Long Thompson, Jill, 1952-

Jill Lynette Long Thompson (born July 15, 1952) is an American politician, educator, and author. A former Democratic Congresswoman from Indiana, she is the author of The Character of American Democracy, published by Indiana University Press in September 2020.

Born Jill Lynette Long in Warsaw, Indiana and raised outside Larwill, Indiana, she graduated from Columbia City Joint High School in Columbia City. The first person in her family to graduate from college, she earned a B.S. in business administration at Valparaiso University and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. in business at Indiana University. From 1981 to 1988, Long taught business administration as an assistant professor at Valparaiso University. She also served as a lecturer at Indiana University at Bloomington and an adjunct at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne from 1987 to 1989. Her first public service experience was as a member of the city council of Valparaiso from 1984 to 1986. She ran for the U.S. Senate against Dan Quayle in 1986 and the U.S. House against Dan Coats in 1988, losing both races.

After Coats was appointed to Quayle's Senate seat, Long won an uphill race for Congress in a special election. She ran effectively as a conservative Democrat, depriving her Republican challengers of issues related to taxation and fiscal conservatism. After being sworn in on April 5, 1989, Long sought and received a seat on the Agricultural Committee to represent her largely rural district. She served on several of its subcommittees: Environment, Credit, and Rural Development; General Farm Commodities; and Livestock. In 1993 she was elected chair of the Congressional Rural Caucus. She managed to double its membership to more than 100 and earned a reputation as a leading advocate for farm interests on Capitol Hill. The Republican groundswell of 1994 and the backlash against Democratic President Clinton cut into her margins. Despite her fiscally conservative roots, Long was one of the victims of the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” losing by 10 percent of the vote that year.

Following her time in Congress, Long briefly served as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. President Clinton then appointed her as an Undersecretary of Agriculture, where she served from 1995 to 2001. As Undersecretary for Rural Development, Long managed 7,000 employees and an $11 billion budget. After leaving the Department of Agriculture, she taught as the Mark E. Johnson Professor of Entrepreneurship at Manchester College in North Manchester, Indiana, and as an adjunct professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana State University.

Long attempted to return to the House in 2002 when she ran for the open congressional seat in the 2nd District. She won a contested primary, but narrowly lost the general election to Chris Chocola. In 2008, Long Thompson won a hotly contested primary for the Democratic nomination for governor of Indiana. She became the first woman in Indiana history to be nominated for governor by a major party. She made reforming state government, accountability, and making larger investments in vocational education the focal points of her campaign. Long Thompson lost to incumbent Governor Mitch Daniels by 18% of the vote in a year in which Barack Obama was the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson to win a presidential race in Indiana.

In October 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Long Thompson to the Farm Credit Administration Board, the independent agency that oversees the Farm Credit System. The nomination was pending confirmation by the U.S. Senate when Obama installed Long Thompson on the Board by recess appointment on March 27, 2010. The Senate finally confirmed her in September 2010. On November 27, 2012, she assumed the role of board chair and CEO of the Farm Credit Administration, with a term ending in May 2014. She continued to serve at the Farm Credit Administration until March 12, 2015. From 2015-2020 she taught ethics at the Kelley School of Business and the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. During the 2020-2021 academic year she served as a visiting scholar with the Ostrom Workshop, also at Indiana University. She lives on a farm with her husband, Don Thompson, a former Navy pilot, near Argos, Indiana.