Tommy Thompson

Military service

Thompson held a student deferment from military service during the Vietnam War until he completed law school in June 1966. The following year, 1966, Thompson enlisted in the National Guard.

After completing six years in the National Guard, Thompson served in the Army Reserves for another four years. His final rank was captain.

President of the University of Wisconsin System (2020–22)

In the fall of 2019, incumbent University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross announced his intention to retire. This kicked off a search by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents to find his successor. In what was seen as a flawed candidate search, complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic in Wisconsin, the board initially was poised to offer the position to University of Alaska System President Jim Johnsen. Johnsen was ultimately forced to withdraw amidst vocal opposition from University of Wisconsin System faculty and students. A week later, after closed-door sessions, the board named Thompson as the interim president. Thompson served nearly two years as interim president before announcing in January 2022 that he would step down, effective March 18, 2022.

After leaving the public sector at the end of the Bush Administration, Thompson joined the law firm Akin Gump, and the consulting firm Deloitte and joined the boards of directors of other companies.

Thompson also joined the board of about two dozen private companies and nonprofit groups.

In 2011, Thompson was paid more than $1.1 million in cash and stock incentives from five public companies, Thompson's consulting firm was paid $471,000 by six companies, and Thompson himself received $3 million from the sale of a healthcare firm he chaired. Thompson's work with these companies and other investments led him to accumulate a disclosed net worth of $13 million.

A number of those companies and organizations (as of 2012), "he helps oversee have faced an array of troubles, including claims of making faulty and dangerous medical implants, failing grades from a corporate watchdog and allegations of misleading investors." An expert with one agency that gave failing marks three of the six public companies who boards Thompson sits on commented that "either [Thompson] has really bad luck choosing companies...or he is one of the directors on company boards who is not exercising sufficient oversight."

Thompson became a partner at law firm Akin Gump, a Washington, D.C., law firm that engages in federal lobbying. There, Thompson provided "strategic advice" to the lobbyists in the firm's health care practice, advising them on how to most successfully lobby government officials on behalf of the firm's clients.

He also became a senior advisor at the professional services firm Deloitte and became Independent Chairman of its Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. Thompson was no longer associated with Deloitte by October 2011.

Medicare prescription drug-benefit

Thompson was one of the key architects of the 2003 passage of Bush's Medicare Modernization Act, which was slated to provide public funding for prescription drugs for Medicare recipients starting in 2006. On the prescription drug-benefit issue, the major piece of health care legislation of President Bush's first term, Thompson frequently served as the president's point man. National analysts cite the passage of Medicare reform as the most important achievement of Thompson's tenure as HHS secretary.

As part of the debate over the adoption of Medicare Part D, Thompson was involved in a dispute over whether the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services had to share cost estimates to Congress for legislation that would create a prescription drug benefit. Critics accused Thompson and HHS of downplaying the true cost of the law by $150 billion. CMS Administrator Tom Scully threatened to fire a CMS actuary if he revealed to Congress his estimate. Investigators determined that the data was improperly hidden from Congress, but did not conclude whether laws had been broken. In 2011 the trustees of Medicare found that the prescription drug benefit had come in 40% below estimates, the Congressional Budget Office (using different budgeting numbers) determined that the program had come in 28% below projections.

In her Senate campaign, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) said in 2012 that Thompson was responsible for forbidding Medicare to negotiate drug prices, a statement that Politifact rated as "True." Thompson said that he had nothing to do with that provision, a statement Politifact rated as "False." The New York Times reported, "In December (2004), just before leaving office, Mr. Leavitt’s predecessor, Tommy G. Thompson, said he wished Congress had given him the authority to negotiate prices for Medicare beneficiaries, as he negotiated discounts on antibiotics during the anthrax scare of 2001."

2001 anthrax scare

Early in his term, Thompson faced an emergency situation with the 2001 anthrax attacks. Thompson was given poor marks for seeming "utterly overtaken by events" and issuing "early statements that the government was prepared to deal with any biological emergency [that] never squared with the facts".

At a White House briefing following the first anthrax death of the scare, Thompson made a statement to the press that "would be cited for years afterward as a historic blunder in crisis communication". Thompson offered the media a "far-fetched" suggestion that the individual who died had come into contact with anthrax from drinking water from a creek.

Thompson's words were criticized by a range of experts as unwarranted, as potentially undermining public confidence, and as the "kind of statements that lead to mistrust of officials and experts". Thompson was also faulted for positioning himself as the voice of the Administration to the public on this issue, having had no formal training in medicine or public health.

Resignation press conference

Thompson resigned on December 3, 2004, in a press conference at which he issued warnings over the dangers of avian flu and the poisoning of U.S. food supplies by terrorists. Thompson stated that he had attempted to resign in 2003, but remained until after the President's reelection at the administration's request. Some noted, in particular, his words: "I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not, you know, attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do. And we are importing a lot of food from the Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that."

1979 congressional campaign

While Thompson was Assistant Minority Leader in the Assembly, incumbent Republican U.S. Congressman William Steiger of Wisconsin's 6th congressional district died at the age of 40 from a heart attack. Thompson was one of seven Republican candidates who ran to replace Steiger in the special election in 1979. State Senator Tom Petri won the primary and general elections and represented the 6th district until his retirement in January 2015.

Alleged politicizing of science

In 2001, early in his term as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Thompson's office rejected 19 of 26 people, including a Nobel laureate, recommended for seats on the advisory board for the NIH developing nations unit by the unit's director. In return, Thompson's office sent back to the unit's director, Gerald Keusch of the Fogarty International Center, résumés for other scientists that Keusch described as "lightweights" with "no scientific credibility." Keusch relayed to one of those rejected, Nobel laureate Torsten Wiesel, that he was pushed aside for having "signed too many full-page letters in The New York Times critical of President Bush." This incident was cited by the advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists as part of a report detailing their allegations of a "politicization of science" under President George W. Bush's administration.

Initial post-government political activities

Soon after leaving office, Thompson began publicly proposing policy solutions for a variety of programs that he had overseen as HHS Secretary. However, critics claimed many changes would benefit companies Thompson owned or had a financial stake in (including Centene and the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions). These included transferring some Medicaid beneficiaries from federal to state responsibility and requiring digitization of medical records, which would directly benefit those companies.

Thompson spoke as a panelist at a 2005 Harvard Kennedy School conference on global poverty, where he discussed medical diplomacy. Thompson also authored a Boston Globe op-ed on the topic.

One of the nonprofit organizations that Thompson joined the board of, Medical Missions for Children, recruited Thompson to co-host a number of episodes of one of its health instructional series, Plain Talk about Health.

Iowa straw poll; withdrawal and endorsements

Thompson had stated he would drop out of the race if he did not finish either first or second in the Ames straw poll on August 11, 2007. Thompson finished sixth, with just 7% of the vote, despite the fact that some major contenders were not competing in the poll. On August 12, Thompson officially announced he would drop out of the race. In October, Thompson endorsed Rudy Giuliani. Thompson told the Associated Press in a statement that "Rudy Giuliani has shown that he is a true leader. He can and will win the nomination and the presidency. He is America's mayor, and during a period of time of great stress for this country he showed tremendous leadership." He then endorsed Senator John McCain after Giuliani's withdrawal from the presidential race. In a New York Times article published October 11, 2008, Thompson was quoted in response to a question regarding whether he was happy with McCain's campaign as saying, "No. I don't know who is."

Political positions during 2012 campaign

During the 2012 campaign, Thompson, speaking to a Tea Party group, said, "Who better than me, that's already finished one of the entitlement programs, to come up with programs that do away with Medicaid and Medicare?" When a videotape of his remarks surfaced, Thompson stated that he did not want to eliminate Medicare but instead wanted a system that would provide a subsidy to individuals to help them purchase private health insurance.

Thompson favored making the Bush tax cuts permanent and adopting a 15% flat tax.

Later political involvement

Over the course of the Republican primaries for the United States presidential election of 2016 Thompson endorsed a number of candidates. Before the primaries, he initially endorsed Scott Walker's campaign. After Walker withdrew his candidacy, Thompson gave his endorsement to the campaign of Jeb Bush. In March 2016 (a month after Bush ended his campaign), Thompson endorsed the campaign of John Kasich and became chair of Kasich's Wisconsin state campaign operation. In early July, Thompson, endorsed Donald Trump (the party's presumptive nominee) and served as a delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Thompson considered running for Wisconsin governor again in 2022, which would mean challenging incumbent Democrat Tony Evers. In March 2022, he visited Mar-a-Lago to consult with then-former president Trump about such a possibility. In April, Thompson claimed that he would not be running for governor. He claimed that he had received encouragement from Trump, but was ultimately dissuaded from running by objections from his own immediate family. In July, Thompson gave his own endorsement in the Republican gubernatorial primary to Tim Michels (the Trump-backed candidate). Trump and Thompson's endorsements of Michels was seen as helping him to overtake former lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch in the polls. While Michels succeeded in securing the Republican nomination, he went on to lose to Evers.

In October 2022, Thompson joined the Council for Responsible Social Media project launched by Issue One to address the negative mental, civic, and public health impacts of social media in the United States co-chaired by former House Democratic Caucus Leader Dick Gephardt and former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.

Thompson served as a delegate to the 2024 Republican National Convention (held in Milwaukee), and delivered a speech at the convention. Thompson claimed that it was the twelfth consecutive Republican convention to which he had been a delegate. In the 2024 presidential election, Thompson once again endorsed Trump, and sent Trump's campaign advice on campaigning in Wisconsin. Thompson also campaigned alongside Trump in Wisconsin.