Robert Lee Stump (April 4, 1927 – June 20, 2003) was an American politician who served as a U.S. Congressman from Arizona. He served as a member from the Democratic Party from 1977 to 1983 and then later a member of the Republican Party until the end of his tenure as congressman.
Early life and career
Stump was born in Phoenix, and was a U.S. Navy World War II combat veteran, where he served on the USS Tulagi from 1943 to 1946. He graduated from Tolleson Union High School in 1947, and Arizona State University in 1951 where he was a member of the Delta Chi fraternity. He owned a cotton and grain farm in the Phoenix suburb of Tolleson for many years.
He served four terms in the Arizona House of Representatives from 1959 to 1967, and five terms in the Arizona State Senate, from 1967 to 1976. He served as President of the Arizona State Senate from 1975 to 1976.
Member of Congress
He was first elected to the 95th Congress on November 2, 1976, originally as a Democrat from the 3rd Congressional District, a vast district stretching from western Phoenix through Prescott to Lake Havasu City and the Grand Canyon. He defeated state senate minority leader Fred Koory with 47 percent of the vote.
Stump wore his party ties very loosely. He considered himself a "Pinto Democrat," the popular name for conservative Democrats from rural Arizona, and his voting record was strongly conservative. His profile was similar to those of conservative Democrats from the South. He voted for Ronald Reagan's tax cuts in 1981. Shortly after that vote, he announced he would become a Republican when Congress reconvened in January 1982. Regardless of his party affiliation, he never faced serious competition at the ballot box. After his initial run for Congress, he only dropped below 60 percent of the vote once, in 1990. He only faced an independent in 1978, and was completely unopposed in 1986.
He briefly considered running for the Senate in 1986 after Barry Goldwater decided to retire.
Described as "quiet" and "assiduously private", Stump kept a fairly low profile for most of his tenure. He had only a skeleton staff; he was known to answer the phone himself at his Washington, D.C. office, and to open his own mail. Stump usually returned home to work his farm in Tolleson on weekends.
In November 1997, Stump was one of eighteen Republicans in the House to co-sponsor a resolution by Bob Barr that sought to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Bill Clinton. The resolution did not specify any charges or allegations. This was an early effort to impeach Clinton, predating the eruption of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. The eruption of that scandal would ultimately lead to a more serious effort to impeach Clinton in 1998. On October 8, 1998, Stump voted in favor of legislation that was passed to open an impeachment inquiry. On December 19, 1998, Stump voted in favor of all four proposed articles of impeachment against Clinton (only two of which received the majority of votes needed to be adopted).
In his 26 years in the House he became a noted member of the House Armed Services Committee, serving as chairman from 2001 to 2003. He'd chaired the House Veterans' Affairs Committee from 1995 to 2001, when he was forced to give that post up due to caucus-imposed term limits. He is one of the few members of the House to chair both committees. He consistently supported increased spending on the military and veterans. The 2003 military appropriations authorization act was named after him in recognition of his commitment to the military as the Bob Stump National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003.
Stump sponsored bills to make English the official language for government business and to alter laws so that children born on US soil to non-citizen parents would not automatically be citizens. According to Amy Silverson, he was "best known in Congress as a perpetual naysayer, casting votes against almost all spending programs."
Between 1976 and 2002, he accumulated a lifetime score of 97 (out of 100) from the American Conservative Union. He received very low scores from the National Council of Senior Citizens, the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL–CIO, the NAACP, and the League of Conservation Voters.