Jim McDermott

James Adelbert "Jim" McDermott, born December 28, 1936 is the U.S. Representative for Washington's 7th congressional district, serving since 1989. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The 7th District includes most of Seattle and Vashon Island, and portions of Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Tukwila, SeaTac, and Burien.

He serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and is a member of the House Progressive Caucus. He was formerly the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee.

Early life, education, and family

McDermott was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was the first member of his family to attend college; he graduated from Wheaton College, Illinois, and then went to medical school, getting an M.D. from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago in 1963. After completing an internship from 1963 to 1964 at Buffalo General Hospital in Buffalo, New York, a two-year psychiatry residency at the University of Illinois Research and Educational Hospital (now called University of Illinois Research Hospital), and fellowship training in child psychiatry from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, he served in the United States Navy Medical Corps as a psychiatrist in California during the Vietnam War. He is married to Therese Hansen, an attorney, and has two grown children.

Early political career

In 1970, McDermott made his first run for public office and was elected to the state legislature as a representative from the 43rd district. He did not seek re-election in 1972 but instead ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Washington. In 1974, he ran for the state senate, and subsequently was re-elected three times, to successive four-year terms. During this time, he crafted and sponsored legislation that would eventually be called the Washington State Basic Health Plan, the first such state program in the country, which offers health insurance to the unemployed and the working poor. In 1980, while still a state senator, McDermott defeated incumbent Dixy Lee Ray in the Democratic primary for governor, but lost the general election to Republican John Spellman. He ran again in 1984, losing the primary to Booth Gardner, who then went on to defeat Spellman in the election.

In 1987, McDermott briefly left politics to become a Foreign Service medical officer based in Zaire, providing psychiatric services to Foreign Service, USAID, and Peace Corps personnel in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 1988, when the seat for Washington's 7th congressional district came open, McDermott returned from Africa to run.

Political campaigns

McDermott has consistently received strong support from his district, taking 83% of the popular vote in 2010, easily winning against independent challenger Bob Jeffers-Schroder. No Republican filed to contest the election in 2010.

Boehner v. McDermott

In December 2004, the House Ethics Committee investigated McDermott over the leaking of an illegally recorded telephone conversation during a 1997 committee investigation of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In the conversation, Mr. Gingrich, his lawyer and several other Republican Congressmen discussed how Gingrich's Congressional allies should deal with the political consequences of his admission that he had violated House ethics rules by giving inaccurate information to the House Ethics Committee for its inquiry into his use of tax-exempt funds. Democrats have described the conversation as evidence that Mr. Gingrich broke an agreement with the Ethics Committee that he would not orchestrate a politically-motivated response to those committee findings.

The recording was made by John and Alice Martin, who claimed that they had overheard the conversation on a police scanner, decided to record it for posterity's sake, and then decided that it might be important for the Ethics Committee to hear. The Martins gave the tape to McDermott because he was the senior Democrat on the Ethics Committee at that time. Within two days, reportedly after the Republican Ethics Committee Chair Nancy L. Johnson refused to allow a vote on making the tape part of the committee's records, sending the tape to the Justice Department, or taking any action against the participants in the conversation, and over the warning of the Committee's legal counsel of possible legal liability, McDermott gave the tape to several media outlets, including the New York Times.

Rep. John Boehner, who was part of the Gingrich conversation, sued McDermott in his capacity as a private citizen, seeking punitive damages for violations of his First Amendment rights. After U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ordered McDermott to pay Boehner for "willful and knowing misconduct" that "rises to the level of malice", McDermott appealed, arguing that since he was not the one involved in the recording, his actions were allowed under the First Amendment, and said a ruling against him would have 'a huge chilling effect' on reporters and newsmakers alike. 18 news organizations — including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post — filed a brief backing McDermott. On March 29, 2006, the court ruled 2–1 that McDermott violated federal law when he turned over the illegally recorded tape to the media outlets, ordering McDermott to pay Boehner's legal costs (over $600,000) plus $60,000 in damages. On June 26, 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the earlier judgment, deciding to re-hear the case with all nine judges.However, the split 4 to 1 to 4 en banc decision in Boehner v. McDermott, 484 F.3d 573 (D.C. Cir. 2007), affirmed the three-judge panel, but on different grounds. The Supreme Court declined McDermott's request for review. On March 31, 2008, Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered McDermott to pay $1.05 million to Boehner, covering attorney's fees, costs and interest. McDermott also has had to pay over $60,000 in fines and close to $600,000 in his own legal fees.

The Ethics Committee formally rebuked McDermott in 2006, writing he had "violated ethics rules by giving reporters access to an illegally taped telephone call involving Republican leaders a decade ago. Rep. McDermott's secretive disclosures to the news media ... risked undermining the ethics process" and that McDermott's actions "were not consistent with the spirit of the committee. Previously, the Martins had pled guilty to violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. In 1997, Gingrich was reprimanded by the House for failing to ensure that he had not violated tax laws, assessed $300,000 in costs, and resigned.

Call to Impeach George W. Bush

In September of 2008, McDermott was the the eighth member of the U.S. House to sign a resolution calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush. The resolution claimed the Bush administration had committed more than a dozen impeachable acts, including misleading the American public about Iraq, spying on American citizens, and trying to "destroy Medicare." The resolution got little support from McDermott's fellow Congressmen.