Tom Stanton

Thomas Robert "Tom" Stanton (born September 18, 1956) is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He previously served as a United States Senator from 1995 to 2001, a member of the New York State Senate from the 27th district from 1989 to 1995, and a member of the New York City Council from the 44th district from 1986 to 1989.

Early life and early career
Thomas Robert "Tom" Stanton was born on September 18, 1956 in Brooklyn, New York. He is the third son of Democratic public school teacher and education activist, Mary Reese and former Republican Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman, Rob Stanton. His parents divorced when he was a teenager after his often absent father’s affair came to light. His mother then married David James, an African American New York City Councilman since 1974 and fellow member of the Democratic Party. Tom became extremely close to his stepfather (who he referred to as his dad) and through him entered into the world of politics. Stanton received a Bachelor of Arts from New York University, majoring in metropolitan studies, a program in urban studies, and received a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He is a 1976 Harry S. Truman Scholar and a former President of the Columbia University College Democrats.

Tom began his political career when he served as deputy campaign manager to his stepfather’s unsuccessful 1981 campaign for Mayor of New York City. He briefly served as James’ chief of staff before resigning due to optics in the spring of 1982. From there, Stanton worked on private sector initiatives to finance affordable housing, and researched and wrote about the preservation of federally assisted housing as a visiting scholar at his alma mater, New York University for two years. After that at the age of 28, he was appointed by the President as the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Regional Administrator for the New York Regional Office. He resigned after only a year in order to seek his stepfather’s city council seat as he was retiring so he could make another (albeit this time successful) run for the mayor’s office in the 1985 election. Stanton won the 44th district overwhelming, begining a four year term. During his tenure on the city council he worked towards affordable housing for the poor and minorities, anti-discrimination measures, stricter environmental standards for the city, access to healthcare, lowering New York City's crime rate and increasing the size of the New York Police Department, and the revitalization of city infrastructure. He served one term, deciding to run for the 27th State Senate district in 1988 instead of for reelection.

New York State Senate
Stanton was successfully elected as a member of the New York State Senate from the 27th district in 1988, taking office on January 4, 1989. During his tenure he continued to fight for his most passionate cause, affordable housing and opposed the Republican-controlled Senate’s desire to reduce spending for low income housing in 1990. He opposed an effort the next year in which a bipartisan group of Republicans and upstate conservative Democrats attempted to cut spending for CUNY schools which they claimed were overfunded. During this time he participated along with his mother and other education activists in a protest against the cuts, arguing that the system’s four-year colleges offered a high quality, tuition-free education to the poor, the working class and the immigrants of New York City who met the grade requirements for matriculated status. Senator Stanton was responsible for a 1993 filibuster on a Republican tax proposal stating “While my Republican colleagues would like to argue that their tax package would reduce taxes for the middle class and dairy farmers upstate who are perceived to pay disproportionately more in taxes than their downstate neighbors. It would in reality cut their own taxes and those of their donors...downstate on Wall Street!” His plan worked with the bill being defeated by the entirety of the Democratic Caucus and a minority of upstate Republicans who were concerned with the optics of voting in favor. In 1994, he proposed a bill that would establish a program called NYCare for Kids, a low-cost health insurance program for children of uninsured, low-income families in the state who do not qualify for Medicaid. Stanton’s commitment to progressive causes over his career and ability to connect with a variety of voters put him on the radar of the New York State Democratic Committee to succeed longtime senior United States Senator from New York, Daniel G. Brennan who was not running for reelection in the 1994 United States Senate election.

United States Senate
Stanton announced his intention to run for the Democratic nomination for United States Senate on December 3, 1994. He won the Democratic primary with ease due to the fact that he was on the state committee’s list of preferred candidates and because of the early endorsement of his stepfather David James who served as Mayor of New York City from 1986 to 1993. He faced his Republican challenger, Vito Molinari, a bombastic former Congressman from New York's 14th congressional district which at the time consisted of all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. Throughout the campaign, Stanton made little fanfare where as his opponent traveled on a campaign bus through the state called the Straight Talk Express, whose name capitalized on his unpolished speaking style and his claim that he would be “an independent voice in Washington”. Meanwhile, Stanton worked on coalition building by doing a series of town halls across the state bringing together an oddball coalition of urban minorities, white dairy farmers, and LGBTQIA+ and disability’s rights activists. Despite Molinari’s attempts to portray Stanton as excessively liberal and prone to government spending, Stanton trounced him winning 55%–42% because of a strong performance among upstate voters, in addition to the usual Democratic strongholds in New York City.

Senator Stanton was sworn into the Senate on January 3, 1995 by Vice President Dan Barnett. He voted against The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 that implemented work requirements for welfare recipients, required state professional and occupational licenses be withheld from illegal immigrants, and encouraged a two-parent family model. He did so because of his belief that the bill destroyed the safety net, increased poverty, lowered income for single mothers, put people from welfare into homeless shelters, and left states free to eliminate welfare entirely. He argued that while it moved mothers and children from welfare to work, many of them were not making enough to survive. About a month after voting against that Stanton voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as the legal union of one man and one woman, allowing individual states to refuse to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. Senator Stanton called this a subversion of civil rights. In late 1997, Senator Stanton unsuccessfully pushed for the United States to enter into the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that it is extremely likely that human-made carbon dioxide emissions have predominantly caused it.

Presidency
On January 9, 1999, Stanton called a press conference at the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse in Farmington, New York that has served as a meeting place for Seneca Indians, African Americans and women throughout history and now offers programming on Civil War history, women`s equality, and Seneca Native American history. In this conference he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. In his speech, he spoke to the notation that their are “Two Americas, the America of the privileged and the wealthy, and the America of those who lived from paycheck to paycheck”. Senator Stanton stated that if elected he would be for those who lived from paycheck to paycheck unlike the current administration. As a one-term Senator with less than six years on the national stage, Stanton’s campaign was initially dismissed as a longshot by the Democratic Party establishment. However, his message resonated with people and he was able to form a winning "Rainbow Coalition" of various minority groups, including African Americans, Hispanics, Arab-Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, family farmers, the poor and working class, and homosexuals, as well as white progressives who fit into none of those categories.

On August 17, 2000 Stanton officially took former Oregon Governor Cynthia Welch as his vice presidential running mate after a voice vote at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. In the general election, Stanton and Welch faced the Republican ticket of incumbent Vice President Dan Barnett of Kansas and his running mate, Tennessee Governor Bob Goode. During the campaign, Senator Stanton was attack by Vice President Barnett for being “a New York liberal” who was “out of step with the American people on the issues”. Stanton criticized Barnett in return, stating during a debate that he had little substance in his platform and was simply “piggybacking off the success of the Weil administration” or “in truth just continuing his reactionary elitism”. Stanton defeated Barnett, winning both the popular vote and the electoral college, with Stanton taking 283 electoral votes to Barnett’s 255 and the popular vote by 51%–49% on November 7, 2000.

Assuming office on January 20, 2001, President Stanton reversed some of the previous administration’s policies such as revitalizing and funding domestic and international family planning programs, entering the United States into the Kyoto Protocol, and began meeting with Democratic congressional leaders about repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a Defense Department directive that prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. It would ultimately be repealed by Congress in February 2005 as the American Psychological Association issued a statement that "Empirical evidence fails to show that sexual orientation is germane to any aspect of military effectiveness including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment and retention." In September 2001, nine months into his first term he fulfilled a foreign policy campaign promise to officially cut diplomatic ties with the Middle Eastern nation of Korristan after the shooting death of Jamie Cochran, the Chargé d'Affaires to Korristan as well the deaths of a number of other embassy employees in October 1998.

In his second year in office, President Stanton used a lot of his political capital to attempt to pass major legislation such as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that included several provisions designed to end the use of soft money in federal elections which is money raised outside the limits and prohibitions of federal campaign finance law. This effort was successful passing with a 240-189 vote in the House and with a 60-40 vote in the Senate, taking effect on November 6, 2002. On the other hand, he fell five votes short in the Senate to pass the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a bill that would have implemented a multi-phase process for qualifying alien minors in the United States that would first grant conditional residency and, upon meeting further qualifications, permanent residency. The Stanton administration’s legislative agenda was derailed upon the Independence Day Attacks of 2003 on New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia where a group of terrorists set off explosives under the cover of three of the nation’s largest Fourth of July fireworks displays. These attacks in turn sparked a global “War on Terror” and caused a hawkish shift in foreign policy within the Stanton administration such as support for the creation of Department of Homeland Security and in 2004, military action in the Middle East which was primarily supported by Republicans and primarily opposed by Democrats, his own party.

After getting intel from military intelligence, President Stanton ordered that Korristan be named a state sponsor of terrorism and later ordered the 2004 Invasion of Korristan where Salafist autocrat, Zalman Abduh Islam was assassinated by coalition forces (including the United States and opposition forces such as Wasat Party-aligned militias). Despite the assassination of Abduh Islam, the War in Korristan continues to this day (U.S. forces began to withdraw in 2017 under President Mark Hollis and scheduled to be completely withdrawn by the year 2020). President Stanton won a decisive victory in his 2004 reelection bid over Republican nominee, Bob Goode, the Governor of Tennessee who was the 2000 Vice Presidential nominee. He garnered 53% of the vote to Goode’s 46% and won 331–207 in the electoral college. This feat is largely attributed to his popularity as a wartime President. President Stanton’s second term was consumed by the ensuing destabilization and internal conflict in Korristan after the assassination of Abduh Islam. U.S. Army General Isaac M. Paulson was then appointed by President Stanton as Special Envoy to Korristan for Humanitarian Aid and Interim Administrative Affairs on March 3, 2005. This made Paulson the country's chief executive authority and also allowed him to rule by decree. President Stanton was criticized across the political spectrum for allowing this with Americans on the right and the left condemning as “imperialism” and “a military dictatorship”. Reacting to pressure, Stanton contacted General Paulson who then (albeit nearly a year after assuming the post) signed Interim Administrative Affairs Order Number 4 which established the Korristani Provisional Assembly for Oversight and Legislative Affairs “in order to ensure representation of the Korristani people and establish separation of powers”. Despite anger over U.S. policy the biggest concern for people including the President was the fact that Abduh Islam’s Pure Islamic Coalition, now a designated terrorist organization known as Al-Naqia still had hold over roughly 45% of the nation’s territory. President Stanton, Vice President Welch, General Paulson, as well as Secretary of State Tim Mullins and Secretary of Defense Dan Ambrose among others devised a comprehensive plan of action to tackle this. However, it was criticized by Republicans for giving “little to no autonomy to commanding officers on the ground”.

On July 18, 2006 General Paulson was instructed to hand over executive powers to Hakim Shah Sahib, Governor of the Provisional Assembly for Oversight and Legislative Affairs. Governor Sahib then assumed the role of Acting President of Korristan a day later. A formal presidential election was held in December of that year. However, legislative elections to the new National Assembly were postponed due to ongoing warfare and divided control of territory in the country so the provisional assembly remained in place. The winner of the Korristani presidential election was a populist oil magnate and provisional assemblyman named Hussein Ahmed Abdullah who’s National Unity Rally (NUR), a disparate coalition of populist politicians from across the political spectrum would later gain a legislative majority. He was initially seen as a supporter of the United States and was able to work with President Stanton. However, Stanton would mostly spend their overlapping tenures trying to keep U.S. forces in the country for peacekeeping and oversight since U.S. intelligence discovered that many high ranking officials were suspected of corruption, espionage, drug trafficking, and in some cases facilitating Al-Naqia. Due to eventual rifts between the two leaders, President Abdullah and the NUR began to adopt increasingly Pro-Iran stances.

In elections at home, support for military action in Korristan was low among Democrats which in turn caused suppressed Democratic turnout and allowed for a Republican majority in the House after the 2006 midterms, largely by running a slate of strong moderate candidates throughout the Rust Belt. Following these midterms, President Stanton mostly had to deal with congressional hearings in regards to Korristan and served as a “national security President” for the remainder of his second term since his domestic agenda was stalled by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. One exception was when Hurricane Thomas hit Fort Lauderdale, Florida on July 24, 2007. Even though efforts were bipartisan, the American people criticized the Stanton administration for the slow federal response to the hurricane since it resulted in additional deaths with the final death toll coming in around 2,000. Among one of the President’s most prominent critics was Fort Lauderdale’s conservative Democratic Mayor, Dave Trellis who because of anger over the hurricane would later be elected to Florida's Democratic-leaning 22nd congressional district in 2008 as a Republican.

President Stanton was ineligible to pursue a third term in the 2008 presidential election due to the term limits established by the 22nd Amendment. The eventual Democratic nominee was his Vice President Cynthia Welch of Oregon who became the first woman to be nominated by a major party as their candidate for President of the United States and who he campaign extensively for. However, she was ultimately defeated by Republican nominee, Governor John Grady of Indiana by 53%–47% and by 290–248 in the Electoral College. Reasoning behind this includes Grady’s promise to tackle the continuing violence and warfare in Korristan as well as other foreign policy issues and his promise to better aid people in the wake of Hurricane Thomas. Pundits claimed the disaster relief promise were the largest factor in his win in the swing state of Florida that held 27 electoral votes. He left office on January 3, 2009.

Post-Presidency
Upon leaving office, President Stanton has been ranked moderately unfavorably in historians' polls that were published in the late 2000s and early 2010s—he consistently fell in the high forties in regards to his approval rating due to the unpopularity of the War in Korristan in his own party and his handling of Hurricane Thomas. However, his favorability ratings with the public have increased since leaving office. He was one of the eulogizers at the funeral of former First Lady Barbara Weil, wife to his predecessor former President Pat Weil of Iowa. His presidential library was opened in 2013 in his native Brooklyn, New York. He has also campaigned for and endorsed many Democratic candidates in his post-presidency such as 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Mark Hollis of Minnesota despite their disagreements in regards to the War in Korristan.