It takes us back to 2005 when the former congressman came to town to find someone — anyone — to unseat Tracy’s own rancher-Rep. Richard Pombo, a seven-term U.S. congressman who’d cut his teeth on the Tracy City Council. At the time, McCloskey was a 78-year-old Republican, a decorated military veteran and retired attorney living on his farm in Yolo County and looking for a Republican in the 11th Congressional District to take on Pombo in the primary.
Restless and enraged by House Republicans who had changed the ethics rules to protect Rep. Tom DeLay (later indicted on campaign finance charges), he’d formed a group called Revolt of the Elders. He drove a bus with the slogan, “Restore Ethics to Congress.”
McCloskey was no newcomer to politics, of course, having run against Richard Nixon for the Republican nomination for president back in 1972. One of his claims to fame was being the first member of Congress to publicly call for the impeachment of President Nixon after the Watergate scandal.
This time, he also had an environmental ax to grind. As a congressman from Palo Alto from 1967 to 1982, he had co-authored the 1973 Endangered Species Act — the very same act that Pombo was trying to dismantle.
Finding no other Republican up to the task of challenging Pombo, the maverick McCloskey threw in his own old hat, moved to Lodi and made his way along the campaign trail to the district’s four counties and many cities, including Tracy.
During the primary, McCloskey asked Pombo to meet him for a public debate, but the closest they got was the Tracy Press’ forum — a packed one — at Williams Middle School.
McCloskey said he was “perfectly agreeable to losing, if I can make my point and make it hard.”
And he did lose, with only 32 percent of the primary vote. Then he endorsed Democrat Jerry McNerney, who bounced out Pombo in the general election.
McCloskey changed his party affiliation to Democrat in 2007. In a letter to the Tracy Press, he stressed that a “new brand of Republicanism” had finally led him to abandon the party he’d joined in 1948.
We need people like McCloskey, who are willing to fight for a cause regardless of the prevailing political winds. That’s why we’ll watch the McCloskey documentary with a smile.
•“Pete McCloskey: Leading from the Front,” airs at 6 p.m. Sunday on KQED Public Television (Channel 9). Narrated by the late Paul Newman, this program tells the colorful and inspirational life story of Pete McCloskey, a war veteran, lawyer and former Republican congressman.
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