Newt Gingrich
From Freepedia
Newton Leroy Gingrich, Ph. D., (born June 17, 1943) is an American politician who is best known as the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. In 1995 he was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year for his role in leading the Republican Revolution in Congress.
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Early life and education
He was born Newton McPherson in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the son of Kathleen and Newton McPherson. His parents separated soon after Newt's birth, and his mother raised him by herself until she married Robert Gingrich, who adopted Newt, hence the name change. Gingrich has a younger half-sister, Candace Gingrich, whom he rarely saw growing up (he was a young adult by the time of her birth).
Gingrich's adopted surname has been generally pronounced "Ging-ritch" since his entry into public life. However, his adoptive family has always pronounced the name "Gin-grick," as would be customary in the Pennsylvania Dutch ethnic milieu.
Gingrich attended school at various military installations and graduated from Baker High School, Columbus, Georgia, in 1961. He received a B.A. degree from Emory University in Atlanta in 1965. He received an M.A. in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1971 in Modern European History from Tulane University in New Orleans. He taught history at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia, from 1970 to 1978.
While still in high school, Gingrich started to date his geometry teacher, Jackie Battley. On June 19, 1962, he married her. Their first child was born the following year.
United States representative
Newt Gingrich made two unsuccessful runs as a Republican for Congress in Georgia's Sixth Congressional District in 1974 and 1976, losing both times to Democrat Jack Flynt, who had served in the House since 1954. Flynt then decided to retire, and so did not run in the 1978 election. The Democrats fielded Georgia State Senator Virginia Shapard in Flynt's place. Gingrich defeated Shapard in November, starting his long career in the House. He would be reelected ten times.
In 1980, Gingrich asked his first wife for a divorce. In an infamous incident, Gingrich tried to discuss the terms of his divorce with his wife while she was in a hospital bed recovering from surgery for uterine cancer. In February 1981, the divorce was finalized, and in August 1981, he married his second wife, Marianne Ginther.
In 1981, Gingrich was a cofounder of both the Congressional Military Reform Caucus and the Congressional Space Caucus. In 1983 he founded the Conservative Opportunity Society, a group that included young conservative House Republicans. In 1983, Gingrich demanded the expulsion of fellow representatives Dan Crane and Gerry Studds for their roles in the Congressional Page sex scandal.
In 1987, Gingrich brought ethics charges against Speaker of the House Jim Wright, a Democrat, who eventually resigned as a result of the Congressional ethics inquiry. Gingrich's success was in part responsible for his rising influence in the Republican caucus, and in 1989 he served as minority whip, succeeding Representative Dick Cheney, who had been appointed Secretary of Defense by President George H. W. Bush. Gingrich served as Minority Whip until the election of 1994, the first midterm election during the Presidency of Bill Clinton.
Gingrich only faced one tough election, in 1990. During the 1990s round of redistricting, Democrats in the Georgia state legislature tried to draw Gingrich's district out from under him by splitting most of his old territory among two other districts. At the same time, they created a new, heavily Republican 6th District located in Fulton and Cobb counties in the wealthy northern suburbs of Atlanta—an area that Gingrich had never represented. However, the plan backfired when Gingrich sold his home in Carrollton and moved to Marietta in the new 6th. He easily won the Republican primary, which was tantamount to election in the new district. Also, five-term incumbent Richard Ray, whose district was redrawn to include much of Gingrich's former territory, lost to Republican state senator Mac Collins.
In 1994, Gingrich defined a Contract with America, a list of campaign promises signed by himself and other Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The promises were designed to unite the various factions of the party and provide a contrast with the policies of the Democratic Party. Many credit that contract (as well as demographic trends) for the election successes of November 1994. In that election, Republicans gained 54 seats and took control of the House for the first time since 1954.
Gingrich was then elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and served from 1995 to 1999. The Congress fulfilled Gingrich's Contract, voting on all ten of the Contract's issues within the first 100 days of the session. Legislation proposed by the 104th Congress included term limits for Congressional Representatives, tax cuts, welfare reform, and a balanced budget law, as well as independent financial auditing of the finances of the House of Representatives and elimination of non-essential services such as the House barbershop and shoe shine concessions. While many of the major proposals did not become law, after defeat or modification in the Senate or President Clinton's veto, they represented a dramatic change in the legislative goals and priorities of previous Congresses and in general promoted Gingrich's conservative philosophy of limited government.
Over the next four years, Gingrich also took aim at the embattled president, investigating various scandals and calling for impeachment of President Clinton.
Democrats filed 84 ethics charges against Speaker Gingrich during his term, including claiming tax-exempt status for a town hall meeting and college course run for political purposes. The charges were eventually dropped following an investigation by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee. However, Gingrich admitted to unintentionally giving inaccurate information to the House Ethics Committee during the course of the investigation, although the committee did not indict him on charges of intentional perjury [1]. The matter was settled when he agreed to reimburse the Committee $300,000 for the cost of prolonging the investigation. The payment was described as a "cost assessment" rather than a "fine" by the Committee [2].
The events of 1998 ended Gingrich's career in the House. In early 1998, many House Republicans had come to see him as a liability and attempted to replace him as Speaker with suburban Buffalo, New York congressman Bill Paxon. The coup failed, and Paxon was forced from office and completely retired from politics. At the end of the year, the Republicans expected big gains from the 1998 Congressional elections. When the party received the poorest results in 34 years for any party not in control of the White House, Gingrich received much of the blame for the showing. He announced that, although he would serve out the lame duck term in Congress, he would not take the Congressional seat to which he'd been re-elected and that he would not stand for the speakership in January.
Post-speakership
In December 1999, Gingrich divorced his second wife, Marianne, after revealing in August that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair for the past six years with a House clerk twenty-three years his junior, Callista Bisek. His infidelity was viewed as highly hypocritical by many critics in light of his heavy emphasis on family values while in office and close ties with the Christian Coalition. This was coupled with the fact that Gingrich handed divorce papers to Marianne after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Similarly, in 1981, Gingrich served divorce papers to his first wife, Jackie Battley, after she was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment. [3] It was also noted by critics that his own adultery had taken place while he was leading moral attacks against Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal for the same behavior. On August 19, 2000, Gingrich married Callista Bisek as his third wife.
Gingrich has since remained involved in national politics and public policy debate. He is a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, focusing on health care (he has founded the Center for Health Transformation), information technology, the military, and politics. He sometimes serves as a commentator, guest or panel member on television news shows. He is listed as a "contributor" by Fox News Channel, and frequently appears as a guest on the channel; he has also hosted occasional specials for FNC.
Since the release of Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America in January 2005, Gingrich has often been mentioned as a Presidential contender for 2008. He has made several trips to Iowa and New Hampshire to discuss his book and on August 16, 2005, David Yepsen wrote in the Des Moines Register that Gingrich was "setting a high standard for what other GOP candidates need to be talking about - and doing - if they want to win here."
In 2005, Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista made a donation, through the Gingrich Foundation, of $25,000 to Luther College to establish the Gingrich Scholarship that provides annual scholarships to instrumental music majors studying piano, organ or wind instruments. (Gingrich's wife, the former Callista Bisek, is an alumna of Luther College.)
In May 2005, he raised eyebrows when he announced that he was collaborating with Hillary Clinton on a new health-care bill.[4][5]
On September 2, 2005, in response to slow federal action in the face of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Gingrich said, "If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"[6]
On October 13, 2005, Gingrich explicitly suggested he may run for president in 2008, saying "There are circumstances where I will run", elaborating that those circumstances would be if no other candidate champions some of the platform ideas advocated by Gingrich. [7]
Books
Gingrich has written several books, both before and after leaving Congress. Notables are To Renew America (1995) and Lessons Learned The Hard Way (1998); a new book, Winning the Future : A 21st Century Contract with America was released in early January 2005.
He has also been co-author with science fiction author William Forstchen, of four alternate history novels: 1945 (in which Nazi Germany did not declare war on the United States during World War II in 1941), and a trilogy on the Civil War: Gettysburg : A Novel of the Civil War (in which the Confederacy won the Battle of Gettysburg), Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant - The Final Victory.
Trivia
- Newt Gingrich frequently posts book reviews to Amazon.com, and at one point was designated a "Top 500" reviewer. (The Weekly Standard covered this hobby in an article.) Amazon has an archive of his reviews.
- Candace Gingrich, his sister, works for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest gay and lesbian organization. In years past she has headed up HRC's "National Coming Out Day" campaign.
Sources and external links
- Newt Gingrich: Defeat of Terror, not Roadmap Diplomacy, Will Bring Peace, Middle East Quarterly, Palestinian-Israeli peace depends on zero-tolerance toward terrorism.
- Newt.org, the official home page of Gingrich
- Congressional Biographical Directory
- Transforming the State Department
- Satirical exploration of Gingrich's biography, revised Contract With America, and 2008 Presidential aspirations
| Preceded by: Jack Flynt | U.S. Representative for Georgia's 6th Congressional District 1979–1999 | Succeeded by: Johnny Isakson |
| Preceded by: Tom Foley | Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives January 4, 1995 – January 3, 1997; January 7, 1997 – January 3, 1999 | Succeeded by: Dennis Hastert |
| Speakers of the United States House of Representatives | Image:House large seal.gif |
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Categories: NPOV disputes | 1943 births | U.S. Representatives from Georgia | Speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives | People from Pennsylvania
