| Election name | Nevada Republican primary, 2008 |
|---|---|
| Country | Nevada |
| Type | presidential |
| Ongoing | no |
| Previous election | Nevada Republican primary, 2000 |
| Previous year | 2000 |
| Next election | Nevada Republican primary, 2012 |
| Next year | 2012 |
| Election date | |
| Image1 | |
| Nominee1 | Mitt Romney |
| Party1 | Republican Party (United States) |
| Home state1 | Massachusetts |
| Popular vote1 | 22,649 |
| Percentage1 | 55.1% |
| Image2 | |
| Nominee2 | Ron Paul |
| Party2 | Republican Party (United States) |
| Home state2 | Texas |
| Popular vote2 | 6,087 |
| Percentage2 | 13.73% |
| Image3 | |
| Nominee3 | John McCain |
| Party3 | Republican Party (United States) |
| Home state3 | Arizona |
| Popular vote3 | 5,651 |
| Percentage3 | 12.75% |
| Map image | Nevadarepcaucus2008.png |
| Map size | 204px |
| Map caption | Election results by county. Red denotes counties won by Paul, and Blue denotes those won by Romney. |
Although the news media report the results of the straw poll, and assigns delegates proportionally based on it, in Nevada it is the county conventions and the state convention which determine who actually goes to the Republican National Convention. Thus, all delegates are unbound until the state convention in April, although they generally will represent the preferences expressed by fellow Republicans in the straw poll.
A poll ahead of the election predicted John McCain to win the election with 22 percent, followed by Rudy Giuliani (18 percent), Mike Huckabee (16 percent), Mitt Romney (15 percent), Fred Thompson (11 percent) and Ron Paul (6 percent).
On January 17, Ron Paul's Nevada campaign representatives warned state GOP officials that thousands of caucus goers had been given incorrect information on where to go to caucus. Party officials addressed the problem with a message on the Nevada GOP website that morning, two days before the caucus.
Although delegates were not pledged to candidates until the state convention, the news media allocated delegates proportionally for reporting purposes.
Category:United States Republican presidential primaries, 2008 Category:Nevada elections, 2008
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| Name | Ron Paul |
|---|---|
| Image name | Ron Paul, official Congressional photo portrait, 2007.jpg|thumb|Paul's Congressional portrait |
| Birth date | August 20, 1935 |
| Birth place | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| State | Texas |
| District | 14th |
| Term start | January 3, 1997 |
| Preceded | Greg Laughlin |
| State2 | Texas |
| District2 | 22nd |
| Term start2 | January 3, 1979 |
| Term end2 | January 3, 1985 |
| Preceded2 | Robert Gammage |
| Succeeded2 | Tom DeLay |
| Term start3 | April 3, 1976 |
| Term end3 | January 3, 1977 |
| Preceded3 | Robert R. Casey |
| Succeeded3 | Robert Gammage |
| Party | Republican (1976–1988)Libertarian (1988 Presidential Election)Republican (1988–present) |
| Spouse | Carolyn "Carol" Paul |
| Children | Ronald "Ronnie" Paul, Jr.Lori Paul PyeattRandal "Rand" PaulRobert PaulJoy Paul-LeBlanc |
| Alma mater | Gettysburg College (B.S.)Duke University School of Medicine (M.D.) |
| Profession | Physician, Politician |
| Residence | Lake Jackson, Texas |
| Religion | Baptist |
| Website | U.S. House of Representatives Office of Ron Paul |
| Signature | Ron Paul signature.svg |
| Branch | United States Air ForceUnited States Air National Guard |
| Serviceyears | 1962–19651965–1968 |
Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American physician and Republican Congressman for the 14th congressional district of Texas. Paul serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Committee on Financial Services, where he has been an outspoken critic of American foreign and monetary policy. He has gained prominence for his libertarian positions on many political issues, often clashing with both Republican and Democratic Party leaders. He is the Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy. Paul has run for President of the United States twice, first in 1988 as the nominee of the Libertarian Party and again in 2008 as a candidate for the Republican nomination.
He is the founder of the advocacy group Campaign for Liberty and his ideas have been expressed in numerous published articles and books, including End The Fed (2009), and (2008). According to a 1998 study published in the American Journal of Political Science, Paul has the most conservative voting record of any member of Congress since 1937. His son Rand Paul was sworn in as a Senator for Kentucky in 2011, an event with made the elder Paul the first Representative in history to serve alongside a son or daughter in the Senate.
Paul has been married to Carol Wells since 1957. They have five children, who were baptized Episcopalian: Ronald, Lori, Rand, Robert, and Joy. Paul's son Rand is senator-elect of the state of Kentucky. They also have eighteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He has four brothers. Two of them, including David Paul, are ministers. Wayne Paul is a Certified Public Accountant.
Paul was the first Republican representative from the area; he also led the Texas Reagan delegation at the national Republican convention. His successful campaign against Gammage surprised local Democrats, who had expected to retain the seat easily in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Gammage underestimated Paul's support among local mothers: "I had real difficulty down in Brazoria County, where he practiced, because he'd delivered half the babies in the county. There were only two obstetricians in the county, and the other one was his partner."
On the House Banking Committee, Paul blamed the Federal Reserve for inflation, it is now available from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, to which Paul is a distinguished counselor.
In 1984, Paul chose to run for the U.S. Senate instead of re-election to the House, but lost the Republican primary to Phil Gramm. He returned to full-time medical practice In his House farewell address, Paul said, "Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare. Vote trading is seen as good politics. The errand-boy mentality is ordinary, the defender of liberty is seen as bizarre. It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic."
As the "Libertarian standard bearer", Paul gained supporters who agreed with his positions on gun rights, fiscal conservatism, homeschooling, and abortion, and won approval from many who thought the federal government was misdirected. This nationwide support base encouraged and donated to his later campaigns.
According to Paul, his presidential run was about more than reaching office; he sought to spread his libertarian ideas, often to school and university groups regardless of vote eligibility. He said, "We're just as interested in the future generation as this election. These kids will vote eventually, and maybe, just maybe, they'll go home and talk to their parents."
After the election, Paul continued his medical practice until he returned to Congress. He also co-owned a coin dealership, Ron Paul Coins, for twelve years with Burt Blumert, who continued to operate it after Paul returned to office. He spoke multiple times at the American Numismatic Association's 1988 convention. In 1985 Ron Paul & Associates began publishing The Ron Paul Investment Letter and The Ron Paul Survival Report; it added the more controversial Ron Paul Political Report in 1987. Many articles lacked a byline, yet often invoked Paul's name or persona.
After his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988, Paul returned to private medical practice and continued to allow the newsletters to be published bearing his name. For 1992, RP&A; earned $940,000 and employed Paul's family as well as Lew Rockwell (its vice-president and seven other workers. Murray Rothbard and other libertarians believed Rockwell ghostwrote the newsletters for Paul; Rockwell later acknowledged involvement in writing subscription letters, but attributed the newsletters to "seven or eight freelancers".
Paul considered running for President in 1992, but instead chose to support Pat Buchanan that year, and served as an adviser to his Republican presidential campaign against incumbent President George H. W. Bush.
Morris also accused Paul of authoring questionable statements in past newsletters, Paul's congressional campaign countered the statements were taken out of context. and that voters might not understand the "tongue-in-cheek, academic" quotes out of context. Further, the campaign rejected Morris' demand to release all back issues.
Paul went on to win the election in a close margin. It became the third time Paul had been elected to Congress as a non-incumbent. In both campaigns, the national Democratic Party and major unions continued to spend heavily on targeting Paul. On December 11, 2001, he told the independent movement that he was encouraged by the fact that the petition had spread the message of Constitutionalism, but did not expect a White House win at that time. Further prompting in early 2007 led him to enter the 2008 race.
Unlike many political candidates, Paul receives the overwhelming majority of his campaign contributions from individuals (97 percent in the 2006 cycle), and receives much less from political action committees (PAC's) than others, ranging from two percent (2002) to six percent (1998). The group Clean Up Washington, analyzing from 2000 to mid-2006, listed Paul as seventh-lowest in PAC receipts of all House members; one of the lowest in lobbyist receipts; and fourth-highest in small-donor receipts. He had the lowest PAC receipts percentage of all the 2008 Republican presidential candidates.
Paul was re-elected to his tenth term in Congress in November 2006. In the March 4, 2008, Republican primary for his Congressional seat, he defeated Friendswood city councilman Chris Peden, obtaining over 70 percent of the vote. On the 2008 ballot, Paul won his eleventh term in Congress running unopposed. In the 2010 Republican primary for his Congressional seat, Paul defeated three opponents with 80 percent of the vote.
Paul adds his own earmarks, such as for Texas shrimp promotion, but he routinely votes against most spending bills returned by committee. Earmarks permit members of Congress, rather than executive branch civil servants, to designate spending priorities for previously authorized funds directed otherwise. In , Paul states his views on earmarks this way: "The real problem, and one that was unfortunately not addressed in the 2007's earmark dispute, is the size of the federal government and the amount of money we are spending in these appropriations bills. Cutting even a million dollars from an appropriations bill that spends hundreds of billions will make no appreciable difference in the size of government, which is doubtless why politicians and the media are so eager to have us waste our time on [earmarks]."
Paul also spends extra time in the district to compensate for "violat[ing] almost every rule of political survival you can think of,"
In March 2001, Paul introduced a bill to repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR) and reinstate the process of formal declaration of war by Congress. Later in 2001, Paul voted to authorize the president, pursuant to WPR, to respond to those responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks. He also introduced Sunlight Rule legislation, which requires lawmakers to take enough time to read bills before voting on them, after the Patriot Act was passed within 24 hours of its introduction. Paul was one of six Republicans to vote against the Iraq War Resolution, and (with Oregon representative Peter DeFazio) sponsored a resolution to repeal the war authorization in February 2003. Paul's speech, 35 "Questions That Won't Be Asked About Iraq", was translated and published in German, French, Russian, Italian, and Swiss periodicals before the Iraq War began. After a 2005 bill was touted as "slashing" government waste, Paul wrote that it decreased spending by a fraction of one percent and that "Congress couldn't slash spending if the members' lives depended on it." He said that in three years he had voted against more than 700 bills intended to expand government.
Paul has introduced several bills to apply tax credits toward education, including credits for parental spending on public, private, or homeschool students (Family Education Freedom Act); for salaries for all K–12 teachers, librarians, counselors, and other school personnel; and for donations to scholarships or to benefit academics (Education Improvement Tax Cut Act). In accord with his political positions, he has also introduced the Sanctity of Life Act, the We the People Act, and the American Freedom Agenda Act.
Note: The numbers for the current session of Congress may no longer reflect the actual numbers as they are still actively in session.
Paul was honorary chair of, and is a current member of, the Republican Liberty Caucus, a political action committee which describes its goal as electing "liberty-minded, limited-government individuals". Paul also hosts a luncheon every Thursday as chair of the Liberty Caucus, composed of 20 members of Congress. Washington DC area radio personality Johnny "Cakes" Auville gave Paul the idea for the Liberty Caucus and is a regular contributing member. He remains on good terms with the Libertarian Party and addressed its 2004 convention. He also was endorsed by the Constitution Party's 2004 presidential candidate, Michael Peroutka.
Paul was on a bipartisan coalition of 17 members of Congress that sued President Bill Clinton in 1999 over his conduct of the Kosovo war. They accused Clinton of failing to inform Congress of the action's status within 48 hours as required by the War Powers Resolution, and of failing to obtain Congressional declaration of war. Congress had voted 427–2 against a declaration of war with Yugoslavia, and had voted to deny support for the air campaign in Kosovo. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that since Congress had voted for funding after Clinton had actively engaged troops in the war with Kosovo, legislators had sent a confusing message about whether they approved of the war. Paul said that the judge's decision attempted to circumvent the Constitution and to authorize the president to conduct a war without approval from Congress.
Paul's campaign showed "surprisingly strong" fundraising with several record-breaking events. He had the highest rate of military contribution for 2008, and donations coming from individuals, aided significantly by an online presence and very active campaigning by supporters, who organized moneybomb fundraisers netting millions over several months. Such fundraising earned Paul the status of having raised more than any other Republican candidate in 2007's fourth-quarter. Paul's name was a number-one web search term as ranked by Technorati, beginning around May 2007. He has led other candidates in YouTube subscriptions since May 20, 2007.
Paul was largely ignored by traditional media, including at least one incident where FOX News did not invite him to a GOP debate featuring all other presidential candidates at the time. One exception was Glenn Beck's program on Headline News, where Beck interviewed Paul for the full hour of his show.
Though projections of 2008 Republican delegate counts varied widely, Paul's count was consistently third among the three candidates remaining after Super Tuesday. According to CNN and the New York Times, by Super Tuesday Paul had received five delegates in North Dakota, and was projected to receive two in Iowa, four in Nevada, and five in Alaska based on caucus results, totaling 16 delegates. However, Paul's campaign projected 42 delegates based on the same results, including delegates from Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota.
In the January Louisiana caucus, Paul placed second behind John McCain, but uncommitted delegates outnumbered both candidates' pledged delegates, since a registration deadline had been extended to January 12. Paul said he had the greatest number of pledged Louisiana delegates who had registered by the original January 10 deadline, and formally challenged the deadline extension and the Louisiana GOP's exclusion of voters due to an outdated list; he projected three Louisiana delegates. The Super Tuesday West Virginia caucus was won by Mike Huckabee, whose state campaign coordinators reportedly arranged to give three Huckabee delegates to Paul in exchange for votes from Paul's supporters. Huckabee has not confirmed this delegate pledge.
Paul's preference votes in primaries and caucuses began at 10 percent in Iowa (winning Jefferson County) and eight percent in New Hampshire, where he had the support of state sovereignty champion, State Representative Dan Itse; on Super Tuesday they ranged from 25 percent in Montana and 21 percent in North Dakota caucuses, where he won several counties, to three percent in several state primaries, averaging under 10 percent in primaries overall. After sweeping four states on March 4, McCain was widely projected to have a majority of delegates pledged to vote for him in the September party convention. Paul obliquely acknowledged McCain on March 6: "Though victory in the political sense [is] not available, many victories have been achieved due to hard work and enthusiasm." He continued to contest the remaining primaries, having added, "McCain has the nominal number ... but if you're in a campaign for only gaining power, that is one thing; if you're in a campaign to influence ideas and the future of the country, it's never over." Paul's recent book, , became a New York Times and Amazon.com bestseller immediately upon release. His newest book, End the Fed, has been released.
On June 12, 2008, Paul withdrew his bid for the Republican nomination, citing his resources could be better spent on improving America. Some of the $4 million remaining campaign contributions was invested into the new political action and advocacy group called Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty. Paul told the newsmagazine NOW on PBS the goal of the Campaign for Liberty is to "spread the message of the Constitution and limited government, while at the same time organizing at the grassroots level and teaching pro-liberty activists how to run effective campaigns and win elections at every level of government."
Controversial claims made in Ron Paul's newsletters, written in the first person, included statements such as "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day." Along with "even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming." Another notable statement that garnered controversy was "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be" An issue from 1992 refers to carjacking as the "hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos." In an article title "The Pink House" the newsletter wrote that " "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."
Shortly afterwards, The New Republic released many previously unpublicized quotations attributed to Paul in James Kirchick's "Angry White Man" article. Kirchick accused Paul of having made racist, sexist, and derogatory comments geared towards African Americans, women, and the LGBT community. Kircheck also accused Paul of possessing "an obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry." CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer that the writing "Didn't sound like the Ron Paul I've come to know." Later, Nelson Linder, president of the Austin chapter of the NAACP, also defended Paul.
Reason republished Paul's 1996 defense of the newsletters, and later reported evidence from "a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists" that Lew Rockwell had been the chief ghostwriter.
Paul had given his own account of the newsletters in March 2001, stating the documents were authored by ghostwriters, and that while he did not author the challenged passages, he bore "some moral responsibility" for their publication.
On September 10, 2008, Paul confirmed his "open endorsement" (CNN) for the four candidates at a press conference in Washington D.C. He also revealed that he had rejected a request for an endorsement of John McCain. He later appeared on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer with Nader where they presented and briefly laid out the four principles that all the independent candidates had agreed on as the most important key issues of the presidential race. On September 22, 2008, in response to a written statement by Bob Barr, Paul abandoned his former neutral stance and announced his support of Chuck Baldwin in the 2008 presidential election.
In the 2008 general election, Paul still received 41,905 votes despite not actively running for the seat. He was listed on the ballot in Montana on the Constitution Party label, and in Louisiana on the "Louisiana Taxpayers Party" ticket, and received write-in votes in California (17,006), Pennsylvania (3,527), New Hampshire (1,092), and other states. (Not all U.S. jurisdictions require the counting or reporting of write-in votes.)
In the 2009 CPAC Presidential Preference straw poll for the 2012 election, Paul tied 2008 GOP Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin for third place with 13% of the vote, behind fellow former candidate Mitt Romney and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. However, in the 2010 CPAC straw poll, he came out on top, decisively winning with 31%, followed distantly by Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, among others. In the 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll, Paul finished second place with 24% of the vote (438 votes), behind only Mitt Romney (with 439 votes). An April 2010 Rasmussen poll found that Ron Paul and President Obama were nearly tied for the 2012 presidential election among likely voters, although later polls showed him trailing significantly. He also trails in polls for the Republican presidential nomination, typically behind Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich.
Jesse Benton, Senior VP of Campaign for Liberty, has said of the prospective run: "If the decision had to be made today, it would be 'no', but he is considering it very strongly and there is a decent likelihood that he will. A lot of it depends on things going on in his personal life and also what's going on in the country."
As part of an effort to encourage Ron Paul to run for president in 2012, a Tea Party moneybomb has been set up with the aim of repeating the 2007 Ron Paul Tea Party moneybomb, which gave Paul's 2008 presidential campaign over $6 million in one day. The goal of The Ron Paul Tea Party is to have 100,000 people donate $100 each on December 16, 2010 to kick off Paul's 2012 presidential run, should he decide to run.
Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, June 15, 2007.]]
Paul has been described as conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian. reflects both his medical degree and his insistence that he will "never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution." One scoring method published in the American Journal of Political Science found Paul the most conservative of all 3,320 members of Congress from 1937 to 2002. Paul's foreign policy of nonintervention made him the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. He advocates withdrawal from the United Nations, and from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for reasons of maintaining strong national sovereignty. He supports free trade, rejecting membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization as "managed trade". He supports tighter border security and opposes welfare for illegal aliens, birthright citizenship and amnesty; he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. He voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks, but suggested war alternatives such as authorizing the president to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal targeting specific terrorists.
Paul adheres deeply to Austrian school economics; he has authored six books on the subject, and displays pictures of Austrian school economists Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises (as well as of Grover Cleveland) he cast two thirds of all the lone negative votes in the House during a 1995–1997 period. and states he has never voted to approve a budget deficit. Paul believes that the country could abolish the individual income tax by scaling back federal spending to its fiscal year 2000 levels; financing government operations would primarily come through the corporate income tax, excise taxes and tariffs. He supports eliminating most federal government agencies, calling them unnecessary bureaucracies. Paul also believes the longterm erosion of the U.S. dollar's purchasing power through inflation is attributable to its lack of any commodity backing. However, Paul does not support a complete return to a gold standard, instead preferring to legitimize gold and silver as legal tender and to remove the sales tax on them. He also advocates gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve System.
Paul supports constitutional rights, such as the right to keep and bear arms, and habeas corpus for political detainees. He opposes the Patriot Act, federal use of torture, presidential autonomy, a national ID card, domestic surveillance, and the draft. Citing the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, Paul advocates states' rights to decide how to regulate social matters not directly found in the Constitution. Paul calls himself "strongly pro-life", "an unshakable foe of abortion", and believes regulation or ban on medical decisions about maternal or fetal health is "best handled at the state level". He says his years as an obstetrician led him to believe life begins at conception; his abortion-related legislation, like the Sanctity of Life Act, is intended to negate Roe v. Wade and to get "the federal government completely out of the business of regulating state matters." Paul also believes that the notion of the separation of church and state is currently misused by the court system: "In case after case, the Supreme Court has used the infamous 'separation of church and state' metaphor to uphold court decisions that allow the federal government to intrude upon and deprive citizens of their religious liberty."
He opposes federal regulation of the death penalty, of education, and of marriage, and supports revising the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy to focus on disruptive sexual behavior (whether heterosexual or homosexual). As a free-market environmentalist, he asserts private property rights in relation to environmental protection and pollution prevention. He also opposes the federal War on Drugs, and thinks the states should decide whether to regulate or deregulate drugs such as medical marijuana. Paul pushes to eliminate federal involvement in and management of health care, which he argues would allow prices to drop due to the fundamental dynamics of a free market. He is an outspoken proponent for increased ballot access for 3rd party candidates and numerous election law reforms which he believes would allow more voter control. Ron Paul has also stated that “The government shouldn't be in the medical business." He is also opposed to government flu inoculation programs.
Paul takes a critical view of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguing that it was unconstitutional and did not improve race relations.
;Congress
;Organizations Founded
;Presidential campaign
Category:1935 births Category:Living people Category:American anti-Iraq War activists Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American libertarians Category:American physicians Category:American political writers Category:American writers of German descent Category:Baptists from the United States Category:Classical liberals Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:Drug policy reform activists Category:Duke University alumni Category:Gettysburg College alumni Category:Internet memes Category:Libertarian Party (United States) presidential nominees Category:Libertarian theorists Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Texas Category:Military physicians Category:People from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Category:People from Brazoria County, Texas Category:Physicians from Texas Category:Politicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Texas Republicans Category:Texas Libertarians Category:United States Air Force officers Category:United States presidential candidates, 1988 Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:University of Pittsburgh people
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| Name | Mitt Romney |
|---|---|
| Alt | Portrait of Mitt Romney |
| Order | 70th |
| Office | Governor of Massachusetts |
| Term start | January 2, 2003 |
| Term end | January 4, 2007 |
| Lieutenant | Kerry Healey |
| Predecessor | Jane Swift (acting) |
| Successor | Deval Patrick |
| Birth date | March 12, 1947 |
| Birth place | Detroit, Michigan |
| Birthname | Willard Mitt Romney |
| Nationality | American |
| Party | Republican |
| Residence | Belmont, Massachusetts San Diego, California |
| Spouse | Ann Romney |
| Children | Tagg (b. 1970), Matt (b. 1971), Josh (b. 1975), Ben (b. 1978), Craig (b. 1981) |
| Alma mater | Brigham Young University (B.A.)Harvard Business School (M.B.A.) Harvard Law School (J.D.) |
| Profession | Businessman, Politician |
| Religion | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints |
| Signature | Mitt Romney Signature.svg |
Romney is the son of George W. Romney (the former Governor of Michigan) and Lenore Romney. He was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and served as a Mormon missionary in France. He attended Stanford University and Brigham Young University as an undergraduate, then earned a joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He entered the management consulting business which led to a position at Bain & Company, eventually serving as its CEO to lead it out of crisis. He was co-founder and head of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm, which during his time there became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. He ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts but lost to incumbent Edward M. Kennedy. Romney organized and steered the 2002 Winter Olympics as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and helped turn the troubled games into a financial success.
Romney won the election for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. In his one term, he presided over a series of spending cuts and increases in fees while the state's finances improved. He signed into law the landmark Massachusetts health care reform legislation, which provided near-universal health insurance access via subsidies and state-level mandates. Romney was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2008 United States presidential election, winning several caucuses and primaries but ultimately losing to John McCain. Since then he has published a book, , and also given speeches and raised campaign funds on behalf of fellow Republicans. He is widely seen as a front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2012 presidential election.
When Mitt was five, the family moved from Detroit to the affluent suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Mitt idolized him, read automotive trade magazines and kept abreast of automotive developments, and aspired to be an executive in the industry himself one day. His father also presided over the Detroit Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to which the family belonged.
in Bloomfield Hills, which Mitt Romney attended for grades 7-12]] Mitt went to public elementary schools, Mitt had a steady set of chores growing up and worked summer jobs, including one as a security guard at a Chrysler plant. Initially a manager for the hockey team and a pep squad member, The two informally agreed to marriage after his senior prom in June 1965, which was shortly followed by his graduation.
Romney attended Stanford University for a year. He became demoralized, and later recalled it as the only time in his life when "most of what I was trying to do was rejected."]] On June 16, 1968, Romney was involved in a serious automobile accident while driving fellow missionaries on dangerous roads in southern France. Trapped between the steering wheel and door, the unconscious and seriously injured Romney had to be pried from the car; a French police officer mistakenly wrote Il est mort in his passport. Romney had suffered broken ribs, a fractured arm, a concussion, and facial injuries, but recovered quickly without needing surgery. He was quite nervous that she had been wooed by others while he was away, and indeed she had dated others, but at their first meeting following his return they reconnected and agreed to get married as soon as possible. The following day the couple flew to Utah for a wedding ceremony at the Salt Lake Temple.
At the culturally conservative Brigham Young, Romney continued to be sheltered from much of the upheaval of the era, and did not join in the few protests against the war or against the LDS Church's policy against giving full membership to blacks.
The Romneys' first son, Tagg, was born in 1970 while both were undergraduates at Brigham Young, living in a $75-a-month basement apartment. They subsequently had Matt (born 1971), Josh (born 1975), Ben (born 1978) and Craig (born 1981).
Romney still wanted to pursue a business career, but his father, who by now was serving in President Richard Nixon's cabinet as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, recommended that a law degree would be valuable. Thus Romney became one of only 15 students to enroll at the recently-created joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration four-year program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. Fellow students noted Romney's strong work ethic and buttoned-down appearance;
During his years in business, Romney tithed constantly, giving millions of dollars to the LDS Church. From 1986 to 1994 he presided over the Boston Stake, which included more than a dozen congregations in eastern Massachusetts.
Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to serve as the President and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee. Although gone, Romney received a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities.
Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime, but had trouble establishing its own positions in a consistent manner. By mid-September 1994, polls showed the race to be approximately even. Kennedy responded with a series of attack ads, which focused both on Romney's seemingly shifting political views on issues such as abortion and on the treatment of workers at a paper products plant owned by Romney's Bain Capital. Kennedy and Romney held a widely watched late October debate without a clear winner, but by then Kennedy had pulled ahead in polls and stayed ahead afterward. Romney spent over $7 million of his own money, with Kennedy spending more than $10 million from his campaign fund, mostly in the last weeks of the campaign (this was the second-most expensive race of the 1994 election cycle, after the Dianne Feinstein–Michael Huffington Senate race in California).
In the November general election, despite a disastrous showing for Democrats overall, Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent, He had stepped down as Boston Stake president in order to run for the Senate, and while still teaching Sunday School, was largely uninvolved in the long and somewhat controversial construction of a Mormon temple in Belmont.
Before Romney came on, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue benchmarks. The Games had also been damaged by allegations of bribery involving top officials, including prior Salt Lake Olympic Committee president and CEO Frank Joklik. Joklik and committee vice president Dave Johnson were forced to resign. Romney's appointment faced some initial criticism from non-Mormons, and fears from Mormons, that it represented cronyism or gave the games too Mormon an image. He became the public face of the Olympic effort, appearing in countless photographs and news stories and even on Olympics souvenir pins. not counting the $224.5 million in security costs contributed by outside sources. Romney broke the record for most private money raised by any individual for an Olympics games, summer or winter.
Romney and his wife contributed $1 million to the Olympics, and he donated to charity the $1.4 million in salary and severance payments he received for his three years as president and CEO. He wrote a book about his experience titled . Romney was widely praised for his successful efforts with the 2002 Winter Olympics including by President George W. Bush, The role gave him experience in dealing with federal, state, and local entities, a public persona he had previously lacked, and the chance to re-launch his political aspirations. Prominent GOP activists campaigned to persuade Romney to run for governor. One poll taken at that time showed Republicans favoring Romney over Swift by more than 50 percentage points. In March 2002, Swift decided not to seek her party's nomination, and so Romney was unopposed in the Republican party primary.
Romney ran as a political outsider again. The campaign was the first to use microtargeting techniques, in which fine-grained groups of voters were reached with narrowly tailored messaging. Romney contributed over $6 million to his own campaign during the election, a state record at the time.
Romney supported raising various fees by more than $300 million, including those for driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and gun licenses. The cuts also included a $140 million reduction in state funding for higher education, which led state-run colleges and universities to increase tuition by 63 percent over four years.
The combined state and local fee burden in Massachusetts increased during Romney's governorship but still was below the national average. According to the Tax Foundation, that per capita burden was 9.8 percent in 2002 (below the national average of 10.3 percent), and 10.5 percent in 2006 (below the national average of 10.8 percent).
Romney was at the forefront of a movement to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state, after a business executive told him at the start of his term that doing so would be the best way he could help people. After positing that any measure adopted not raise taxes and not resemble the previous decade's failed "Hillarycare" proposal, Romney formed a team of the state's top experts that beginning in late 1994 came up with a set of proposals more innovative and ambitious than incremental ones from the Democratic legislature. gave Romney's plan a positive reception, which encouraged Democratic legislators to work with it. The bill also establishes means-tested state subsidies for people who do not have adequate employer insurance and who make below an income threshold, by using funds previously designated to compensate for the health costs of the uninsured. He vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a controversial $295-per-employee assessment on businesses that do not offer health insurance and provisions guaranteeing dental benefits to Medicaid recipients. Romney said of the measure overall, "There really wasn't Republican or Democrat in this. People ask me if this is conservative or liberal, and my answer is yes. It's liberal in the sense that we're getting our citizens health insurance. It's conservative in that we're not getting a government takeover."
At the beginning of his governorship, Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits. In May 2004 Romney instructed town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but citing a 1913 law that barred out-of-state residents from getting married in Massachusetts if their union would be illegal in their home state, no marriage licenses were to be issued to out-of-state same-sex couples not planning to move to Massachusetts. Romney's position on some other social issues, such as abortion rights, abstinence-only sex education, and therapeutic cloning, also evolved into a more conservative stance during his time as governor. Given a prime-time appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, Romney was already being discussed as a potential 2008 presidential candidate. Midway through his term, Romney decided that he wanted to stage a full-time run for president, and on December 14, 2005, Romney announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term as governor. As chair of the Republican Governors Association, Romney traveled around the country, meeting prominent Republicans and building a national political network; Romney's frequent out-of-state travel contributed towards declining his approval rating declining in public polls towards the end of his term. The weak condition of the Republican state party was one of several factors that led to Democrat Deval Patrick's lopsided win over Republican Kerry Healey in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Romney's term ended January 4, 2007.
The assets that Romney's campaign began with included his résumé of success in the business world and his rescuing of the Salt Lake Olympics, Romney also had solid political experience as governor together with a political pedigree courtesy of his father, a strong work ethic and energy level, and a large, wholesome-looking family that seemed so perfect as to be off-putting to some voters. was in remission and would be an active participant in his campaign, helping to soften his image. Romney's liabilities included having run for senator and served as governor in one of the nation's most liberal states, having taken some positions there that were opposed by the party's conservative base, and subsequently shifting those positions. polls indicated that about a quarter of Republican voters, and a quarter of voters overall, said they were less likely to vote for a candidate who was a Mormon. He proved the most effective fundraiser of any of the Republican candidates, with his Olympics ties helping him with fundraising from Utah residents and from sponsors and trustees of the games. Romney's staff suffered from internal strife and the candidate himself was indecisive at times, constantly asking for more data before making a decision. Persistent questions about the role of religion in Romney's life, as well as Southern Baptist minister and former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee's rise in the polls based upon an explicitly Christian-themed campaign, led to the December 6, 2007, "Faith in America" speech. and echoed Senator's John F. Kennedy's famous speech during his 1960 presidential campaign in saying "I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law." Romney largely avoided discussing the specific tenets of his faith, instead stressing that he would be informed by it and that, "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone." Of the 60 percent of caucus-goers who were evangelical Christians, Huckabee was supported by about half of them while Romney by only a fifth. A couple of days later, Romney won the lightly-contested Wyoming Republican caucuses. At a Saint Anselm College debate, Huckabee and McCain pounded away at Romney's image as a flip flopper. (Romney's staff would conclude that competing as a candidate of social conservatism and ideological purity rather than of pragmatic competence had been a mistake. On January 19, Romney won the lightly-contested Nevada caucuses, but placed fourth in the intense South Carolina primary, where he had effectively ceded the contest to his rivals. McCain gained further momentum with his win in South Carolina, leading to a showdown between him and Romney in the Florida primary.
For ten days, Romney campaigned intensively on economic issues and the burgeoning subprime mortgage crisis, while McCain repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Romney favored a premature withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. McCain won key last-minute endorsements from Florida Senator Mel Martinez and Governor Charlie Crist, which helped push him to a five percentage point victory on January 29. Trailing McCain in delegates by a more than two-to-one margin, Romney announced the end of his campaign on February 7 during a speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. received about 4.7 million total votes, and garnered about 280 delegates.
Romney endorsed McCain for president a week later. He soon founded the Free and Strong America PAC, a political action committee whose stated mission was to raise money for other Republican candidates and to promote Republican policies. His efforts earned McCain's respect and the two developed a warmer relationship; he was on the nominee's short list for the vice presidential running mate slot, where his experience in matters economic would have balanced one of McCain's weaknesses. McCain, behind in the polls, opted instead for a high-risk, high-reward "game changer" and selected Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. Romney continued to work for McCain's eventually unsuccessful general election campaign.
Romney's book, , was released on March 2, 2010; an 18-state promotional book tour was undertaken. The book, which debuted atop the New York Times Best Seller list, avoided anecdotes about Romney's personal or political life and focused much of its attention on a substantive presentation of his views on economic and geopolitical matters. Immediately following the passage the same month of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Romney attacked the landmark legislation as "an unconscionable abuse of power" and said the act should be repealed. The hostile attention it held among Republicans created a potential problem for the former governor, since the new federal law was in many ways similar to the Massachusetts health care reform passed during Romney's term; as one Associated Press article stated, "Obamacare ... looks a lot like Romneycare."
Polls of various kinds showed Romney remaining in the forefront of possible 2012 presidential contenders. In nationwide opinion polling for the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries, he has often led polls or been in the top three along with Palin and Huckabee. He finished first in the CPAC straw poll in 2009 and second in 2010, and won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll in 2010. A January 2010 National Journal poll of political insiders found that a majority of Republican insiders, and a plurality of Democratic insiders, predicted Romney would become the party's 2012 nominee. Pew Research Center and Gallup Poll results showed that during 2009 and 2010, more in the general public were viewing him favorably (36 to 40 percent) than unfavorably (28 to 29 percent); this was a marked improvement from the days of his 2008 presidential campaign, when the reverse had been true. Romney also stood to possibly gain from the Republican electorate's tendency to nominate candidates who had previously run for president and were "next in line" to be chosen.
Romney campaigned heavily for Republican candidates around the nation in the 2010 midterm elections, and raised the most funds of any of the prospective 2012 Republican presidential candidates.
For much of his business career, Romney had no tangible record of political positions taken. Until his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign, he was registered as an Independent.
As a candidate for, and then as, Governor of Massachusetts, Romney at first again generally operated in the mold established by Weld and followed by Weld's two other Republican successors, Paul Cellucci and Swift: restrain spending and taxing, be tolerant on social issues, protect the environment, be tough on crime, try to appear post-partisan. one particular difference is that while George was willing to defy political trends, Mitt has been much more willing to adapt to them. Journalist and author Daniel Gross sees Romney as approaching politics in the same terms as a business competing in markets, in that successful executives do not hold firm to public stances over long periods of time, but rather constantly devise new strategies and plans to deal with new geographical regions and ever-changing market conditions.
Indeed, throughout his business, Olympics, and political career, Romney's instinct has been to apply the "Bain way" towards problems. Romney's technocratic instincts have thus always been with him; in his public appearances during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign he sometimes gave PowerPoint presentations rather than conventional speeches. Upon taking office he became, in the words of The Boston Globe, "the state's first self-styled CEO governor."
People magazine included Romney in its 50 Most Beautiful People list for 2002. In 2004, Romney received the inaugural Truce Ideal Award for his role in the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 2008, he shared with his wife Ann the Canterbury Medal from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, for "refus[ing] to compromise their principles and faith" during the presidential campaign.
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Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Mormon missionaries Category:American chief executives Category:American Latter Day Saints Category:American Mormon missionaries Category:American people of Canadian descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:American political writers Category:Bain Capital Category:Bishops of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Category:Boston Consulting Group people Category:Businesspeople from Massachusetts Category:Brigham Young University alumni Category:Cranbrook alumni Category:Governors of Massachusetts Category:Harvard Business School alumni Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Management consultants Category:Massachusetts Republicans Category:Michigan Republicans Category:Mormon missionaries in France Category:People from Belmont, Massachusetts Category:People from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Category:People from Detroit, Michigan Category:Pratt–Romney family Category:Private equity and venture capital investors Category:Stake presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Category:Stanford University alumni Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:Writers from Massachusetts
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| Name | Keith Olbermann |
|---|---|
| Caption | Keith Olbermann, 2009 |
| Birthname | Keith Theodore Olbermann |
| Birth date | January 27, 1959 |
| Birth place | New York City, New York, US |
| Education | B.S., Cornell University |
| Occupation | Political commentator |
| Years active | 1980s-present |
| Gender | Male |
| Credits | Countdown with Keith Olbermann (2003–present)SportsCenter (1992–1997)Football Night in America (2007–2010) |
| Url | http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ |
Olbermann spent the first twenty years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and radio stations in the 1980s, winning the Best Sportscaster award from the California Associated Press three times. He later co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter from 1992 to 1997. After leaving ESPN amid controversy, Olbermann became a sports anchor and producer for Fox Sports Net from 1998 to 2001, during which time he hosted Fox's studio coverage of baseball.
After leaving Fox, Olbermann re-joined MSNBC after a hiatus, hosting Countdown with Keith Olbermann in 2003. Olbermann has established a niche in cable news commentary, gaining note for his pointed criticism of major politicians and public figures, directed particularly at the political right. strongly criticized the George W. Bush administration; and John McCain's unsuccessful 2008 Presidential candidacy. Although he has said on at least one occasion "I'm not a liberal; I'm an American", many describe Olbermann as a liberal.
Olbermann became a devoted fan of baseball at a young age, a love he inherited from his mother who was a lifelong New York Yankees fan.
While at Hackley, Olbermann began his broadcasting career as a play-by-play announcer for WHTR. After graduating from Hackley in 1975, Olbermann enrolled at Cornell University at the age of 16. Olbermann graduated from Cornell in 1979 with a B.S. in communications arts.
Early in 1997, Olbermann was suspended for two weeks after he made an unauthorized appearance on The Daily Show on Comedy Central with then-host and former ESPN colleague Craig Kilborn. At one point in the show, he referred to Bristol, Connecticut (ESPN's headquarters), as a "'Godforsaken place." this began a long and drawn-out feud between Olbermann and ESPN. Between 1997 and 2007, incidents between the two sides included Olbermann's publishing an essay on Salon.com in November 2002, titled "Mea Culpa", in which he stated: "I couldn't handle the pressure of working in daily long-form television, and what was worse, I didn't know I couldn't handle it." The essay told of an instance when his former bosses remarked he had "too much backbone," a claim that is literally true, as Olbermann has six lumbar vertebrae instead of the normal five.
According to Olbermann, he was fired from Fox in 2001 after reporting on rumors that Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns Fox, was planning on selling the Los Angeles Dodgers. When asked about Olbermann, Murdoch said: "I fired him...He's crazy." News Corp. went on to sell the Dodgers to Frank McCourt in 2004. That year, Olbermann remarked, "Fox Sports was an infant trying to stand [in comparison to ESPN], but on the broadcast side there was no comparison--ESPN was the bush leagues."
In 2005, Olbermann made a return to ESPN on the radio when he began co-hosting an hour of the syndicated Dan Patrick Show on ESPN radio, a tenure that lasted until Patrick left ESPN on August 17, 2007. Olbermann and Patrick referred to this segment as "The Big Show," just as their book was known. Patrick often introduced Olbermann with the tagline "saving the democracy," a nod to his work on Countdown.
On April 16, 2007, Olbermann was named co-host of Football Night in America, NBC's NFL pre-game show that precedes their Sunday Night NFL game, a position which reunited him in 2008 with his former SportsCenter co-anchor Dan Patrick. Olbermann left the show prior to the start of the 2010 season.
After leaving Fox Sports in 2001, Olbermann returned once more to news journalism. In 2003, his network won an Edward R. Murrow Award for writing on the "Keith Olbermann Speaking of Everything" show. In addition, Olbermann wrote a weekly column for Salon.com from July 2002 until early 2003., worked for CNN as a freelance reporter,
Olbermann returned to MSNBC in 2003 briefly as a substitute host on Nachman and as an anchor for the network's coverage of the war in Iraq. Prior to his return, Olbermann was a contributor to CNN and provided twice-daily commentary, "Speaking of Sports," for ABC Radio Network. Along with Hannah Storm, Olbermann also co-hosted NBC Sports' pre-game coverage of the MLB 1997 World Series.
Countdown's format, per its name, involves Olbermann ranking the five biggest news stories of the day or sometimes "stories my producers force me to cover," as Olbermann puts it. This is done in numerically reverse order, counting down with the first story shown being ranked fifth but apparently the most important. The segments ranked numbers two and one typically are of a lighter fare than segments ranked five through three. The first few stories shown are typically oriented toward government, politics, and world events. His stories usually involve celebrities, sports, and, regularly and somewhere in the middle, the bizarre, in a segment he calls "Oddball." Opinions on each are offered by Olbermann and interviewed guests. Olbermann has been criticized for only having guests that agree with his perspective. Former Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg stated that "Countdown is more or less an echo chamber in which Olbermann and like-minded bobbleheads nod at each other."
In a technique similar to that of former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite in connection to the Iran Hostage Crisis, Olbermann for many years closed the program by counting the days since May 1, 2003, the day that President George W. Bush declared the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished", and then crumpling up his notes, throwing them at the camera and saying "Good night and good luck" in the mode of another former CBS newsman, Edward Murrow. Olbermann discounts this gesture to his hero as "presumptuous" and a "feeble tribute."
On February 16, 2007, MSNBC reported that Olbermann had signed a four-year extension on his contract with MSNBC for Countdown which also provided for his hosting of two Countdown specials a year to be aired on NBC as well as for his occasional contribution of essays on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams.
Olbermann co-anchored, with Chris Matthews, MSNBC's coverage of the death of fellow NBC News employee Tim Russert on June 13, 2008. He presented a tribute, along with several fellow journalists, in honor of Russert.
During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Olbermann co-anchored MSNBC's coverage with Chris Matthews until September 7, 2008, when they were replaced by David Gregory after complaints from both outside and inside of NBC that they were making partisan statements. Despite this, Countdown was broadcast both before and after each of the presidential and vice-presidential debates, and Olbermann and Matthews joined Gregory on MSNBC's Election Day coverage. Olbermann and Matthews also led MSNBC's coverage of the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
In November 2008, it was announced that Olbermann had signed a four-year contract extension worth an estimated $30 million.
Since beginning Countdown
In an article on "perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade", the New York Times's Brian Stelter noted that as of early June 2009 the "combat" between the two hosts seems to have abruptly ended due to instructions filtered down to Olbermann and O'Reilly from the chief executives of their respective networks. On the August 3, 2009 edition of Countdown, Olbermann asserted that he had made statements to Stelter before the article was published denying that he was a party to such a deal, or that there was such a deal between NBC and Fox News, or that any NBC executive had asked him to change Countdown's content. Olbermann maintained that he had stopped joking about O'Reilly because of O'Reilly's alleged attacks of George Tiller, and soon resumed his criticism of O'Reilly.
During the 2008 Democratic Party primaries Olbermann frequently chastised presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton for her campaign tactics against her principal opponent, Senator Barack Obama, and made her the subject of two of his "special comments". Olbermann has also posted on the liberal blog Daily Kos.
In November 2007, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph placed Olbermann at #67 on their Top 100 list of most influential US liberals. It said that he uses his MSNBC show to promote "an increasingly strident liberal agenda." It added that he would be "a force on the Left for some time to come." Avoiding ideological self-labeling, Olbermann once told the on-line magazine Salon.com, "I'm not a liberal, I'm an American." This was criticized by his colleague Joe Scarborough, who called the comments "reckless" and "sad". Yael T. Abouhalkah of the Kansas City Star said that Olbermann "crossed the line in a major way with his comments". Jon Stewart criticized him about this attack in his show by noting that it was "the harshest description of anyone I've ever heard uttered on MSNBC", following which Olbermann apologized by noting, "I have been a little over the top lately. Point taken. Sorry."
He has accused the Tea Party movement of being racist due to what he views as a lack of racial diversity at the events, using photos that show overwhelmingly Caucasian crowds attending the rallies. In response, the Dallas Tea Party invited Olbermann to attend one of their events and also criticized his network for a lack of racial diversity, pointing out that an online banner of MSNBC personalities that appears on the website shows only white personalities. Olbermann declined the invitation, citing his father's prolonged ill health and hospitalization and noted that the network has minority anchors, contributors and guests.
On his February 14, 2008 "Special Comments" segment, Olbermann castigated Bush for threatening to veto an extension of the Protect America Act unless it provided full immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies. During the same commentary, Olbermann called Bush a fascist. In 1973, Card Memorabilia Associates published his book The Major League Coaches: 1921-1973. The September issue of Beckett Sports Collectibles Vintage included a T206 card that depicted Olbermann in a 1905-era New York Giants uniform. He argues that New York Giants baseball player Fred Merkle should not be denied inclusion into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of a baserunning mistake. He contributed the foreword to More Than Merkle (ISBN 0-8032-1056-6), a book requesting amnesty for Merkle's error, also known as the "Merkle Boner". Olbermann was also one of the founders of the first experts' fantasy baseball league. He was one of the founders of the USA Today Baseball Weekly LABR league, giving the league its nickname (LABR stands for League of Alternative Baseball Reality). Olbermann wrote the foreword to the 2009 Baseball Prospectus Annual.
In March 2009, Olbermann began a baseball-related blog entitled Baseball Nerd. He has also written a series of articles on baseball cards for the Sports Collectors Digest.
Olbermann suffers from a mild case of celiac disease, as well as restless legs syndrome. This head injury permanently upset his equilibrium, resulting in his avoidance of driving.
During a period in the mid-1990s, Olbermann appeared in a series of Boston Market advertisements, in which he would instruct a group of underweight models to "Eat something!" Olbermann had cited the need to spend time with his father for taking a leave of absence shortly before his father's death; occasionally recording segments to air at the beginning of the shows which Lawrence O'Donnell guest hosted in his absence, giving his views on the state of the American health care system and updating viewers on his father's condition.
Category:1959 births Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American political pundits Category:American television news anchors Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Boston, Massachusetts television anchors Category:Cornell University alumni Category:American writers of German descent Category:Living people Category:Television news anchors in Los Angeles, California Category:Major League Baseball announcers Category:MSNBC Category:NBC News Category:People from New York City Category:People from Westchester County, New York Category:National Football League announcers
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From 1997 to 1998 Plouffe served as Democratic leader Dick Gephardt's Deputy Chief of Staff. In 1999-2000, as executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Plouffe led Democrats to gains that came within several thousand votes of winning back the House. He also led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to unusually high fundraising amounts, during his tenure at the DCCC.
In the winter of 2000, Plouffe joined AKPD Message and Media but left briefly to serve as a strategist for Gephardt's unsuccessful Presidential bid. He returned to the firm and became a partner in February 2004. Beginning in 2003, Plouffe and fellow AKPD partner David Axelrod worked on Barack Obama's 2004 Illinois Senate campaign, beginning his association with Obama. Plouffe worked with Axelrod on the successful 2006 campaign of Deval Patrick for Governor of Massachusetts.
Category:1967 births Category:American Jews Category:American campaign managers Category:Barack Obama Category:Living people Category:Democrats (United States) Category:People from Wilmington, Delaware Category:University of Delaware alumni Category:American non-fiction writers Category:American political writers
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