Today it looks like Rep. Pete Stark will be handed Charlie Rangel’s gavel. It hasn’t benn formall announced but it’s being presented as a done deal. Here are a few moments with Rep. Pete Stark compiled by the RNCC:
••• In 1990, Stark called then-Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, an African American, ”a disgrace to his race” because he opposed “proposals for Federally sponsored national health insurance.” (“Lawmaker Assails Health Chief,” Associated Press, 8/03/90)
••• In 1991, Stark “singled out ‘Jewish colleagues’ for blame for the Persian Gulf War, referring to then-Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.) as ‘Field Marshal Solarz in the pro-Israel forces.’” (Jonathan Weisman, “Stark’s Latest Gaffe Is Just One in a Long Line,” The Washington Post, 10/24/07)
••• In 1995, during a meeting Stark called a female colleague a “whore for the insurance industries.”
(Jonathan Weisman, “Stark’s Latest Gaffe Is Just One in a Long Line,” The Washington Post, 10/24/07)
••• In 2001, Stark at a Ways & Means subcommittee hearing referred to then-Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) as the “current Republican Conference chairman, whose children were all born out of wedlock.” (Jonathan Weisman, “Stark’s Latest Gaffe Is Just One in a Long Line,” The Washington Post, 10/24/07)
••• In 2003, Stark picked a fight with a fellow committee member during a Ways & Means Committee hearing, saying “You think you are big enough to make me, you little wimp?” and “Come on. Come over here and make me, I dare you. You little fruitcake.” (Jonathan Weisman, “Stark’s Latest Gaffe Is Just One in a Long Line,” The Washington Post, 10/24/07)
••• In 2007, Stark said that Republicans wanted to “blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement.” (Stark floor statement, 10/18/07)
••• In 2009, Bloomberg reported that Stark had been “taking advantage of a tax break for a home in Maryland that he claims as his principal residence,” even though he represents a district in California. (Timothy J. Burger, “California Congressman Calls Maryland Home to Gain Tax Credit,” Bloomberg, 3/19/09)
••• Perhaps the San Francisco Chronicle said it best in a 2003 editorial: “Only a politician who assumes he has a job for life could behave so badly on a semi-regular basis by spewing personalized invective that might get him punched in certain East Bay taverns.” (Editorial, “Pete Stark’s Tiring Tirades,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/23/03)
