Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 68, ended his self-described “wild ride” presidential bid on May 2, calling presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney a clear conservative alternative to President Barack Obama.
Gingrich left Congress and elective politics in 1999, when he stepped down as speaker. Between then and his campaign to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, Gingrich ran a Washington-based management and strategic consulting firm that bears his name and acted as 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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Newt Gingrich ended his self-described “wild ride” presidential bid yesterday and called presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who he previously dismissed as a “Massachusetts moderate,” a clear conservative alternative to President Barack Obama.
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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich officially will end his Republican presidential campaign tomorrow in Arlington, Virginia, spokesman R.C. Hammond said in an e-mail.
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Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich will suspend his presidential candidacy after winning just two Republican primaries and falling far behind in the delegate count to his party’s presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, several people familiar with his plans said.
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The former U.S. House speaker’s time on the campaign trail has led to the shuttering of two businesses that generated $107 million in income during the last 10 years and helped him accrue at least $7.3 million in assets.
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The biggest what-if scenario of Rick Santorum’s presidential bid is whether an exit by Newt Gingrich weeks ago would have allowed the former Pennsylvania senator to overtake front-runner Mitt Romney in the Republican race.
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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said his rival Mitt Romney is “far and away” the most likely candidate to win the Republican nomination.Gingrich said he’ll endorse Romney if he gets a majority of the delegates to the Republican nominating convention.
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Gingrich Group, which operates the Center for Health Transformation, yesterday listed debt of as much as $10 million and assets of less than $100,000 in Chapter 7 documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Atlanta, where it is based.
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Mitt Romney is drawing influential Republican backers behind his presidential bid, as rival Newt Gingrich -- his long-shot campaign downsized and ambitions curbed -- retrenches for a months-long fight to deny the front- runner the party’s nomination.
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Newt Gingrich is reorganizing his presidential campaign, cutting one-third of his staff and scaling back his schedule following a series of losses in Republican primary contests and a shortage of funds for his candidacy.
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David Plouffe was responding to criticism by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum of Obama’s comments on the racially charged case of Trayvon Martin. Santorum accused Obama of “politicizing” the case; Gingrich said Obama is “dividing this country up.”
Opinion from Bloomberg View
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Newt Gingrich never saw it ending this way. The former House speaker, who has long thought of himself as a historic figure, envisioned he would be the candidate of innovative “big ideas” and the agenda-setter for the 2012 U.S. election.
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Gingrich would make a lousy NASA chief, and I wouldn’t trust him with private money, either. But I would hire him as the space program’s resident philosopher and noodge.
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Republican Party leaders increasingly express concern that their elongated presidential primary process will damage the party’s eventual nominee.
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The Republican primary contest has produced the most negative, mean campaign since the Watergate scandal brought about campaign-finance reform four decades ago. Turnout is mediocre and the appeal of the Republican brand has plummeted.
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Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have decisively proved that they gravely misunderstand either Afghanistan or Islam, possibly both. The alternative is that they are playing politics with one of the most sensitive periods of the war in Afghanistan since it began over nine years ago.
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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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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.
Presidential Election News
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Updated 8 minutes ago
Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook defended his company’s use of offshore tax shelters before U.S. senators who castigated the most-valuable technology company for avoiding $9 billion and more in payments.
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Updated 33 minutes ago
Canadian energy producers lobbying for U.S. approval of the Keystone XL pipeline are targeting undecided Democratic lawmakers in Washington in advance of a decision on the $5.3 billion project.
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Updated 2 hours, 3 minutes ago
Receiving $54 million in consulting fees for a decade’s work on her own family’s offshore trusts is unusual and probably saved U.S. Commerce Secretary nominee Penny Pritzker on taxes, according to estate experts.
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Updated 3 hours, 27 minutes ago
Republican politicians and activists can barely contain their glee at the simultaneous eruption of three major controversies about the Obama administration.
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B456 Systems Inc., the bankrupt electric-car battery maker formerly called A123 Systems Inc., won court approval of a plan to exit bankruptcy that pays creditors from the proceeds of selling virtually all its assets.
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General Motors Co.’s redesigned full- size pickups are bolstering analysts’ confidence that the automaker’s shares will keep climbing after topping their initial public offering price for the first time in two years.
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Updated 3 hours, 28 minutes ago
During President Barack Obama’s May 16 news conference, reporter Jeff Mason asked as part of his question: “And, more broadly, how do you feel about comparisons by some of your critics of this week’s scandals to those that happened under the Nixon administration?” The president responded, “I’ll let you guys engage in those comparisons, and you can go ahead and read the history, I think, and draw your own conclusions.”
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Republicans defended Mitt Romney against criticism from Democrats that he avoided taxes by keeping money stashed overseas. Those roles are now reversed with the disclosure that President Barack Obama’s pick to run the Commerce Department does the same thing.
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President Barack Obama is facing a make-or-break week as he tries to seize control of three scandal story lines that could upend one of the top priorities of his second term: revising the nation’s immigration laws.
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House lawmakers say ousted Internal Revenue Service chief Steven Miller failed to fully explain why he didn’t inform them for more than a year that small-government groups seeking tax-exempt status were subject to extra scrutiny.
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