Thomas Joseph Rooney (born November 21, 1970) is an American politician who served as a U.S. representative from Florida from 2009 to 2019. He represented from 2009 to 2013 and from 2013 to 2019. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Rooney announced in February 2018 that he would retire from Congress and would not seek re-election in 2018.
He serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.
Early life and education Rooney was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When Tom was 14, his father, Patrick J. Rooney Sr., moved with the family to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida where they owned a dog track and gambling business.
He graduated from the Benjamin School in North Palm Beach, Florida in 1989. In college, Rooney played football for Syracuse University and Washington & Jefferson College outside Pittsburgh where he earned his B.A. in English Literature. He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.
Rooney attended the University of Florida, where he received an M.A. in Political Science. He attended the University of Miami School of Law, where he received his J.D. and met his wife, Tara Lombardi. They became members of The Florida Bar in 1999.
He is not related to fellow Republican representative Francis Rooney.
Military career After law school, both Rooney and his wife joined the U.S. Army JAG Corps. In 2001, Tom and Tara, along with their newborn son, were stationed at Fort Hood on 9/11. Rooney spent more than four years on Active Duty in the United States Army JAG Corps. He served as Special Assistant U.S Attorney at Fort Hood in Texas, prosecuting all civilian crimes on post. Rooney also served in the 1st Cavalry Division.
In 2002, Rooney began teaching Constitutional and Criminal Law as an Asst. Prof. in the Dept. of Law at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He received two Army Commendation Medals for his service. Tom and Tara Rooney each completed active duty with the rank of captain.
During his active duty time in the JAG Corps, he served with fellow future Congressman Patrick Murphy, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who was the first Iraq War veteran elected to the U.S. Congress.
Early political career As his first job out of college, Tom Rooney worked for U.S. Senator Connie Mack III, who had worked with Tom's father, Patrick J. Rooney Sr., at one time. Rooney started in Senator Mack's mailroom: "We opened every letter and that's where I learned what people's issues were. It really helped shape a blank slate in my life." After getting his Master's degree, he returned to Florida, where he went to work as an Assistant Attorney General. While working as a criminal prosecutor for Attorney General Charlie Crist, he joined the Board of Directors with "The Children's Place at Home Safe," a Palm Beach County shelter that helps abused, neglected, and abandoned children. In 2005, Rooney was named CEO of Home Safe; because of his work there, Governor Jeb Bush appointed him to the Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County Board of Directors in January 2006. After his second year as director, Rooney returned to the Board of Directors of Children's Place and resumed his practice of law in Stuart, Florida with the law firm of Kramer, Sopko & Levenstein, P.A. He is a graduate of Leadership Palm Beach County.
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections 2008
Rooney challenged Democratic incumbent Tim Mahoney. Mahoney had narrowly won the Republican-leaning district in 2006, after five-term incumbent Mark Foley abruptly resigned under a cloud of scandal. Since Foley resigned a little more than a month before the election, Florida election law required Foley's name to remain on the general election ballot, with votes for him being transferred to his replacement, State Representative Joe Negron. It was widely believed that this significantly undermined Negron's chances, as many voters would be reluctant to cast a ballot in Foley's name.GOP Picks Negron to Replace Foley on Florida Ballot FOXnews, October 3, 2006. The campaign used the slogan 'Punch Foley for Negron' as a means of educating the public about the ballot situation and as a means of differentiating the two men, making voting for Foley more palatable.
Given Mahoney's narrow margin of victory, coupled with the unusual circumstances surrounding the 2006 election and this district's Republican bent, the 16th District was viewed as one of Republicans' best opportunities to take a congressional seat from the Democrats in 2008. In the Republican Party primary, Rooney was endorsed by Florida's Governor, Charlie Crist, and defeated State Representative Gayle Harrell and investment banker Hal Valeche. Mahoney, aided by incumbency and having burnished his image as a moderate Blue Dog Democrat, consistently led Rooney in polls throughout the 2008 election cycle until mid-October 2008, when it was revealed that Mahoney, who had promoted a family values image and campaigned against corruption in contrast to the disgraced Foley, had engaged in multiple extramarital affairs and secretly paid off his mistresses to conceal them. This revelation shifted the race decisively in Rooney's favor, even causing the Palm Beach Post to take the rare step of rescinding its previous endorsement of Mahoney and endorsing Rooney instead.
2010
Rooney ran unopposed in the Republican primary. In the general election, he defeated Democratic nominee Jim Horn and write-in candidate William Dean.
2012
For his first two terms, Rooney represented a district stretching from the Treasure Coast through the Everglades to Port Charlotte on the other side of the state. Redistricting, however, saw the 16th renumbered as the 18th District and made significantly more compact. It lost most of its heavily Republican western portion to the new 17th District, which stretched from the Everglades to the outer suburbs of Tampa. Rooney opted to run for reelection in the 17th. He retained roughly one-third of his previous constituents. Most of them lived in the western portion of the old 16th. He sold his home in Tequesta, which remained in the 18th, and bought a home in Okeechobee as his official residence in the new 17th.
In the August 14 Republican primary—the real contest in this heavily Republican district—Rooney faced Joe Arnold, a Republican state committeeman for Okeechobee County and member of the school board. Rooney defeated Arnold in a landslide, getting 74% of vote. Rooney ran in the general election against a retired airline pilot, Democrat William Bronson (formerly an unsuccessful Republican candidate in Massachusetts and Georgia) as well as Socialist Workers Party write-in candidate Tom Baumann (who ran unsuccessful campaigns in Minnesota and Manhattan).
Rooney received endorsements in Florida from Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, U.S. Reps. Allen West and Dennis A. Ross as well as from the NRA Political Victory Fund. In their Saturday, October 13, edition the Tampa Bay Times recommended Tom Rooney for the District 17 seat, and on October 19, The Tampa Tribune endorsed him. The Bradenton Herald recommended Rooney on 26 October.
2014
Rooney faced off against Democratic nominee Will Bronson in the November 4, 2014, general election and won with 63.2% of the vote.
2016
Rooney faced off against Democratic nominee April Freeman in the November 8, 2016, general election and won with 61.8% of the vote.
Tenure One of the first bills Rooney introduced in the House was to prevent any money being spent to bring prisoners to Florida from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Another was a bill he co-sponsored to try to reduce the number of military veteran suicides by mandating mental health screenings for returning troops. Although that bill did not pass, the military eventually adopted the reforms Rooney asked for. Rooney has been recognized by the city of Stuart, Florida for his efforts to prevent veteran suicides.
Rooney sponsored a bill to name a federal courthouse under construction in Fort Pierce in honor of a St. Lucie County rancher, and former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Alto Adams. Rooney's bill was approved by the House in September 2009, but was not passed by the Senate until September 2012, when the new courthouse had been open for eight months.
Since 2009, Rooney has personally presented Congressional Award medals to young people in his district.
In April 2011, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, traveled to Iraq with Rooney and four other members, who met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Ambassador James Franklin Jeffrey. Rooney said that they discussed with Maliki how the United States and Iraq might interact diplomatically after the U.S. troop withdrawal scheduled for December of that year.
On the evening of February 19, 2012, a man crashed his pickup truck into Rooney's Stuart, Florida office. No one was inside the building at the time. The man claimed he tried to park in front of the building, but instead of pressing the brake, accidentally pressed the accelerator. The driver was cited for careless driving by the Stuart Police Department.
Rooney, as Chairman of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry, introduced the Defense of Environment and Property Act in March 2012. This act would make changes to federal water regulations and prevent some prosecutions of farmers and landowners by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In response to an expansion of federal power to regulate wetlands in a 2011 EPA and Army Corps document that redefined "navigable waters," the Rooney bill defines navigable waters to exclude "wetlands without a continuous surface connection" to a body of water. The Rooney bill is a companion to a Senate bill introduced by U.S. Senator Rand Paul.
Libya A June 2011 bill to defund U.S. operations in Libya was written by Rooney, but defeated on the floor of the House because 89 Republicans voted against it. Rooney accepted responsibility for defeat of the bill, which was in competition with a non-binding resolution to deny President Barack Obama authority to wage war against Libya, saying "It was my bill. You can blame me. I think we tried to limit funds so our kids weren't in harm's way but not leave NATO on their own. People either wanted all or they wanted nothing."
On 13 September 2012, Rooney said that Obama should be blamed for attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East because the violence, and the deaths of four Americans in the U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi, was foreseeable: "We supported the rebels without taking into account their individual values or motives, and without understanding their ability or plan to govern. We helped these individuals topple a dictator, but then stood on the sidelines as radical extremists assumed power. It should come as no surprise that these movements in the region have given way to violent, anti-American actions."
District switch with Allen West Although most of the voters in Rooney's old 16th District were in the new 18th District, in January 2012 Rooney announced that he would run for the neighboring 17th Congressional District seat, while Allen West declared in the new 18th. Redistricting had made West's old 22nd District, which already had a modest Democratic lean, even more Democratic, and West wanted to run in a friendlier district. As previously mentioned, Rooney's former district had been made somewhat friendlier to Democrats, and he opted to run in a more conservative district that included a large chunk of his old district's western portion.
In announcing his decision to run for reelection in Rooney's Congressional district, Allen West said: