FREMONT, Calif. — Forget Berkeley, Cambridge, Santa Monica or those other left-wing bastions.
To find the most liberal member of the U.S. House of Representatives, come here to the blue-collar side of San Francisco Bay where, amid the sprouting subdivisions and ethnic neighborhoods, Fortney "Pete" Stark (D-Fremont) has charted an unswerving leftward course for more than three decades.
Antiwar? Check. Pro-gun control? Check. Opposes bans on gay marriage and late-term abortions? Check, and check.
National Journal, the policy bible and political field guide to Washington, has devised a formula for ranking members of Congress based on their votes on more than 100 foreign policy, economic and social issues. For the last two years, Stark has finished at the very top -- or bottom, depending -- as the leftmost lawmaker on the left-right scale.
Others might shun the liberal label, which is about as politically fashionable these days as Earth Shoes and woolly sideburns. Not the combustible Stark, who says he "greened in the '60s" and reveled in his image back then -- here's an oxymoron for you -- as a "hippie banker."
"I only won by .5 of a point," Stark says of his latest first-place showing. "But it's nice."
Actually, the margin was .3%, putting Stark just ahead of Georgia's cop-slugging Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney. But there is no quibbling with his longevity, or denying the delight he takes in trashing Republicans -- particularly the "witch-burners," as he dubs the most zealous Christian conservatives.
"You'll get the death penalty soon for not saying the Lord's Prayer right," he scoffs.
Stark can seem harmless enough, bantering with the hostess at an Italian restaurant here in his East Bay district. At 74, he is a bit stooped, with a slight hitch in his step. His steel-gray hair has gone white at the temples and his oval glasses and long, pleated face give him the look of an erudite bloodhound.
But Stark is proof that age doesn't necessarily mellow. It certainly hasn't stilled his tongue, which can be scathing even by today's belligerent standards. Ask about regrets, and he allows that some of his more provocative quotes over the years were "unnecessary."
He once called the American Medical Assn. a bunch of "greedy troglodytes." He skewered one well-respected Republican colleague as "a whore for the insurance industry," another as a "fruitcake" and a third as a "fascist." He referred to House leaders as President George W. Bush's "Republican henchmen," and nearly provoked a fistfight on the House floor by accusing a GOP leader of fathering several children outside of marriage.
