Kolbe: GOP on wrong path
Social conservatives hold too much sway, retiring U.S. rep says
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Trade: Kolbe helped start the free trade movement with a speech in Acapulco, Guererro, Mexico, in 1987 calling for a pact with Mexico. Six years later, he helped lead the charge on Capitol Hill to get the North American Free Trade Agreement approved by Congress. For better or worse, it may be his biggest national legacy.
Immigration: Illegal immigrants pour over the border in his district and Kolbe co-sponsored a bill that would allow a guest worker program and let those here already have a "path to citizenship." Critics call that amnesty.
Social Security: With Texas Democrat Charles Stenholm, Kolbe introduced the only bipartisan legislation on fixing the program by allowing private savings accounts, cutting benefits for future recipients and raising taxes. The bill never went anywhere in Congress.
Las Cienegas National Conservation Area: Kolbe's bill putting 42,000 acres of desert under the control of the Bureau of Land Management was signed into law in 2000. The watershed is protected from development and is a key habitat link between the Santa Rita and Rincon mountains.
Morris K. Udall Center for Environmental Conflict Resolution: Kolbe established the organization that works to settle disputes related to land use.
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base: After the Cold War, Congress looked four times at lists of bases to close. Kolbe led the Arizona delegation in fending off closure. The base's mission has expanded to include headquarters of the 12th Air Force and expanded drug interdiction efforts.
Rio Nuevo: Mayor Bob Walkup credits Kolbe with securing the former federal courthouse property and folding it into "the Thrifty Block" projects. Walkup called Kolbe's work pivotal to downtown redevelopment.
Other local projects: Kolbe helped move up the Interstate 10 and Interstate 19 interchange project, got money for southern Arizona hospitals to offset the costs of care provided to illegal immigrants who can't pay their bills and got $1 million to provide the scientific planning needed for Pima County's desert conservation plan.
Congressman Jim Kolbe's Web site: www.house.gov/kolbe
My wife, Alayne, and I have known Jim Kolbe and have been friends with Jim for the past 25 years. We worked on Jim's first campaign for Congress, which he lost to Jim McNulty. We had the honor to be at his swearing in as congressman two years later in Washington, D.C.
Jim is a close family friend and serves as a father figure to our children. Our youngest son, Lt. Isaac Greenberg, is presently serving our nation with his Army comrades of the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. Isaac was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point by both Sen. John McCain and Congressman Jim Kolbe.
The community needs to recognize that during his tenure, Jim appointed from southern Arizona probably more young people to the four service academies than ANY OTHER congressman in the House of Representatives! He interviewed each one in person! Jim stayed in constant contact with these young people throughout their years at the academies and during and after their service period! Each year Jim visited each academy to see "his" soldiers, airmen and sailors!
Jim for the 22 years as congressman had both a send-off and holiday party at his home for the academy students and their parents! Today throughout the world in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and other military and diplomatic posts are Jim's kids!
Thank you, Jim, for being there for Isaac and his compadres!
- Bruce Greenberg
Just as we were starting our medical business in '03, Medicare placed a freeze on all Medicare Provider Numbers until investigations of fraud in Texas could be resolved. Unfortunately, that meant we could not provide services to our patients in Pima County until the freeze was lifted.
After many weeks of worry and concern, we contacted Congressman Kolbe's office and asked for his assistance.
Jim Kolbe and staff immediately began looking into our situation. Shortly thereafter, I received a call from a Medicare representative and was given our Medicare Provider Number. It was only then that we were able to open the doors of our small business. We will be forever grateful to Congressman Kolbe and his caring staff.
- Phil Mendoza
Precision Orthotics of Tucson Inc.
A few year ago I wrote letters to Jim Kolbe, John McCain, and Jon Kyl regarding an issue with which I was concerned. Rep. Kolbe was the only one who responded to me.
The important thing is that his response to my issue was most definitely one I DID NOT want to hear. And he knew that. Yet, he stood on his convictions even at the possible expense of losing a vote (he didn't).
He could easily have taken the safe route by ignoring me. He earned my respect and I'm sorry to see him go.
- Frank
Our family had fallen into an unexpected situation when we needed his help. It was back in the early '80s, when my sister in-law had a valid tourist visa to visit the USA But as her luck would have it, she was questioned, harassed and intimidated to a point where she was denied entry and sequestered at the airport for further investigation. To top it off, she had a history of high blood pressure and was under a doctor's care, which made us more nervous. We had to take quick action to resolve the predicament she was in.
We contacted Congressman Kolbe's office and explained our dilemma. Mr. Kolbe got in touch with the Los Angeles Airport Immigration Office and presented our case. He convinced the officer in charge that my sister-in-law had posted a bond, left a family back home and had a valid three-month tourist visa. There was no valid reason to deny her entry and endanger her frail health.
The immigration officer agreed with Congressman Kolbe's position and released my sister-in-law, who was reunited with her sister - my wife - in Tucson within 24 hours.
- Shiraz-Ali Peera
1982: Arizona state Sen. Jim Kolbe loses to Bisbee Democrat Jim McNulty in the race for a seat in Congress representing the newly drawn Fifth Congressional District. It essentially became the Eighth District in 2002.
1984: In a re-match coinciding with President Reagan's 49-state landslide victory, Kolbe beats McNulty in a contentious campaign..
1986: Kolbe switches his vote from opposing aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels to supporting it. He also votes for landmark tax reform.
1987: In Acapulco, Guererro, Mexico, Kolbe gives a speech calling for a free trade agreement with Mexico. He and California Republican David Dreier introduce a bill calling for such an agreement.
1988: Kolbe pushes for a copper coin to replace the U.S. dollar and eventually to eliminate the penny. The penny was nearly worth more than 1 cent melted down.
1989: After being mentioned as a candidate for governor, Kolbe decides not to run. He joins the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which decides spending issues.
1991: Kolbe votes for the first Gulf War, to oust Iraq from Kuwait.
1993: Kolbe helps persuade a majority of his colleagues to support the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1994: Republicans sweep into control of Congress and for the first time in his 10 years in Congress, Kolbe's party is in the majority.
1996: After Kolbe votes for the Defense of Marriage Act, letting states refuse to recognize gay marriage, gay activists threaten to reveal his sexual orientation. Kolbe declares that he is gay and cruises to re-election. He will spend the next 10 years as the only openly gay Republican in Congress.
1998: Kolbe votes to impeach President Clinton over the president's sexual involvement with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Two months later, Kolbe is booed by a hometown crowd when he joins Clinton onstage at the Tucson Convention Center. He faces his stiffest competition for re-election from former Mayor Tom Volgy.
2000: Kolbe speaks at the Republican National Convention about free trade, even though some religious conservatives object to a gay man speaking. Part of the Texas delegation bows its head in prayer during his remarks.
2002: Kolbe votes to authorize President Bush to use military force to invade Iraq.
2005: Two of Kolbe's top issues, Social Security and immigration reform, are in play but go nowhere in the 109th Congress. In November, Kolbe announces he will not seek a 12th term.
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A Capitol Hill office gives a man power to persuade, but retirement gives him freedom to speak.
One week before the final day of his 22 years as southern Arizona's congressman from District 8, Republican Jim Kolbe blasted his party's decision to focus on opposing abortion and stem cell research, predicted that gay marriage would become legal and revealed why the GOP-controlled Congress abandoned the president on Social Security reform, one of Kolbe's core issues.
Kolbe also predicted:
● The immigration reform package he helped craft will lead to the solution he expects the next Congress to enact.
● Social Security reform won't happen until a new president achieves a second term.
● The war in Iraq will end by 2008.
"You will see a decided decline in the next two years," he said of the increasingly unpopular war. "Our engagement has got to be dramatically reduced over the next two years."
Kolbe, 64, will leave office next week as a federal investigation delves into his conduct with House pages. He said he did nothing wrong when he took a camping trip in 1996 with two teenage former pages and others.
"There were allegations but there was nothing at all that was ever substantiated," Kolbe said.
In addition to championing free trade and pursuing immigration and Social Security reform, Kolbe helped secure key local environmental protection, good old-fashioned pork barrel projects and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and Fort Huachuca during four rounds of base closures.
He won a reputation as someone constituents and interest groups could talk to, even if many found him too moderate.
Come Thursday, he no longer will have to answer to us.
During an interview this week, Kolbe sat in his Tucson living room beneath shelves of history books with a pile of reading in front of him.
One of the first books he'll read in retirement is "The Conservative Soul" by Andrew Sullivan, a leading conservative voice in the U.S. and the United Kingdom and a fierce critic of the religious right.
Kolbe, too, argued that Republicans ceded too much power to social conservatives, who tied the party's fate to fighting abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research.
"It's a terrible mistake," Kolbe said. "It takes the party in the wrong direction. It takes us away from our core element and our core values: fiscal discipline and a strong defense."
Gay marriage will one day be legal in the United States, he said.
"As much as the social conservatives might not like to hear it, there will be a time when your grandchildren say: 'What was the argument with gay marriage? Who cares?' "
The issue is personal for Kolbe. In 1996, he was "outed" by a gay magazine and has since been the only openly gay Republican in Congress.
He's bitter about how he was forced to come out but calls it the "best thing that could have happened" to him.
What happened next is worth noting, too: His constituents re-elected him five more times.
"I think they thought I was a good congressman the day before, so why wouldn't I be a good congressman tomorrow?"
The Tucson gay rights group Wingspan praises Kolbe's record on its issues, but Executive Director Kent Burbank said Kolbe has not won over gay constituents.
"There are many people in the gay community who have problems" with Kolbe's vote for a bill allowing states to refuse recognition of gay marriages granted in other states.
It's a vote Kolbe regrets.
"We need at least a national policy allowing civil unions," he said, "but I don't think we are there yet."
In Congress, Kolbe pushed for free trade, immigration reform and privatizing Social Security. He achieved success with trade.
He and California Republican David Dreier introduced a bill in 1987 calling for a trade pact with Mexico. Years later, President George H.W. Bush started to push the idea and Kolbe played a key role in getting the North American Free Trade Agreement approved at the behest of President Clinton.
He helped run the "whip operation," winning votes among his peers during the hard-fought effort in 1993.
"My job was to explain the economics," he said. "Most of them knew instinctively that it was good but they would be scared because of the local concerns."
The fear was that Mexico's cheap labor would pull American jobs south of the border with what H. Ross Perot called "the giant sucking sound."
"The benefits of trade are diffused but the costs are concentrated," Kolbe said. "You don't hear that free trade created 500 jobs in Tucson, but if a factory here shuts down and moves 40 jobs to Mexico, it's a front-page story."
A consequence, which was predicted, was that cheap U.S. agriculture devastated Mexican farmers in the southern states. Many can no longer make a living and are coming to America illegally.
Negotiators on both sides knew that was coming, Kolbe said, and gave Mexico time to enact land reform to stop it. It never happened.
"Politically, Mexico didn't do what they needed to do," Kolbe said. He had a plan to deal with increased illegal immigration, too.
He supported a guest worker program that would give people here illegally a path to citizenship after they paid a fine and went to the back of the waiting list for permanent status.
"If you want change, you have to give them an incentive to come out of the shadows," Kolbe said.
His position almost cost him his seat in Congress when former state Rep. Randy Graf challenged Kolbe in the 2004 primary and won 43 percent of the vote.
Graf criticized Kolbe's plan as amnesty.
"States pass tax amnesty all the time," Kolbe said. "We have amnesty for people who broke the law because we know we benefit more than by not addressing the problem."
Kolbe was an advocate for letting people control their own Social Security investments.
President Bush picked up the idea and ran hard with it in 2005, but hit a brick wall and his own party wouldn't support Bush.
The president sold the easy part - private accounts - and told Congress to do the heavy lifting on reducing benefits and raising taxes to shore up the program for future generations.
"He said: 'I'm proposing the dessert; now I want Congress to deal with the spinach,' " Kolbe said. "Congress said: 'Thanks, but no thanks. We're up for election in two years.' "
Don't expect the issue to come back soon, Kolbe said. Presidents don't usually want to touch such a dicey topic until they will no longer face voters. Next time, Kolbe said, a president would be advised to play it straight.
"The only way you can do it is to be upfront at the beginning," he said. "Tell the people it's going to be more taxes and a cut in benefits."
That kind of talk from a congressman representing a district teeming with Social Security recipients earned him kudos, and a little amazement, from Jack Camper, president and CEO of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce: "A lot of people don't want to touch these issues. Jim Kolbe took them on."
He secured in southern Arizona three of America's national conservation areas, including Las Cienegas, but his environmental record gets mixed reviews.
"He did great work for southern Arizona," said Carolyn Campbell, director of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, which includes dozens of environmental groups in Tucson. "But nationally, he tended to vote with his party and against the environment."
According to Project Vote Smart, The League of Conservation Voters gave Kolbe consistent ratings of less than 10 percent while he got strong ratings from property rights and pro-growth groups.
But his proudest achievement, Kolbe said, is providing top-notch constituent services, including getting students appointed to the nation's military academies.
In 2005, he had 15 appointees in the Air Force Academy, three times the average sent to military academies by all other members of the House of Representatives.
The constituent services will be hard for his successor, Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, to top, Kolbe said.
"It has the most impact on people's lives," he said. "You help get Grandma's Social Security or Grandpa's Medicare, that not only affects them but all the people around them."
Jim Kolbe has always been liberal on most issues (Republican doesn't mean conservative, people!), and he has always represented his constituents well.
Lots of really pathetic posts here. Some of you folks ought to think about sobering up before posting your comments.