Candidate for
United States Representative; District 8

Mike German was born and raised in Gary, Indiana, and was graduated from Lew Wallace High School with Honors in 1970. In high school, Mike swam competitively, taught swimming at an inner-city YMCA and spent his summers as a lifeguard on Lake Michigan. He attended Wabash College as a Hoosier Scholar for two years, where he was on the swim team, became a member of The Sigma Chi Fraternity and was on the Dean's List, until he received a draft lottery number of 8. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1972, was selected as Outstanding Recruit in boot camp and served in the Sixth Fleet as one of it's first seagoing law clerks until Honorably Discharged in 1975. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Illinois in Urbana in 1977, complementing his major in History with a double minor in English and Political Science, and again placing on the Dean's List. In his free time, Mike continues to swim, bicycle and travel. He is a member of the Olympic Club, where he is a registered U.S. Masters Swimmer, and served as National Legal Affairs Director for the League of American Bicyclists from 1992-1994.

After living and working in Ann Arbor, Michigan for two years, Mike moved to San Francisco to begin law school at the University of San Francisco, from which he was graduated in 1981. Continuing his interest in matters maritime, he worked during law school and afterwards with Acret & Perrochet, one of San Francisco's premiere admiralty "boutiques" from 1979 to 1984, first as a clerk and then as an associate attorney after being admitted to the California Bar. Mike was then a partner in the firm of German & Siggins with Peter J. Siggins, his longtime friend and colleague, until "going solo" in 1987, which he continued to do until 2000. In 2000, Mike joined the Criminal Law Division of the California Attorney General's Office, where he continues to practice today. For much of the past decade, Mike was also an arbitratator in the San Francisco and Contra Costa Superior Courts.

Mike's legal career spans over twenty years of practice. Because he has argued cases on both sides of key issues affecting not only San Francisco but our larger society as well, he is uniquely equipped for the legislative, debate and policymaking tasks required of him in Congress. His legal work has been recognized as outstanding: three times in the past decade, Mike was included in "Who's Who in American Law," the "A-List" of the legal profession.

Mike's interest in politics began with what he observed growing up: the dually debilitating effects of political corruption in one-party communities and of environmental pollution in one-industry towns. He learned that political diversity is as important to ensuring political rectitude as is competition of any other kind, and therefore immersed himself in Republican politics beginning with his work on former Congressman - and fellow Chicagolander - Tom Campbell's last California State Senate campaign in 1993. During this time, Mike also ran for the San Francisco seat on the California Bar Board of Governors, focusing on getting the Bar back to its basic functions of enforcing discipline and overseeing continuing education programs, and away from engaging in special interest advocacy. While Mike lost this election, his first, his platform for Bar reform was later seized upon by then-Governor Pete Wilson in his own efforts to reform California's legal profession.

In 1996, Mike ran for and was elected to the San Francisco Republican County Central Committee, where he was soon selected as its General Counsel, a position he held through 2001. He quickly established a reputation as a law and order moderate with habits of hard work, strong, but succint and collegial, debate, and for his ability to get along with his fellow committeemembers, despite their ideological differences. He was appointed to the California State GOP Central Committee and served two terms there, where, as a member of its Health Education and Welfare Committee, he successfully moderated the Party's 2000 Platform by removing divisive and mean-spirited language from its provisions on AIDS prevention.

Mike first became active in Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay GOPers, in 1994 and served as President of its San Francisco chapter, one of the first such clubs in the nation, from 1997 through 2000, after rising through its officers' ranks and reaffirming his ability to put on productive and - actually enjoyable! - fundraisers. He had earlier shown this same skill as a member of Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (BALIF), where he was widely credited with turning its annual dinners into the organization's most profitable fundraising events. He continues to serve Log Cabin as General Counsel of its statewide organization and in 2000 received the Leonard Matlovich Award for his efforts on Log Cabin's behalf.

Now, he seeks to make the Grand Old Party a better party. Mike continues to work for an inclusive GOP that recognizes and respects the division between church and state, the differences between public and private functions, including which are best equipped to do either, and the need for real diversity of opinion, both in the Big Tent of the GOP and in society as a whole. As a Republican, Mike can - and will! - hold the Republican Congress and the rest of the GOP to its promise of tolerance and inclusion, free of attacks grounded on "partisanship" that any other critic would have to contend with. Specifically,

• Mike is strongly Pro-Choice but understands and respects the values that faith represents and reflects on our private characters without allowing it to control public institutions or influence our private beliefs. There is a place for religion - in churches - and there is a place for the state - and that place is not in our homes and private lives.

• Having seen - and now living in! - cities where public safety has deteriorated because of lax law enforcement, Mike stands for a strict and fair approach in dealing with crime, whether on the streets or in corporate boardrooms. He supports the "broken windows" theory of policing that Rudy Giuliani used so successfully in New York - and is so sorely needed in San Francisco - and will provide the Congressional oversight that only a Republican Congressman can provide over ALL levels of San Francisco's one-party regime.

• Mike has a demonstrated record of working for equal rights for ALL American citizens. His record in court and in the public forum shows he is not afraid to take on difficult or controversial cases or issues, from protecting the rights of gays, senior citizens and voters, to speaking out plainly on issues and controversies and offering workable solutions to resolve them. He'll do the same in Congress, and will work diligently to enact ENDA, revise Medicare to provide a meaningful and cost-effective prescription benefit plan, and reform elections to protect our most basic right - the right to govern ourselves.

• As a free market exponent, Mike is opposed to unregulated and unlimited welfare of all kinds, whether individual or corporate, and will work to continue welfare reform and expand criminal prosecutions for illegal business behavior, whether in boardrooms, stock exchanges or political caucuses. He supports reforming disclosure rules for stock options and preventing IPOs from being offered to governmental officials who are charged with regulating them. Because only a fair market can be a free market, Mike will strongly support and expand consumer rights wherever they help to level the playing field.

• As a San Francisco homeowner and past president of his condominium association, Mike is keenly aware of the issues presented by the lack of affordable housing in S.F. and of the need to properly utilize property taxes collected from those who pay them. He supports zero-based budgeting, and will actively work for conversion and construction of much needed single family, owner occupied, market rate housing in San Francisco, including expansion of the same first time homeowner programs that allowed him to buy his own home in 1984. He supports both the HOPE Initiative and Care not Cash propositions and urges all San Franciscans to support them as well.

• Because we cannot grow as individuals or as a society unless we are equipped with the basic tools to do so, Mike is strongly supportive of all efforts to improve our education system. "All efforts" means just that - and includes charter schools, school vouchers, tax credits and other alternatives to established school systems that will make public schools compete for good students and produce a good product in the form of educated students. As the son of a high school math teacher, Mike also recognizes that parents must be educated to ensure they provide a supportive environment at home for their kids to learn. Together, a positive home environment and competent schools equipped with proper facilities, programs and teachers will ensure that we have the raw material - our children - to meet the challenges imposed by an increasingly complex world.

• Mike supports President Bush's economic policies wholeheartedly and will work to expand tax cuts as much as possible by reducing the superfluous government programs that keep taxes high, especially on low and middle-income taxpayers who can afford to pay them least. The only tinkering he would do with the President's proposed tax cut would be to increase the cuts for low and middle income taxpayers, who need this relief most of all - and NOW! He supports expansion of the student loan interest deduction, elimination of the capital gains tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment. As a veteran, Mike knows the difference between military preparedness and excessive expenditures and will work to ensure an efficient, not a bloated, national defense.

• Because Mike enjoys the outdoors and appreciates a clean environment, he will work strongly for strict implementation and enforcement of the strictest air and water pollution laws, along with environmentally sound public works, such as California High-Speed Rail. As an avid bicyclist, he will work for bike-friendly transportation and expansion of the Rails-to-Trails program. He will aggressively pursue cleanup of the toxic site at Hunters Point so its neighbors can live and work without fear of being poisoned. He supports California's stricter air quality standards, for both vehicles and businesses, and will urge the federal Department of Justice to abandon its opposition to them. The mistakes of earlier Republican administrations in appointing environmentally-hostile administrators such as Ann Gorsuch and James Watt will NOT be repeated on his watch. At the same time, however, Mike will not allow environmental terrorists to hijack either the environmental movement or the private property or necessary public projects which are equally part of the evolving world we live in. We CAN have our cake and eat it too in balancing the environment with controlled growth!

• Mike will ensure that the Presidio National Park is not turned into an office park, as it could be under its present structure and leadership. Whether profit or non-profit, business must take a back seat to limited provision of single-family, owner-occupied, housing in the Presidio, if it is to be developed in any way other than as a park. Mike will ensure that REAL community input - not the mechanical manipulations of a select few - will determine the future of the Presidio and that ALL San Franciscans will benefit from it.

• Recognizing that legal, controlled immigration, the same kind that allowed his own ancestors to come to this country in the early 1900s and assimilate into our American culture, is what made our nation great, Mike will work to make the reformed INS more efficient in all of its operations. As a lawyer who fought and won against the INS in several cases, Mike knows its shortcomings and how to correct them. Recognizing that illegal, uncontrolled immigration, the kind that threatens to undo our culture by proceeding too fast for assimilation to occur, has jeopardized not only our security but our sovereignty, Mike will work for strict border controls and accounting for all who seek to become part of our country. He will work to review and overhaul the H1-B and L-1 visa programs, especially where corporate abuse has resulted in thousands of American citizens, both native and naturalized, being displaced by lower-paid foreign workers. (See expanded discussion of this issue in "Mike On!") Because Mike's experiences abroad and at home have convinced him that America is a uniquely beautiful and constituted nation, he will not allow it to be divided or devolve into the sort of societies from which others have fled for the freedom and opportunity they have found here.

• As your Congressman, a uniquely qualified Representative from the majority and the President's party, Mike can - and will! - work much more effectively for all San Franciscans than any leader of the minority party might. Not only will Mike bring recognition and benefits to San Francisco, but he will also bring tolerance and inclusion - surely among San Francisco's best attributes - from San Francisco to the rest of our great Nation. Mike's experience, advice and skills will have far greater effect within his own governing party and administration than any other opposition politician's could. As he has already shown on the local and state levels, Mike is the ideal messenger to moderate the GOP on the national level as well. Electing Mike German to Congress is a win-win situation for everyone!