Mike Thompson, a Democrat, was just reelected to California’s fourth congressional district in the November election.

Thompson has served in Congress since 1988, where he represents Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Lake and Yolo counties. Prior to serving in Congress, he represented California’s 2nd district in the State Senate.

On Oct. 16, he visited Sonoma State and shed some light on his political positions on climate change, gun violence prevention, war, the presidential election, and more in an interview with staff writers and editors of the Sonoma State Star.

Thompson ran against John Munn, a Republican candidate and farmer.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

STAR: I noticed you said [in an article that] one of the biggest issues we’re facing is climate change, and [your opponent, John Munn,] said the economy. What other plans do you have to push climate action?

Mike Thompson: So, in the last Congress, the Inflation Reduction Act had a component that was the most significant climate change legislation in our history. That was my bill, it’s called the Green Act. What it did, using my work on the tax committee, it used the tax policy to move us more quickly into renewable energy. And for the last almost two years now, that the Republicans have been in charge of the house, my main role has been defending that. Because they’ve tried at every instance to try to take that away, so we’ve had to fight them. So right now, my tax staff is meeting with the Treasury and all the outside climate change groups, and every congressional member’s office that has climate tax policy legislation, to find out what Green Act Two is going to look like. I also want to add that one thing I’m really proud of is having passed legislation that protected 370,000 acres of the North Coast [that will] never be developed. I said to my staff, ‘370,000 acres, I’d like to get a million acres.’ Fast forward, I’m well over a million acres. Two weeks ago, we did like five or six projects where we greatly expanded waterfowl and wildlife habitat. The number of acres that we’ve been able to preserve is just off the charts.

STAR: So building off her last question, are there any policies, legislation or bills you think we could cover in an article that would engage voters who go to college here and who read the paper, that would potentially energize them to vote either down ballot or locally?

Thompson: I think if I were writing a paper to get folks of college age motivated, I think I would focus on three things. One would be climate; younger people are much smarter about this than older folks. I would focus on the last guy that was in the White House, you’ve probably been watching what he’s doing. You know when you don’t have policy successes on which to run, you do other things. You lie, you belittle people, you bully people, and you threaten people. And I think that’s very telling if you watch this guy. His latest threat to California is that he’s going to withhold fire protection money. I mean for Christ’s sake, we’ve lost thousands of homes, lost lives, businesses, it just disrupted our community… and he’s going to hold back money for that? I think that’s an important one to focus on. I would focus on his tax policy.

So the financial stuff, with corporations and rich people getting richer, and middle class people getting poorer— I think that’s an issue. I think I would talk about the fact that [young women] have fewer constitutional protections than your mother and your grandmother had. And [Trump] says he proudly appointed judges that repealed Roe v. Wade and he says it’s a beautiful thing to watch. Young women are being turned away at hospitals, they’re having to go sometimes out-of-state to get the reproductive healthcare that I believe they’re more than capable of deciding with their doctor and their family and their God and whomever is in their discussion sphere to be able to make that decision, and he just changed that. And it’s interesting because if you ever bring that up— I’ve done some posts on my social media, and I got all the right-wingers, ‘You’re lying, he just turned it over to the states!’ If you look for an example to compare that with, it’d be like Abraham Lincoln saying ‘I’m against slavery, and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let each state decide how they’re going to do it.’ There would still be slaves.

Gun violence in the United States of America is the number one cause of death for kids and teenagers. What day of the year is this? 293 or something like that? How many mass shootings do you think we’ve had this year? 470 or something. So we’ve had more mass shootings than we’ve had days of the year. Mass shootings are the ones that get covered in the media. But the reality is everyday, 30 people are killed by someone using a gun. And if you add to that suicide and accidents, it’s 100 people a day.

STAR: In terms of what was said previously in the debates about Haitian immigrants, what is your stance on immigration? [Sonoma State is] also a Hispanic-serving institution, so many of the readers of the paper here might be curious [about] your stance on that? I’m assuming it would differ a bit from the Trump administration?

Thompson: Very [laughter]. There’s really two issues. One is border security. And when they’re out yelling and going crazy about immigrants poisoning our blood— that’s what Hitler said about the Jews, as you know— about Haitians eating your dogs and cats, it’s not true. He says this crazy stuff. Can we do more on border security? Absolutely, and we should, and we need to. The other issue is immigration reform itself. And there’s a million examples I could give you. In California right now, in K-12, we have a teacher shortage of 6,000 teachers. So if Sonoma State could somehow figure out how to attract and educate and pass 6,000 school teachers, every one of them could have a job. At the same time, we have 6,000 DACA recipients teaching K-12. So if Trump gets his way, we go from a 6,000 teacher shortage to a 12,000 teacher shortage. If you come here legally, and do all the stuff you need to do to become a citizen, the average [process takes] 22 years. That tells you there’s a number of things wrong.

STAR: I understand that you are a veteran.

Thompson: I am.

STAR: Do other veterans in the local area also agree with your stance on gun violence?

Thompson: Oh I’m sure some of them do, I can’t speak for all of them. But as a matter of fact, I was giving a eulogy the other day and some guy got in my face about gun violence prevention. He said he was a veteran, and he said what really annoyed him is I referred to it as ‘gun violence prevention.’ He said guns don’t do anything. ‘You put a gun on a table and it doesn’t do anything. How can you call it gun violence prevention?’ He told me that he was a retired California Highway Patrolman. I said, how many tickets did you write for vehicular manslaughter? You can park the car on the side of the road all day, it’s not going to kill anybody, but somebody gets in that car and does something stupid— it becomes vehicular manslaughter. So some of them do, some of them don’t. I’m a gun owner, I’ve owned guns all my life, I hunt. The thing that I hear most, the hunters will tell ya, I don’t need an AK-47 or an AR-15 to go hunting. Can’t we fix this? Why don’t we just get those guns off the street? So that’s a step further than most people would want to go.

STAR: For students who may be reading the news on American foreign policy, what can you tell [us] about your stance on a possible arms embargo?

Thompson: I think it’s a much bigger issue than that. We’ve been trying to help figure out what happens in the Middle East forever. And I don’t know that we’re ever going to be able to get there. But what I think needs to happen in the immediate is we need to figure out how we help negotiate a ceasefire. How we get the prisoners back, and how we get appropriate aid to the people living in Gaza. And how you do that isn’t easy. You have two entities, you have Israel, and you have Hamas, who’s not interested in figuring out how to do an immediate ceasefire and get the prisoners back. So this is going to be a heavy lift. The Biden administration has come in and said ‘You either need to get this thing done, or we’re going to start withholding our support.’ And I don’t know if this hammer is going to be any more successful than the last, but I think we need to do that. And I think we need to figure out a peaceful way forward. Because just stopping it isn’t going to be enough. It’s a lot more complicated than you would think, looking from afar. You gotta remember that Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organizations.

STAR: Just as a clarifying question, you would say that you would stand for a ceasefire, but it might not be the only step?

Thompson: Yeah, my position would be to negotiate a ceasefire, release of the hostages, and a peaceful path forward.

STAR: Right now with aid being blocked, there’s no aid getting into Gaza right now—

Thompson: That’s why I voted for the bill, because it had so much aid for Gaza, it’s critically important.

STAR: Absolutely.

Thompson: And part of that aid is food and water.

STAR: What are your thoughts on student protests that took place earlier on in the spring across university campuses?

Thompson: I fully support a person’s right to protest, it just needs to be done peacefully. You referenced me being a veteran— I went to war and got shot up for people to have a right to protest and to open and free elections. I think it’s an important part of our democracy.

STAR: Do you see this conflict right now possibly escalating to a point where American college students would be called into something?

Thompson: I could see this escalating. It’s a very, very serious concern. I look at war maybe differently than some of my colleagues. If you remember when we were attacked on Sept. 11, the first call from the then president was George W. Bush, was we’re going to go into Iraq. It seemed a little foolish to me, because Iraq had nothing to do with it… If I vote to send somebody’s kid to war, I want to feel confident enough about that being the right decision. Where if I find myself sitting at the kitchen table telling his mom and dad that he’s dead– that there was a reason why his life was put on the line. That’s one of the more serious votes that one can cast as a member of congress, and I voted no, I voted against going [to Iraq]. And then things started to shift and we found out it was based on lies.

STAR: I know Sonoma State is largely a liberal school, but we also have a pretty sizable amount of students who are Republican. Even if they’re paying attention to the local elections, why should they vote for you specifically?

Thompson: I’ll say two things. One I’ll say to you: you ought to organize Republican students to come in and talk to me about gun violence. I think that would be an interesting thing to do. The other thing I would tell you is I believe that our government works best when we work together. And I have a reputation for working across party lines. I did it in the Senate, I did it in Congress. Every year when they do the evaluation as to who is most bipartisan, I’m always very high up on the list. I’m in the top one or two for California members of Congress, and around 30 nationally for members of Congress. Because I believe that’s how you get good policy done. If you don’t, if you just jam something through because you’ve got the majority, then you’re going to be fighting over it for the next ten years. But if you can come together with a policy that you agree on, the likelihood is the more productive that will be. I think that people in our district, Sonoma State students, or people in my hometown of St. Helena, send me to Congress to get things done. Not to throw bombs, not to be one of these red meat guys. And that’s kind of how I deal with things.

STAR: Do you have any insight you could provide as far as some of the propositions and measures on the ballot for California and Sonoma County? Specifically, I’m curious about Prop. 36, Prop. 32, and Measure J?

Thompson: I’m a big proponent of a livable wage, so that kind of speaks for itself. I think bad people should be punished for bad things that they do, but there’s a tremendous amount of work that can be done to ensure that we’re not taking up jail space and precious, scarce resources by imprisoning people who, there are other alternatives to dealing with that. Measure J I think would be very harmful to Sonoma County agriculture, so I’ve come out strongly in opposition to that.