanic American advocacy group La Raza to the Ku Klux Klan by saying "it's a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses."

On February 4, 2010, Tancredo spoke at the National Convention for the Tea Party movement where he told attendees that Barack Obama won because of "people who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English". He then proposed "a civics literacy test" as a prerequisite to voting. These remarks were criticized by the Democratic Colorado House Speaker Terrance Carroll and the Southern Poverty Law Center's research director Heidi Beirich. Tancredo has denied the charge that his remarks were aimed at a specific group. On April 14, 2009, a speech by Tancredo at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was disrupted by students protesting his views on immigration in which he called for a civics literacy test before voting.

Tancredo has declared himself in favor of the legalization of marijuana. He said that his reasons to legalize marijuana include "The issue of violence that surrounds it—not just on the border—and the crimes all over the place. The number of people in prison and the amount we spend to keep them there. The broken families." While in Congress, Tancredo voted each year to attach an amendment, which never passed, that would have prevented the US Justice Department from spending any money to "enforce any drug laws in contradiction to state law."

Said Tancredo in September 2007, "You have to remember that we are always just one kooky judge away from actually having homosexual marriage forced on all the rest of us, because of the [full faith and credit] clause in the U. S. Constitution. Therefore, we need, we absolutely have to have, a constitutional amendment that defines marriage." He is in full support of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Due to his numerous stances opposing the gay rights movement, he has received ratings of 7% from the American Civil Liberties Union, 0% from the Human Rights Campaign, and 19% from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People As of 2007, however, Tancredo boasted a 97.8% rating from the American Conservative Union.

In a speech given at a campaign event for Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck on July 8, 2010, Tancredo said of President Barack Obama, " the greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, the greatest threat to our way of life; everything we believe in. The greatest threat to the country that our founding fathers put together is the man that's sitting in the White House today." In April 2010, while not addressing directly widespread "birther" sentiment in the Republican Party, Tancredo said at a South Carolina Tea Party rally about the president: "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?" On July 22, 2010, in an editorial in The Washington Times, Tancredo said that Congress should bring impeachment charges against President Obama. In February 2012, Tancredo said on Hardball with Chris Matthews, in a discussion of candidate Mitt Romney's economic policy alternatives to the president: "Hell, my dog's better at it than Obama!"

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." The contractor, Denver Audio Design, denied hiring illegal immigrants and the Denver Post refused to identify the two they said came to them with the claim that they worked on Tancredo's basement remodeling.

On September 11, 2006, in Columbia, South Carolina, Tancredo spoke to a gathering of the "Americans Have Had Enough Coalition", which he had helped found. The League of the South also invited its own members to attend the event. The room at the South Carolina State Museum in which Tancredo spoke had a prominent picture of Robert E. Lee and was draped with Confederate battle flags. At the closing of the event, men dressed in Confederate military uniforms reportedly began to sing "Dixie". Several days later, Tancredo came under heavy criticism from a group of Denver ministers for attending the function. In his defense, Tancredo said, "I gave it [the same speech] in probably five or six different venues, this was just one, all of them were open to the public. I don't check people at the door for their private thoughts."

In a November 19, 2006 interview with WorldNetDaily, Tancredo referred to the city of Miami, Florida, as a "Third World country." His comments drew strong criticism from numerous political leaders and organizations, including Florida Governor Jeb Bush who, in a letter to the congressman, called Tancredo's remarks "naive." Tancredo replied in a letter, "I certainly understand and appreciate your need and desire to try and create the illusion of Miami as a multiethnic 'All American' city," he said. "I can also appreciate that the cultural and ethnic diversity of the city offers many advantages to its residents. However, it is neither naïve nor insulting to call attention to a real problem that cannot be easily dismissed through politically correct happy talk." On December 12, 2006, Tancredo was announced by the Rotary Club of Miami as its guest speaker. The next day, the event was canceled by the restaurant. News reports said, "The manager of the restaurant where Tancredo was to speak, the Rusty Pelican on Key Biscayne, said Wednesday that the owners didn't want him to appear on Thursday in order to keep up the integrity and reputation of the business. The manager also said staff members objected to working the party where his immigration talk was supposed to be held, some customers threatened to boycott the restaurant, and the restaurant had received bomb threats." Tancredo spokesman Carlos Espinosa said "What is more 'Third World country' than threatening to bomb the place?" Tancredo referred to Miami as having been taken over by "thugs" and "separatists" and declared that "I knew speaking your mind could be dangerous in Havana—I guess it's equally dangerous to do so in Miami. Apparently, there isn't much of a difference between the two anymore."

In another incident, student protests against a Tancredo speech scheduled to be given at the Michigan State University College of Law on November 30, 2006, turned violent. Protesters tried to block Tancredo's speech and police were called when protesters pulled a fire alarm prior to the speech on immigration policy. Michigan State University College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom sponsored the event. According to Tancredo, one of the student backers of the speech "was spit on, one was kicked, and one was punched". Protesters interrupted the speech with loud shouting. Tancredo said protesters organized on the Internet social networking site Facebook and "declared ahead of time on Facebook that they would not allow me to speak".

On April 17, 2008, Tancredo alleged that Pope Benedict XVI was encouraging illegal immigration to the US to boost membership in the Catholic Church. In response to a statement by the Pope at a Mass in Washington, Tancredo stated, "I suspect the Pope's immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church." While Tancredo was raised a Catholic, he now attends Cherry Hills Community Church, a congregation in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Tancredo has stated that he would like to see the United States give more support to the Iranian exile organization People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI). The PMOI was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States State Department from 1997 to 2012. Tancredo states that this was done "for political reasons" by the Clinton administration.

A former Catholic, Tancredo now attends Cherry Hills Community Church. They have two children and five grandchildren. On February 3, 2009, The Denver Post revealed that Tancredo had probably lost a significant amount of money invested in hedge funds with Agile Group, a Boulder based investment company with substantial investments in Bernie Madoff's investment firm.