Candidate for
United States Representative; District 8; Republican Party

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.

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 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 - to a well-known San Francisco Public Defender, 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 was responsible for moderating 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 for turning its annual dinners into the organization's most profitable fundraising events. Mike credits his membership in Sigma Chi for this talent; it was there that he learned to throw a good party!

Now, he seeks to make the Grand Old Party a better party. As a supporter of Dick Riordan in his bid for California Governor, 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, and which are best equipped to do either, and the need for real diversity of opinion in the Big Tent of the GOP. Specifically,

• Mike is strongly Pro-Choice, but understands and respects the values that faith represents and reflects on our private characters and public institutions.

• Having seen - and now living in! - cities where public safety has deteriorated because of lax law enforcement, Mike stands for a strict but evenhanded approach in dealing with crime, including support for the death penalty. 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.

• As a free market exponent, he is opposed to unregulated and unlimited welfare of all kinds, whether individual or corporate, and will work to expand welfare reform. Mike authored an amicus curiae brief in support of Proposition 209, which ended affirmative action in California, and firmly believes that preferences of any kind - racial, sexual or otherwise - are contrary to the Constitution and the public interest.

• 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, local rent control strictures notwithstanding.

• Mike supports President Bush's economic policies wholeheartedly and would seek to expand tax cuts as much as possible by reducing the superfluous government programs that keep taxes high. He supports expansion of the student loan interest deduction, elimination of the capital gains tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.

• Because Mike enjoys the outdoors and appreciates a clean environment, he will work strongly for strict implementation and enforcement of air and water pollution laws. 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 and controlled growth!

• 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 INS more efficient in all of its operations. 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. 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 freedom and opportunity here.