Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 68, is making his return to elective politics since he left Congress in 1999 after stepping down as speaker.
Since then, Gingrich has run a Washington-based management and strategic consulting firm that bears his name and has been a one-man Republican Party ideas incubator. The author of more than a dozen books, ranging from his take on the Civil War to essays on American culture. He recently released a children’s book written with his third wife, Callista.
Gingrich also headed a nonprofit political organization called American Solutions for Winning the Future, a Washington policy advocacy group that served as his primary fundraising operation. It closed in August after experiencing financial problems once the former speaker separated from it to run for president.
A college professor turned politician, Gingrich was first elected to Congress from Georgia in 1978. He joined a group of young members who began attacking Democrats more aggressively than the older generation of Republican House leaders. He led the party’s takeover of the House in the 1994 election, the so- called “Republican Revolution,” and was elevated to speaker the following year.
Gingrich’s tenure was marked by the 1995 partial government shutdown that led to a balanced budget agreement with Bill Clinton and the start of impeachment proceedings against the president. Gingrich announced in November 1998 he was stepping down as speaker, just days after his party lost seats in the midterm elections. He quit the House in January, 1999.
A native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Gingrich was the adopted child of an Army officer and grew up on a variety of military installations. He graduated in 1965 from Emory University in Atlanta, where he majored in history, and received a PhD in history from New Orleans-based Tulane University in 1971.
Gingrich taught history and environmental studies at West Georgia College for eight years before his election to Congress. He is the father of two daughters.
Newt Gingrich News
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A political action committee supporting Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich burned through most of the $10 million it received from billionaire casino executive Sheldon Adelson and his wife in January.
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As he seeks the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich has become a de facto spokesman for Lean Six Sigma, a business management concept pioneered by a Dallas entrepreneur who has spent more than $200,000 of his own money to promote the former U.S. House speaker’s candidacy.
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Newt Gingrich was just days away from the Jan. 31 Florida Republican presidential primary when he told reporters that his campaign was down to its last $600,000.
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Republican voters are beginning to coalesce around the presidential candidacy of front-runner Mitt Romney even as his opponents vow to continue their campaigns into a series of contests this month and beyond.
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Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, asked the U.S. Appeals Court in Richmond, Virginia, today to dismiss his case challenging the state’s primary rules.
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Mitt Romney won Nevada caucuses, solidifying his front-runner status in the Republican presidential race. Newt Gingrich, who has been his main competitor, last night dismissed any suggestion he is close to ending his candidacy, calling such speculation the “greatest fantasy” on the part of the Romney campaign.
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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had ties to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae during his time as speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, adding to questions about the nature of his relationship with the home mortgage companies.
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Former Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, while refusing to endorse any of the four remaining competitors, suggested the contest may end soon and that money will be the factor that narrows the field.
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Newt Gingrich’s campaign distributed blue signs to supporters that read “46 States to Go” before he took the stage the night of his loss to Mitt Romney in Florida’s Republican presidential primary this week.
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Mitt Romney prepared for victory in the Republican presidential primary in Florida today, as Newt Gingrich, trailing in public opinion polls, vowed to wage a prolonged fight for the nomination.
Opinion from Bloomberg View
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Newt 2012 is not about to be bogged down by government bureaucrats. Rather than file the campaign finance documents required of every presidential campaign, Newt 2012 has basically told the FEC to stuff it.
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If Mitt Romney loses the Feb. 28 primary in Michigan, panic will set in among Republican politicians and big contributors; talk of a brokered convention or a late-entering candidate will reach a crescendo.
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The competition doesn’t “prepare” Romney for the fall, as he said when declaring victory in Florida. But Gingrich’s presence in the race does have the perverse effect of making Romney seem more rational and centrist, which will help a lot in the general election.
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Yes, Virginia, there is a Republican establishment and, like Santa Claus, it works quietly. After it convinced reluctant conservatives to nominate Senator John McCain for the presidency in 2008 -- and he lost spectacularly to a rookie senator from Illinois -- its members went to ground.
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More than two thirds of Americans live in states or localities that permit early voting. Convenience, however, has a cost. Campaigns are not static; they add information, context and plot points as they move forward.
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Gingrich’s success in South Carolina was an indication that the American people don’t know much about history. Whether the same will be true in Florida will be seen on Tuesday. To many voters there, one suspects, the 1990s aren’t ancient history at all.
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To listen to Gingrich, the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s was about the Gipper and Newt. He frequently talks about the way he and Ronald Reagan “changed” Washington. “Gingrich had absolutely nothing to do with the Reagan Revolution,” replies Lou Cannon, who as a journalist covered the entire Reagan presidency.
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Many voters find information about a politician’s private life politically relevant. Many, probably most, don’t. It turns out that the real sophisticates here are the voters. It’s the journalists who are prudes. I’m not saying this is a good thing. But it does change the equation.
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The question is whether Gingrich appreciates that capital sufficiently or whether, as president, he would merely squander it. To understand the stakes, it helps to review the squandering on all sides in the period of Gingrich’s previous revolution: the Republican Revolution of the 1990s.
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After the audience was asked to stay silent during Monday’s debate, Newt Gingrich, whose debate performances have seemed to thrive on cheers and jabs to the media, threatened to skip future debates if the audience couldn’t participate.
Presidential Election News
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Updated 14 minutes ago
U.S. companies led by General Electric Co. and Pfizer Inc. stockpiled an additional $187 billion in untaxed overseas profits over the past year, boosting their offshore holdings by 18.4 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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Updated 20 minutes ago
After Eliot Engel and Jerrold Nadler, two Democratic congressmen from New York, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem last month, Engel’s wife summed it up:
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Updated 46 minutes ago
U.S. food-stamp use, which Republicans have cited as evidence of a failing economy, rose 0.5 percent to a record in December, the government said.
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Updated 24 minutes ago
Mitt Romney is pressing to refocus the Republican presidential race on jobs and the economy in the sprint to potentially pivotal Super Tuesday contests next week, looking to blunt rival Rick Santorum’s bid to sow doubts about his record on social issues.
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They drive trucks. They wait on tables. Some still have factory jobs. And they likely will determine which Republican presidential candidate walks away with one of Super Tuesday’s biggest prizes.
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Updated 1 hour ago
Republicans who blame party rules for a protracted primary race may be mistaken.
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Chris Christie, New Jersey’s first- term Republican governor, said he’d consider a request from Mitt Romney to become his vice presidential running mate, if the former chief executive of Massachusetts were to ask.
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President Barack Obama said his Republican critics are “licking their chops” at the prospect of rising gasoline prices as higher energy costs threaten to crimp the economic recovery.
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Every year around late February, the government puts out the Economic Report of the President, which includes a whole bunch of historical charts on the state of the economy that you can download as Excel spreadsheets. Most years I combine them all into one big spreadsheet and try to draw some conclusions.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke defended the central bank’s expansive monetary policy, telling a Senate hearing that it helped create jobs and stabilize prices.
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