Newt Gingrich

Origins of Political Career

Gingrich lost to incumbent Democrat Jack Flynt in 1974 and 1976 in a district that stretched from Atlanta’s southern suburbs to the Alabama state line, though he got more than 48 percent of the vote in both contests. It was after his 1974 defeat that Gingrich told an Atlanta newspaper that his ambition “is to be an old-time political boss in 20 years.”

Flynt retired in 1978 and Gingrich, in an early and ugly incarnation of the “family values” campaigns he would later champion, attacked his opponent, state senator Virginia Shapard (D), by claiming that if she won she’d have to break up her family by moving to Washington and that a nanny would have to take over her maternal responsibilities.Peter Boyer, “The Long March of Newt Gingrich,” Frontline/PBS, 1995.

Gingrich beat Shapard, but, ironically, it wouldn’t be long until he broke up his own family after moving to Washington. In 1980, he went to the hospital room where his wife, Jackie, was being treated for uterine cancer and told her he wanted a divorce. Gingrich would later marry Marianne Ginther, 15 years his junior, whom he’d met just before asking Jackie for a divorce.Gail Sheehy, “The Inner Quest of New Gingrich,” Vanity Fair, September 1995. Gingrich said publicly that his second marriage had a 53 to 47 percent chance of succeeding. It didn’t.Peter J. Boyer, “Good Newt, Bad Newt,” Vanity Fair, July 1989.

Gingrich would later admit that he’d cheated on his second wife, too, and that he was having an affair with a young staff member, Callista Bisek, even as he was leading the Republican charge to impeach President Bill Clinton over Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich maintained he was not being hypocritical because he focused his arguments for Clinton’s impeachment not on the president’s affair, but on Clinton having lied about it under oath.Gail Sheehy, “The Inner Quest of New Gingrich,” Vanity Fair, September 1995.

Gingrich married Bisek, 23 years his junior, in 2000 shortly after his divorce from Marianne. The two now live in northern Virginia, where she heads Gingrich Productions, a movie production company.

“War for Power”

Gingrich has lived his life according to two rules he laid out as early as 1978 to a group of College Republicans at the Holiday Inn near the Atlanta airport. Be bold, take risks and don’t be afraid to make mistakes, he told the crowd. And, secondly, “take yourself seriously.”Bill Schneider, “Gingrich confession: Clearing the way for a 2008 run?” CNN, March 9, 2007.

“You’re fighting a war. It is a war for power,” Gingrich told the future Republicans. “When one of your elders comes in and says, ‘I don’t like what you’re doing,’ tell them, ‘Tough.’ They ain’t you. Do you like what they do?”Newt Gingrich, Speech to College Republicans, Atlanta Airport Holiday Inn, June 24, 1978.

“I think that one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the camp fire, but are lousy in politics,” Gingrich said. He left his audience with one final piece of advice. When criticizing  party elders or Democrats, “say it in the press, say it loud, fight, scrap, issue a press release, go make a speech.”Newt Gingrich, Speech to College Republicans, Atlanta Airport Holiday Inn, June 24, 1978.

It’s easy to see over the course of Gingrich’s congressional career that he took his own advice seriously.

Once in Congress, Gingrich built a bully pulpit where none existed, taking advantage of rules that allowed members to make after-hours speeches when the chamber was usually empty except for C-SPAN’s television cameras. Gingrich used that time — and garnered national attention — by repeatedly assailing Democrats on ethics issues, calling them corrupt.

Targeting Democrats

Gingrich’s first target was then-Rep. Charles Diggs (D-Mich.) Newt Gingrich, Speech to College Republicans, Atlanta Airport Holiday Inn, June 24, 1978., one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus who’d been in office 25 years when Gingrich led a call to expel Diggs for taking kickbacks from three of his employees. Diggs was censured by the House and later jailed on those charges.Long March of Newt Gingrich, Chronology

With time, Gingrich grew even bolder until one day he attacked Democrats for believing “America does nothing right.” House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) called Gingrich’s attack “the lowest thing I’ve ever seen in my 32 years in Congress.” But Gingrich and an ally, then-Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), demanded that O’Neill’s attack on Gingrich be struck from the record and it was, marking the first time since 1798 that a speaker had been rebuked in such as way.“Black Americans in Congress 1870-2007,” House Document 108-224 “I am now a famous person,” Gingrich told reporters.Peter J. Boyer, “Good Newt, Bad Newt,” Vanity Fair, July 1989.

Starting in 1987, Gingrich went after the biggest target he could find: House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas), accusing Wright of using a book deal to cover up money he was receiving from political supporters. In 1989, Wright was eventually forced to resign.

Growing the GOP

All the while he was attacking Democrats, Gingrich was building a Republican Party in his own image, using a political action committee funded by corporate interests, GOPAC, to recruit and train GOP candidates.. Every month, he’d dictate his thoughts on the Republican Party’s future into a tape recorder and mail the tapes to GOP candidates around the country.Gail Sheehy, “The Inner Quest of New Gingrich,” Vanity Fair, September 1995.

In 1994, Gingrich helped write “The Contract with America,” a poll-tested collection of reforms, and assembled 300 Republican House members on the Capitol steps to publicize it. The Contract nationalized the congressional elections and allowed Republicans to capture 54 House seats, eight Senate openings and take control of both chambers for the first time in 40 years. Gingrich was elected House Speaker shortly afterwards.

But during his rise to fame, Gingrich struck book deals of his own in which he invited political supporters and others to “invest” their money in his writings. One of those deals, a $4.5 million advance from conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, was for “To Renew America,” a book based on material from a course Gingrich taught at Kennesaw State College in Georgia, which closely resembled the deal Wright had made for his own book.

Democrats quickly pounced on Gingrich, using his own tactics against him. They called for an outside prosecutor to investigate Gingrich, just has Gingrich had done with Wright. Even Gingrich was no match for his own tactics. Mired in ethical controversies of his own, Gingrich made several other political missteps, including allowing the government to shut down because of a budget feud with Clinton and then leading the 1998 charge for impeachment despite public resistance to it.

Shortly after Republicans lost seats in the 1998 elections, Gingrich stepped down as speaker and resigned from Congress.

Newt Inc.

Whatever the hopes of his adversaries, however, Gingrich never went away.

“Newt Inc.,” the derisive term Democrats applied to Gingrich’s budding political enterprises, which seemed to produce as much cash as ideas,Gail Sheehy, “The Inner Quest of New Gingrich,” Vanity Fair, September 1995. has become Newt.org, Gingrich’s main digs on the Internet from which he promotes all things Newt. The cyber-enterprise ranges from ideas about modernizing medical records to the vast array of books, audio recordings or DVDs he’s produced and will sell with “a message customized for you or a loved one.”John F. Dickerson, “Newt Inc.,” Time magazine, Feb. 12, 1995.

The lines between Newt the political philosopher and Newt the entrepreneur remain blurred. At the end of a recent article he wrote for the conservative Human Events magazine http://shop.newt.org/ in which he outlined ideas for the rehabilitation of the Republican Party, Gingrich included this postscript: “Father’s Day is just around the corner and there are great gift ideas available at great prices at Newt.org.”Newt Gingrich, “My Plea to Republicans: It’s time for Real Change to Avoid Real Disaster,” Human Events, May 6, 2008.

Gingrich remains a one-man conglomerate. He is chairman of the Gingrich Group, a communications and consulting firm; political analyst for Fox News; founder and general chairman of the advocacy group American Solutions; founder of the Center for Health Transformation; a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute; a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution; and a prolific writer with 18 non-fiction books and novels to his credit.. His production company recently released a DVD about Ronald Reagan called “Rendezvous with Destiny.” All of that is in addition to endless book tours, speaking engagements, monthly newsletters and podcasts.

Future Ambitions

Gingrich’s future political ambitions are ambiguous. In 2008, he generated massive publicity for himself and his most recent book by suggesting that he might run for president and then flying off to New Hampshire and Iowa to sign copies of “Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America.”

Remaking the GOP

Gingrich called the Republican Party he helped build “off the rails” following the 2008 elections in which Democrats seized the White House and solidified their control of Congress. He continues to raise money and advance the kind of big ideas he says the GOP must own if it is to regain power. The man who recently led Gingrich’s political action committee, GOPAC, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Steele, was just chosen to lead the Republican National Committee.

Health Care

Gingrich has set up an organization to deal exclusively with health care issues, the Center for Health Transformation. He is stressing the need for private-sector solutions to the rising cost and lagging availability of insurance for Americans. He has begun work on a variety of proposals with unlikely allies, including then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), whose own health care proposals Gingrich helped kill in the early 1990s.

Climate Change

One of the latest issues Gingrich is tackling climate change, even though he still insists that proof of global warming and human impact on the phenomenon is lacking. But Gingrich wrote a book, “Contract with the Earth,” on the subject and joined his arch-nemesis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), to do a television ad in April 2008 on the subject for The Alliance for Climate Protection, a group founded by former Vice President Al Gore. “Conservatives are missing from this debate,” Gingrich wrote to fans, “and I think that’s a mistake.”Roger Simon, “Newt Gingrich Sees ‘More Pain’ in Our Future,” Politico, Feb. 3, 2009.