Julius Caesar "J. C." Watts, Jr. (born November 18, 1957) is an American politician from Oklahoma who was a college football quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners and professionally in the Canadian Football League. Watts served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 as a Republican, representing the 4th congressional district in south-central Oklahoma. After leaving Congress he established a lobbying and consulting firm, served on corporate boards, and worked as a political commentator.

Watts was born and raised in Eufaula, Oklahoma, in a rural impoverished neighborhood. After being one of the first children to attend an integrated elementary school, he became a high school quarterback and gained a football scholarship for the University of Oklahoma. He graduated 1981 with a degree in journalism and became a football player in the Canadian Football League until his retirement in 1986.

Watts became a Baptist minister and was elected in 1990 to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission as the first African American in Oklahoma to win statewide office. He successfully ran for Congress in 1994 and was reelected to three additional terms with increasing vote margins. Watts delivered the Republican response to Bill Clinton's 1997 State of the Union address and was elected Chair of the House Republican Conference in 1998. He retired in 2003 and turned to lobbying and business work.

J. C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE: JCP) is a chain of American mid-range department stores based in Plano, Texas, a city north of Dallas. The company operates 1,107 department stores in all 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. JCPenney also operates catalog sales merchant offices nationwide in many small markets.

Most JCPenney stores are located in suburban shopping malls. Before 1966, most of its stores were located in downtown areas. As shopping malls became more popular in the latter half of the 20th century, JCPenney followed the trend by relocating its stores to anchor the malls. In more recent years, the chain has continued to follow consumer traffic, echoing the retailing trend of opening some standalone stores, including some next door to competitors. Certain stores are located in power centers and can be considered big-box stores. The company has been an Internet retailer since 1998. It has streamlined its catalog and distribution while undergoing renovation improvements at store level.

Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich ( /ˈnjuːt ˈɡɪŋɡrɪtʃ/; born Newton Leroy McPherson; June 17, 1943) is an American politician, author, and political consultant. He represented Georgia's 6th congressional district as a Republican from 1979 until his resignation in 1999, and served as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Gingrich was a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.

In the 1970s, Gingrich taught history and geography at the University of West Georgia. During this period he ran twice (1974 and 1976) for the United States House of Representatives before winning in November 1978. He served as House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995.

A co-author and architect of the "Contract with America", Gingrich was a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time named him "Man of the Year" for "his role in ending the four-decades-long Democratic majority in the House". While he was House speaker, the House enacted welfare reform, passed a capital gains tax cut in 1997, and in 1998 passed the first balanced budget since 1969. The poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 Congressional election and pressure from Republican colleagues caused Gingrich's resignation from the speakership on November 5, 1998, and then the House on January 3, 1999.

John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican presidential nominee in the 2008 United States election.

McCain followed his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, into the United States Navy, graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he was almost killed in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture, and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. His war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.

He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981 and moved to Arizona, where he entered politics. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily four times, most recently in 2010. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for his willingness to disagree with his party on certain issues. After being investigated and largely exonerated in a political influence scandal of the 1980s as a member of the Keating Five, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. He is also known for his work towards restoring diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, and for his belief that the war in Iraq should be fought to a successful conclusion. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, opposed spending that he considered to be pork barrel, and played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations.

Christopher John "Chris" Matthews (born December 17, 1945) is an American news anchor and political commentator known for his nightly hour-long talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, which is televised on the American cable television channel MSNBC. On weekends he hosts the syndicated NBC News–produced panel discussion program The Chris Matthews Show. Matthews makes frequent appearances on many other NBC and MSNBC programs. On March 22, 2009, Matthews renewed the contract for Hardball with Chris Matthews through 2012.

Matthews was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Irish American parents and is a Roman Catholic. He attended La Salle College High School. He is a 1967 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and did graduate work in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Matthews served in the United States Peace Corps in Swaziland from 1968 to 1970 as a trade development adviser.

When Matthews first arrived in Washington, D.C., he worked as a police officer with the United States Capitol Police. Subsequently, he served on the staffs of four Democratic members of Congress, including Senators Frank Moss and Edmund Muskie. In 1974, he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Pennsylvania's 4th congressional district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he received about 24% of the vote in the primary. Matthews was a presidential speechwriter during the Carter administration and later worked for six years as a top aide to longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O'Neill, playing a direct role in many key political battles with the Reagan administration.