Phil Crane
From Freepedia
Philip Miller Crane (born November 3 1930), American politician, was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 2005, representing the 8th District of Illinois in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago. At the time of his defeat in the 2004 election, Crane was the longest-serving Republican member of the House.
He was born in Chicago, was educated at Hillsdale College, the University of Vienna, and Indiana University (gaining a PhD in history in 1961) and served in the United States Army.
His brother, Dan Crane, served together with him as another Congressman from Illinois for three terms. Another brother, David Crane, ran for Congress from Indiana a few times simultaneously with Phil and Dan. The handsome brothers were dubbed "the Kennedys of the Right." However, David never won a seat in Congress, and Dan ended up being defeated for re-election over a sex scandal. Phil Crane began to battle alcoholism, which he later publicly acknowledged.
Crane was a faculty member at Indiana University and at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, a staff member for the Republican National Committee, director of research for the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, and a staff member of (then) former Vice-President Richard Nixon from 1964 to 1968 before entering the House.
He was first elected to Congress in the 13th District of Illinois in a 1969 special election, succeeding Representative Donald Rumsfeld, who was appointed to a position in the Nixon Administration. He was elected to a full term in 1970 and 16 times thereafter. His district number changed as Illinois lost population--from the 13th (1969-73) to the 12th (1973-93) to the 8th (1993-2005). His district was long considered the most Republican district in Chicagoland, if not in all of Illinois. He almost always won with 70 percent or more of the vote until the 1990s, when he had to fend off more moderate Republican primary opponents and better-funded Democrats in the general election.
In 1978, shortly before the general election, Crane announced that he would be a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. This surprised many observers, as Crane had been expected to support the probable candidacy of former California governor Ronald Reagan. At the time of his announcement, Crane expressed doubts that Reagan would run again (after two failed attempts for the nomination in 1968 and 1972), and intimated that, should Reagan run, he would likely drop out. However, he did stay in the race after Reagan's entry, and was one of the early exiters during the Republican primaries.
Once widely considered a conservative firebrand, Crane was seen to become a "foot soldier" to Republican interests, with little discernable leadership or influence even after the Republicans took control of the House in 1994. Crane became a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which handles tax issues. As chairman of its trade subcommittee, he was effective in his efforts to promote his staunch free trade views. However, when the full committee's chairman retired in 2000, Crane was passed over for the highly coveted post of Ways and Means chairman, despite having been the committtee's most senior member, serving since 1975.
In 2002, business consultant Melissa Bean ran against Crane as a Democrat. A general theme of her campaign was that Crane was out of touch with his constituents, as even some Republicans claimed they had not seen him in decades and his Washington DC office lacked a public email address. Despite receiving little statewide or national assistance, she surprised both parties by garnering 43% of the vote in a district that supposedly had been redrawn to protect Crane (several previous opponents found their homes drawn out of the 8th and into the neighboring 10th).
Bean sought a rematch in the 2004 election. Some considered the race unwinnable for Bean, but endorsements from most major Chicagoland newspapers, along with strong fundraising via several liberal blogs and the Democrats' Senate candidate, Barack Obama, helped make her challenge more substantial. The national and state GOP did their best to salvage the seat, but Bean defeated Crane by 4 points.
| Preceded by: Donald Rumsfeld | U.S. Representative of Illinois's 8th Congressional District 1969 – 2005 | Succeeded by: Melissa Bean |
