By: J. Randolph Evans
Last Wednesday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich officially suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. It was definitely a wild ride with lots of twists and turns.
Somehow, it is appropriate that the end of this chapter comes during the week of the Kentucky Derby. Working as a Senior Adviser to Speaker Gingrich during the Presidential race was a little like having a horse in the Kentucky Derby – a horse that led twice, and looked at times as though he would actually win the Derby.
Over the course of his career, Speaker Gingrich has always been a long shot who accomplished unimaginable things. In 1974 (during the Watergate Scandal), he ran for Congress for the first time as a Republican in a heavily rural Democratic Congressional District in West Georgia. No one gave him much of a shot, and indeed he lost.
In 1976, (with Democratic Georgia native son Jimmy Carter at the head of the ticket), he ran for Congress in the same district again. He lost. It was not until his third try in 1978 that he was elected.
In May 1988, Congressman Newt Gingrich took one of the greatest risks of his political life. He filed charges against the sitting and powerful Democratic Speaker Jim Wright. Speaker Jim Wright subsequently resigned as Speaker based on the charges.
Congressman Gingrich did not stop there. In 1989, President George Bush named then House Minority Whip Dick Cheney to his cabinet as Secretary of Defense. This left open the number 2 position in the House Leadership – the House Minority Whip. Only the House Minority Leader was a higher position.
Even though he had held no position in the House Leadership, Congressman Gingrich ran for the open position. Again, few gave him much of a chance. Certainly, he was not the favorite of either the House Leadership or the GOP Establishment. Yet, by a single vote, Congressman Gingrich was elected to the Leadership as the House Minority Whip.
As part of the Leadership, Whip Gingrich had a different role. However, he remained an outsider when it came to issues on which he differed with the Leadership. Probably one of the most significant was his decision to leave the White House rather than appear at the White House press conference in support of President George H.W. Bush’s proposed tax increases.
Whip Gingrich continued his quest to elect a Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives. Interestingly, Democrats had firmly controlled the House for over 4 decades. No one – except Gingrich – thought that Republicans could actually capture control in a single election. Yet, he set out to lead a Republican Revolution and capture control of the House. And, with the Contract with America, he did.
In the 1994 election, Republicans gained a whopping 54 seats to capture control and propel Newt Gingrich to Speaker of the House of Representatives. Immediately, he led the House to vote on the items contained within the Contract With America during the first 100 days. At the same time, Democrats launched an all-out series of attacks with the House Ethics Committee. With the single exception of letters drafted by his then lawyers, Gingrich was eventually exonerated of all charges.
Meanwhile, Speaker Gingrich continued to tackle issues no one thought were possible to solve – like reforming welfare and actually balancing the federal budget. But it came with a price. Gingrich was the subject of tens of millions of dollars of relentless negative attack advertisements.
While Republicans retained control of the House in both the 1996 and 1998 elections, the election results in 1998 were less than expected or hoped for. Although the ethics issues were now behind him, and Republicans retained control, Speaker Gingrich decided to step down. Many thought his political career was over. Indeed, at the time, most insiders considered any suggestion that he might one day be a serious candidate for President as laughable.
Of course, these same political insiders had thought the same thing when he ran for Congress in rural Democratic Georgia in 1974, 1976, and 1978; filed charges against the powerful sitting Democratic Speaker Jim Wright; ran for House Minority Whip in 1989 without any prior Leadership position; led a plan to capture Republican control of the House in 1994 after 4 decades of Democratic rule; reformed welfare; and balanced the budget for four years.
In 2008, Speaker Gingrich considered the possibility of a run for President, but decided to wait. And so, it was 2012 when the Gentleman From Georgia (using the title of historian Mel Steely’s book about Newt Gingrich) decided to run for the Republican nomination for President. He competed, and led, and at times looked like he might actually win. What a ride! Who knows what is next?