title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: When Rasputin was murdered, part of the Imperial relatives asked Maria to return to the capital and use the moment to replace Alexandra as the Tsar's political adviser. Maria refused, but she did admit that Alexandra should be removed from influence over state affairs: "Alexandra Feodorovna must be banished. Don’t know how but it must be done. Otherwise she might go completely mad. Let her enter a convent or just disappear".


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: Revolution came to Russia in 1917, first with the February Revolution, then with Nicholas II's abdication on 15 March. After travelling from Kiev to meet with her deposed son, Nicholas II, in Mogilev, Maria returned to the city, where she quickly realised how Kiev had changed and that her presence was no longer wanted. She was persuaded by her family there to travel to the Crimea by train with a group of other refugee Romanovs.


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: After a time living in one of the imperial residences in the Crimea, she received reports that her sons, her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren had been murdered. However, she publicly rejected the report as a rumour. On the day after the murder of the Tsar's family, Maria received a messenger from Nicky, "a touching man" who told of how difficult life was for her son's family in Yekaterinburg. "And nobody can help or liberate them – only God! My Lord save my poor, unlucky Nicky, help him in his hard ordeals!" In her diary she comforted herself: "I am sure they all got out of Russia and now the Bolsheviks are trying to hide the truth." She firmly held on to this conviction until her death. The truth was too painful for her to admit publicly. Her letters to her son and his family have since almost all been lost; but in one that survives, she wrote to Nicholas: "You know that my thoughts and prayers never leave you. I think of you day and night and sometimes feel so sick at heart that I believe I cannot bear it any longer. But God is merciful. He will give us strength for this terrible ordeal." Maria's daughter Olga Alexandrovna commented further on the matter, "Yet I am sure that deep in her heart my mother had steeled herself to accept the truth some years before her death."


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: Despite the overthrow of the monarchy in 1917, the former Empress Dowager Maria at first refused to leave Russia. Only in 1919, at the urging of her sister, Queen Dowager Alexandra, did she begrudgingly depart, fleeing Crimea over the Black Sea to London. King George V sent the battleship HMS "Marlborough" to retrieve his aunt. The party of 17 Romanovs included her daughter the Grand Duchess Xenia and five of Xenia's sons plus six dogs and a canary.


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: After a brief stay in the British base in Malta, they travelled to England on the British battleship , and she stayed with her sister, Alexandra. Although Queen Alexandra never treated her sister badly and they spent time together at Marlborough House in London and at Sandringham House in Norfolk, Maria, as a deposed empress dowager, felt that she was now "number two," in contrast to her sister, a popular queen dowager, and she eventually returned to her native Denmark. After living briefly with her nephew, King Christian X, in a wing of the Amalienborg Palace, she chose her holiday villa Hvidøre near Copenhagen as her new permanent home.


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: There were many Russian émigrées in Copenhagen who continued to regard her as the Empress and often asked her for help. The All-Russian Monarchical Assembly held in 1921 offered her the "locum tenens" of the Russian throne but she declined with the evasive answer "Nobody saw Nicky killed" and therefore there was a chance her son was still alive. She provided financial support to Nikolai Sokolov, who studied the circumstances of the death of the Tsar's family, but they never met. The Grand Duchess Olga sent a telegram to Paris cancelling an appointment because it would have been too difficult for the old and sick woman to hear the terrible story of her son and his family.


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: In November 1925, Maria's favourite sister, Queen Alexandra, died. That was the last loss that she could bear. "She was ready to meet her Creator," wrote her son-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, about Dowager Empress Maria's last years. On 13 October 1928 at Hvidøre near Copenhagen, in a house she had once shared with her sister Queen Alexandra, Dowager Empress Maria died at the age of 80, having outlived four of her six children. Following services in Copenhagen's Russian Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Church, the Empress was interred at Roskilde Cathedral.


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: In 2005, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and President Vladimir Putin of Russia and their respective governments agreed that the Empress's remains should be returned to St. Petersburg in accordance with her wish to be interred next to her husband. A number of ceremonies took place from 23 to 28 September 2006. The funeral service, attended by high dignitaries, including the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Denmark and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, did not pass without some turbulence. The crowd around the coffin was so great that a young Danish diplomat fell into the grave before the coffin was interred. On 26 September 2006, a statue of Maria Feodorovna was unveiled near her favourite Cottage Palace in Peterhof. Following a service at Saint Isaac's Cathedral, she was interred next to her husband Alexander III in the Peter and Paul Cathedral on 28 September 2006, 140 years after her first arrival in Russia and almost 78 years after her death.


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: The Dagmarinkatu street in Töölö, Helsinki, and the Maria Hospital, which also previously operated in Helsinki, are named after Empress Maria Feodorovna.


title: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)

text: In the 1997 American animated film "Anastasia", directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, Maria Feodorovna is voiced by Angela Lansbury.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Newton Leroy Gingrich (; né McPherson; born June 17, 1943) is an American politician and author who served as the 50th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. representative for Georgia's 6th congressional district serving north Atlanta and nearby areas from 1979 until his resignation in 1999. In 2012, Gingrich unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: A professor of history and geography at the University of West Georgia in the 1970s, Gingrich won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1978, the first Republican in the history of Georgia's 6th congressional district to do so. 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".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: As House Speaker, Gingrich oversaw passage by the House of welfare reform and a capital gains tax cut in 1997. Gingrich played a key role in several government shutdowns, and impeached President Bill Clinton on a party-line vote in the House. The poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 congressional elections, a reprimand from the House for Gingrich's ethics violation, and pressure from Republican colleagues resulted in Gingrich's resignation from the speakership on November 6, 1998. He resigned altogether from the House on January 3, 1999. Political scientists have credited Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States and hastening political polarization and partisanship.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Since leaving the House, Gingrich has remained active in public policy debates and worked as a political consultant. He founded and chaired several policy think tanks, including American Solutions for Winning the Future and the Center for Health Transformation. Gingrich ran for the Republican nomination for president in the 2012 presidential election, and was considered a potential frontrunner at several points in the race. Despite a late victory in the South Carolina primary, Gingrich was ultimately unable to win enough primaries to sustain a viable candidacy, he withdrew from the race in May 2012 and endorsed eventual nominee Mitt Romney. Gingrich later emerged as a key ally of President Donald Trump, and was reportedly among the finalists on Trump's short list for running mate in the 2016 election. Since 2020, Gingrich has supported Trump's claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich was born as Newton Leroy McPherson at the Harrisburg Hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on June 17, 1943. His mother, Kathleen "Kit" (née Daugherty; 1925–2003), and biological father, Newton Searles McPherson (1923–1970), married in September 1942, when she was 16 and McPherson was 19. The marriage fell apart within days. He is of English, German, Scottish and Scots-Irish descent.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1946, his mother married Robert Gingrich (1925–1996), who adopted him. Robert Gingrich was a career Army officer who served tours in Korea and Vietnam. In 1956, the family moved to Europe, living for a period in Orléans, France and Stuttgart, Germany.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich has three younger half-siblings from his mother, Candace and Susan Gingrich, and Roberta Brown. Gingrich was raised in Hummelstown (near Harrisburg) and on military bases where his adoptive father was stationed. The family's religion was Lutheran. He also has a half-sister and half-brother, Randy McPherson, from his biological father's side. In 1960 during his junior year in high school, the family moved to Georgia at Fort Benning.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1961, Gingrich graduated from Baker High School in Columbus, Georgia, where he met, and later married, his math teacher. He had been interested in politics since his teen years. While living with his family in Orléans, France, he visited the site of the Battle of Verdun and learned about the sacrifices made there and the importance of political leadership.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Emory University in Atlanta in 1965. He went on to graduate study at Tulane University, earning an M.A. (1968) and a PhD in European history (1971). He spent six months in Brussels in 1969–70 working on his dissertation, "Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945–1960."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich received deferments from the military during the years of the Vietnam War for being a student and a father. In 1985, he stated, "Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1970, Gingrich joined the history department at West Georgia College, where he spent "little time teaching history." He coordinated a new environmental studies program and was removed from the history department "by 1976". During his time in the college, he took unpaid leave three times to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing twice before leaving the college. Serving professors were not allowed under the rules of the university system to run for office. He left the college in 1977 after being denied tenure.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1974, Gingrich made his first bid for political office as the Republican candidate in in north-central Georgia. He lost to 20-year incumbent Democrat Jack Flynt by 2,770 votes. Gingrich's relative success surprised political analysts. Flynt had never faced a serious challenger; Gingrich was the second Republican to ever run against him. He did well against Flynt although 1974 was a disastrous year for Republican candidates nationally due to fallout from the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich sought a rematch against Flynt in 1976. While the Republicans did slightly better in the 1976 House elections than in 1974 nationally, the Democratic candidate in the 1976 presidential election was former Governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter. Carter won more than two-thirds of the vote in his native Georgia. Gingrich lost his race by 5,100 votes.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: As Gingrich primed for another run in the 1978 elections, Flynt decided to retire. Gingrich defeated Democratic State Senator Virginia Shapard by 7,500 votes. Gingrich was re-elected five times from this district. He faced a close general election race once—in the House elections of 1990—when he won by 978 votes in a primary race against Republican Herman Clark and won a narrow 974 vote victory over Democrat David Worley in the general. Although the district was trending Republican at the national level, conservative Democrats continued to hold most local offices, as well as most of the area's seats in the General Assembly, well into the 1980s.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1981, Gingrich co-founded the Military Reform Caucus (MRC) and the Congressional Aviation and Space Caucus. During the 1983 congressional page sex scandal, Gingrich was among those calling for the expulsion of representatives Dan Crane and Gerry Studds. Gingrich supported a proposal to ban loans from the International Monetary Fund to Communist countries and he endorsed a bill to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a new federal holiday.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1983, Gingrich founded the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS), a group that included young conservative House Republicans. Early COS members included Robert Smith Walker, Judd Gregg, Dan Coats and Connie Mack III. The group gradually expanded to include several dozen representatives, who met each week to exchange and develop ideas.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich's analysis of polls and public opinion identified the group's initial focus. Ronald Reagan adopted the "opportunity society" ideas for his 1984 re-election campaign, supporting the group's conservative goals on economic growth, education, crime, and social issues. He had not emphasized these during his first term. Reagan also referred to an "opportunity" society in the first State of the Union address of his second term.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In March 1988, Gingrich voted against the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 (as well as to uphold President Reagan's veto). In May 1988, Gingrich (along with 77 other House members and Common Cause) brought ethics charges against Democratic Speaker Jim Wright, who was alleged to have used a book deal to circumvent campaign-finance laws and House ethics rules. During the investigation, it was reported that Gingrich had his own unusual book deal, for "Window of Opportunity," in which publicity expenses were covered by a limited partnership. It raised $105,000 from Republican political supporters to promote sales of Gingrich's book. Gingrich's success in forcing Wright's resignation contributed to his rising influence in the Republican caucus.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In March 1989, Gingrich became House Minority Whip in a close election against Edward Rell Madigan. This was Gingrich's first formal position of power within the Republican party. He said his intention was to "build a much more aggressive, activist party". Early in his role as Whip, in May 1989, Gingrich was involved in talks about the appointment of a Panamanian administrator of the Panama Canal, which was scheduled to occur in 1989 subject to U.S. government approval. Gingrich was outspoken in his opposition to giving control over the canal to an administrator appointed by the dictatorship in Panama.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich and others in the House, including the newly minted Gang of Seven, railed against what they saw as ethical lapses during the nearly 40 years of Democratic control. The House banking scandal and Congressional Post Office scandal were emblems of the exposed corruption. Gingrich himself was among members of the House who had written NSF checks on the House bank. He had overdrafts on twenty-two checks, including a $9,463 check to the Internal Revenue Service in 1990.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1990, after consulting focus groups with the help of pollster Frank Luntz, GOPAC distributed a memo with a cover letter signed by Gingrich titled "Language, a Key Mechanism of Control", that encouraged Republicans to "speak like Newt". It contained lists of "contrasting words"—words with negative connotations such as "radical", "sick," and "traitors"—and "optimistic positive governing words" such as "opportunity", "courage", and "principled", that Gingrich recommended for use in describing Democrats and Republicans, respectively.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: During negotiations with the Democrats who held majorities in the House and Senate, President George H. W. Bush reached a deficit reduction package which contained tax increases despite his campaign promise of "". Gingrich led a revolt that defeated the initial appropriations package and led to the 1990 United States federal government shutdown. The deal was supported by the President and Congressional leaders from both parties after long negotiations, but Gingrich walked out during a televised event in the White House Rose Garden. House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel characterized Gingrich's revolt as "a thousand points of spite".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Due to population increases recorded in the 1990 United States census, Georgia picked up an additional seat for the 1992 U.S. House elections. However, the Democratic-controlled Georgia General Assembly, under the leadership of fiercely partisan Speaker of the House Tom Murphy, specifically targeted Gingrich, eliminating the district Gingrich represented. Gerrymandering split Gingrich's territory among three neighboring districts. Much of the southern portion of Gingrich's district, including his home in Carrollton, was drawn into the Columbus-based 3rd district, represented by five-term Democrat Richard Ray. Gingrich remarked that "The Speaker, by raising money and gerrymandering, has sincerely dedicated a part of his career to wiping me out." Charles S. Bullock III, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said "Speaker Murphy didn't like having a Republican represent him." At the onset of the decade, Gingrich proved to be the only Republican representative of Georgia's 10 congressional districts until 1992, with the creation of Georgia's 4th congressional district and the Republican gains of Jack Kingston and Mac Collins.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: The Assembly created a new, heavily Republican 6th district in Fulton and Cobb counties in the wealthy northern suburbs of Atlanta—an area that Gingrich had never represented. Gingrich sold his home in Carrollton and moved to Marietta in the new district. His primary opponent, State Representative Herman Clark, who had challenged Gingrich two years earlier, made an issue out of Gingrich's 22 overdraft checks in the House banking scandal, and also criticized Gingrich for moving into the district. After a recount, Gingrich prevailed by 980 votes, with a 51 to 49 percent result. His winning the primary all but assured him of election in November. He was re-elected three times from this district against nominal Democratic opposition.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In the 1994 campaign season, in an effort to offer an alternative to Democratic policies and to unite distant wings of the Republican Party, Gingrich and several other Republicans came up with a Contract with America, which laid out 10 policies that Republicans promised to bring to a vote on the House floor during the first 100 days of the new Congress, if they won the election. The contract was signed by Gingrich and other Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The contract ranged from issues such as welfare reform, term limits, crime, and a balanced budget/tax limitation amendment, to more specialized legislation such as restrictions on American military participation in United Nations missions.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In the November 1994 midterm elections, Republicans gained 54 seats and took control of the House for the first time since 1954. Long-time House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois had not run for re-election, giving Gingrich, the highest-ranking Republican returning to Congress, the inside track at becoming Speaker. The midterm election that turned congressional power over to Republicans "changed the center of gravity" in the nation's capital. "Time" magazine named Gingrich its 1995 "Man of the Year" for his role in the election.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: The House fulfilled Gingrich's promise to bring all ten of the Contract's issues to a vote within the first 100 days of the session. President Clinton called it the "Contract on America".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Legislation proposed by the 104th United States Congress included term limits for Congressional Representatives, tax cuts, welfare reform, and a balanced budget amendment, as well as independent auditing of the finances of the House of Representatives and elimination of non-essential services such as the House barbershop and shoe-shine concessions. Following Gingrich's first two years as House Speaker, the Republican majority was re-elected in the 1996 election, the first time Republicans had done so in 68 years, and the first time simultaneously with a Democratic president winning re-election.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: As Speaker, Gingrich sought to increasingly tie Christian conservatism to the Republican Party. According to a 2018 study, Christian conservatism had become firmly ingrained in the Republican Party's policy platforms by 2000. Yale University congressional scholar David Mayhew describes Gingrich as profoundly influential, saying "In Gingrich, we have as good a case as we are likely to see of a member of Congress operating in the public sphere with consequence."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: A number of scholars have credited Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States, and hastening political polarization and partisan prejudice. According to Harvard University political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, Gingrich's speakership had a profound and lasting impact on American politics and health of American democracy. They argue that Gingrich instilled a "combative" approach in the Republican Party, where hateful language and hyper-partisanship became commonplace, and where democratic norms were abandoned. Gingrich frequently questioned the patriotism of Democrats, called them corrupt, compared them to fascists, and accused them of wanting to destroy the United States. Gingrich furthermore oversaw several major government shutdowns.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason identified Gingrich's instructions to Republicans to use words such as “betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors” about Democrats as an example of a breach in social norms and exacerbation of partisan prejudice. Gingrich is a key figure in the 2017 book "The Polarizers" by Colgate University political scientist Sam Rosenfeld about the American political system's shift to polarization and gridlock. Rosenfeld describes Gingrich as follows, "For Gingrich, responsible party principles were paramount... From the outset, he viewed the congressional minority party's role in terms akin to those found in parliamentary systems, prioritizing drawing stark programmatic contrasts over engaging the majority party as junior participants in governance."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Boston College political scientist David Hopkins writes that Gingrich helped to nationalize American politics in a way where Democratic politicians on the state and local level were increasingly tied to the national Democratic party and President Clinton. Hopkins notes that Gingrich's view


title: Newt Gingrich

text: directly contradicted the conventional wisdom of politics... that parties in a two-party system achieve increasing electoral success as they move closer to the ideological center... Gingrich and his allies believed that an organized effort to intensify the ideological contrast between the congressional parties would allow the Republicans to make electoral inroads in the South. They worked energetically to tie individual Democratic incumbents to the party's more liberal national leadership while simultaneously raising highly charged cultural issues in Congress, such as proposed constitutional amendments to allow prayer in public schools and to ban the burning of the American flag, on which conservative positions were widely popular – especially among southern voters.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich's view was however vindicated with the Republican Party's success in the 1994 U.S. midterm elections, sometimes referred to as the "Gingrich Revolution." Hopkins writes, "More than any speaker before or since, Gingrich had become both the strategic architect and public face of his party." One consequence of the increasing nationalization of politics was that moderate Republican incumbents in blue states were left more vulnerable to electoral defeat.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: According to University of Texas political scientist Sean M. Theriault, Gingrich had a profound influence on other Republican lawmakers, in particular those who served with him in the House, as they adopted his obstructionist tactics. A 2011 study by Theriault and Duke University political scientist David W. Rohde in the "Journal of Politics" found that "almost the entire growth in Senate party polarization since the early 1970s can be accounted for by Republican senators who previously served in the House after 1978" when Gingrich was first elected to the House.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich consolidated power in the Speaker's office. Gingrich elevated junior and more ideologically extreme House members to powerful committees, such as the Appropriations Committee, which over time led to the obliteration of internal norms in the committees. Term limits were also imposed on committee chairs, which prevented Republican chairs from developing a power base separate from the Republican Party. As a result, the power of Gingrich was strengthened and there was an increase in conformity among Republican congresspeople.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: A central pledge of President Bill Clinton's campaign was to reform the welfare system, adding changes such as work requirements for recipients. However, by 1994, the Clinton administration appeared to be more concerned with pursuing a universal health care program. Gingrich accused Clinton of stalling on welfare, and proclaimed that Congress could pass a welfare reform bill in as little as 90 days. He insisted that the Republican Party would continue to apply political pressure on the President to approve their welfare legislation.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1996, after constructing two welfare reform bills that Clinton vetoed, Gingrich and his supporters pushed for passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which was intended to reconstruct the welfare system. The act gave state governments more autonomy over welfare delivery, while also reducing the federal government's responsibilities. It instituted the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which placed time limits on welfare assistance and replaced the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Other changes to the welfare system included stricter conditions for food stamp eligibility, reductions in immigrant welfare assistance, and work requirements for recipients. The bill was signed into law by President Clinton on August 22, 1996.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In his 1998 book "Lessons Learned the Hard Way", Gingrich encouraged volunteerism and spiritual renewal, placing more importance on families, creating tax incentives and reducing regulations for businesses in poor neighborhoods, and increasing property ownership by low-income families. He also praised Habitat for Humanity for sparking the movement to improve people's lives by helping them build their own homes.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: A key aspect of the 1994 Contract with America was the promise of a balanced federal budget. After the end of the government shutdown, Gingrich and other Republican leaders acknowledged that Congress would not be able to draft a balanced budget in 1996. Instead, they opted to approve some small reductions that were already approved by the White House and to wait until the next election season.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: By May 1997, Republican congressional leaders reached a compromise with Democrats and President Clinton on the federal budget. The agreement called for a federal spending plan designed to reduce the federal deficit and achieve a balanced budget by 2002. The plan included a total of $152 billion in bipartisan tax cuts over five years. Other major parts of the spending plan called for $115 billion to be saved through a restructuring of Medicare, $24 billion set aside to extend health insurance to children of the working poor, tax credits for college tuition, and a $2 billion welfare-to-work jobs initiative.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: President Clinton signed the budget legislation in August 1997. At the signing, Gingrich gave credit to ordinary Americans stating, "It was their political will that brought the two parties together."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In early 1998, with the economy performing better than expected, increased tax revenues helped reduce the federal budget deficit to below $25 billion. Clinton submitted a balanced budget for 1999, three years ahead of schedule originally proposed, making it the first time the federal budget had been balanced since 1969.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1997, President Clinton signed into effect the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which included the largest capital gains tax cut in U.S. history. Under the act, the profits on the sale of a personal residence ($500,000 for married couples, $250,000 for singles) were exempted if lived in for at least two of the previous five years. (This had previously been limited to a $125,000 once-in-a-lifetime exemption for those over the age of 55.) There were also reductions in a number of other taxes on investment gains.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Additionally, the act raised the value of inherited estates and gifts that could be sheltered from taxation. Gingrich has been credited with creating the agenda for the reduction in capital gains tax, especially in the "Contract with America", which set out to balance the budget and implement decreases in estate and capital gains tax. Some Republicans felt that the compromise reached with Clinton on the budget and tax act was inadequate, however Gingrich has stated that the tax cuts were a significant accomplishment for the Republican Congress in the face of opposition from the Clinton administration. Gingrich along with Bob Dole had earlier set-up the Kemp Commission, headed by former US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp, a tax reform commission that made several recommendations including that dividends, interest, and capital gains should be untaxed.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Among the first pieces of legislation passed by the new Congress under Gingrich was the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, which subjected members of Congress to the same laws that apply to businesses and their employees, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. As a provision of the Contract with America, the law was symbolic of the new Republican majority's goal to remove some of the entitlements enjoyed by Congress. The bill received near universal acceptance from the House and Senate and was signed into law on January 23, 1995.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich shut down the highly regarded Office of Technology Assessment, and relied instead on what the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists called "self-interested lobbyists and think tanks".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich and the incoming Republican majority's promise to slow the rate of government spending conflicted with the president's agenda for Medicare, education, the environment and public health, leading to two temporary shutdowns of the federal government totaling 28 days.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Clinton said Republican amendments would strip the U.S. Treasury of its ability to dip into federal trust funds to avoid a borrowing crisis. Republican amendments would have limited appeals by death-row inmates, made it harder to issue health, safety and environmental regulations, and would have committed the president to a seven-year balanced budget. Clinton vetoed a second bill allowing the government to keep operating beyond the time when most spending authority expires.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: A GOP amendment opposed by Clinton would not only have increased premiums, but it would also cancel a scheduled reduction. The Republicans held out for an increase in Medicare Part B premiums in January 1996 to $53.50 a month. Clinton favored the then current law, which was to let the premium that seniors pay drop to $42.50.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: The government closed most non-essential offices during the shutdown, which was the longest in U.S. history at the time. The shutdown ended when Clinton agreed to submit a CBO-approved balanced budget plan.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: During the crisis, Gingrich's public image suffered from the perception that the Republicans' hardline budget stance was owed partly to an alleged snub of Gingrich by Clinton during a flight on Air Force One to and from Yitzhak Rabin's funeral in Israel. That perception developed after the trip when Gingrich, while being questioned by Lars-Erik Nelson at a "Christian Science Monitor" breakfast, said that he was dissatisfied that Clinton had not invited him to discuss the budget during the flight. He complained that he and Dole were instructed to use the plane's rear exit to deplane, saying the snub was "part of why you ended up with us sending down a tougher continuing resolution". In response to Gingrich's complaint that they were "forced to use the rear door," NBC news released their videotape footage showing both Gingrich and Dole disembarking at Tel Aviv just behind Clinton via the front stairway.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich was widely lampooned for implying that the government shutdown was a result of his personal grievances, including a widely shared editorial cartoon depicting him as a baby throwing a tantrum.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Democratic leaders, including Chuck Schumer, took the opportunity to attack Gingrich's motives for the budget standoff. In 1998, Gingrich said that these comments were his "single most avoidable mistake" as Speaker.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Discussing the impact of the government shutdown on the Republican Party, Gingrich later commented that, "Everybody in Washington thinks that was a big mistake. They're exactly wrong. There had been no reelected Republican majority since 1928. Part of the reason we got reelected ... is our base thought we were serious. And they thought we were serious because when it came to a show-down, we didn't flinch." In a 2011 op-ed in "The Washington Post", Gingrich said that the government shutdown led to the balanced-budget deal in 1997 and the first four consecutive balanced budgets since the 1920s, as well as the first re-election of a Republican majority since 1928.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Eighty-four ethics charges were filed by Democrats against Gingrich during his term as Speaker. All were eventually dropped except for one: claiming tax-exempt status for a college course run for political purposes. On January 21, 1997, the House officially reprimanded Gingrich (in a vote of 395 in favor, 28 opposed) and "ordered [him] to reimburse the House for some of the costs of the investigation in the amount of $300,000". It was the first time a Speaker was disciplined for an ethics violation.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Additionally, the House Ethics Committee concluded that inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented "intentional or ... reckless" disregard of House rules. The Ethics Committee's Special Counsel James M. Cole concluded that Gingrich had violated federal tax law and had lied to the ethics panel in an effort to force the committee to dismiss the complaint against him. The full committee panel did not agree whether tax law had been violated and left that issue up to the IRS. In 1999, the IRS cleared the organizations connected with the "Renewing American Civilization" courses under investigation for possible tax violations.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Regarding the situation, Gingrich said in January 1997, "I did not manage the effort intensely enough to thoroughly direct or review information being submitted to the committee on my behalf. In my name and over my signature, inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable statements were given to the committee, but I did not intend to mislead the committee ... I brought down on the people's house a controversy which could weaken the faith people have in their government."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In the summer of 1997, several House Republicans attempted to replace him as Speaker, claiming Gingrich's public image was a liability. The attempted "coup" began July 9 with a meeting of Republican conference chairman John Boehner of Ohio and Republican leadership chairman Bill Paxon of New York. According to their plan, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, Boehner and Paxon were to present Gingrich with an ultimatum: resign, or be voted out.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: However, Armey balked at the proposal to make Paxon the new Speaker, and told his chief of staff to warn Gingrich. On July 11, Gingrich met with senior Republican leadership to assess the situation. He explained that under no circumstance would he step down. If he was voted out, there would be a new election for Speaker. This would allow for the possibility that Democrats, along with dissenting Republicans, would vote in Democrat Dick Gephardt as Speaker.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On July 16, Paxon offered to resign his post, feeling that he had not handled the situation correctly, as the only member of the leadership who had been appointed to his positionby Gingrichinstead of elected. Gingrich accepted Paxon's resignation and directed Paxon to immediately vacate his leadership office space.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1998, Gingrich's private polls had given his fellow Republicans the impression that pushing the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal would damage Clinton's popularity and result in the party winning a net total of six to thirty seats in the House of Representatives. At the same time Gingrich was having an affair with a woman 23 years his junior. But instead of gaining seats, Republicans lost five, the worst midterm performance in 64 years by a party not holding the presidency. Other ethics violations including an unpopular book deal, added to his unpopularity even though he himself was reelected in his own district.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: The day after the election, a Republican caucus ready to rebel against him prompted his resignation of the speakership. He also announced his intended and eventual full departure from the House a few weeks later. In January 1999 he resigned his seat. When relinquishing the speakership, Gingrich referred to other Republicans when he said he was "not willing to preside over people who are cannibals". Writing a retrospective on his career at that point, "The New York Times" in November 1998 described Gingrich as "an expert in how to seize power, but a novice in holding it" further opining that he "illustrate[d] how hard it is for a radical, polarizing figure to last in leadership".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In December 1997, Gingrich flirted with a potential run for president in the 2000 election, but his party's midterm performance and his subsequent resignation led to him drop any plans to do so.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich has since remained involved in national politics and public policy debate. McKay Coppins of "The Atlantic" summarized time with Gingrich in 2018:


title: Newt Gingrich

text: [Gingrich] is dabbling in geopolitics, dining in fine Italian restaurants. When he feels like traveling, he crisscrosses the Atlantic in business class, opining on the issues of the day from bicontinental TV studios and giving speeches for $600 a minute. There is time for reading, and writing, and midday zoo trips—and even he will admit, "It's a very fun life."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 2003, he founded the Center for Health Transformation. Gingrich supported the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, which created the Medicare Part D federal prescription drugs benefit program. Some conservatives have criticized him for favoring the plan, due to its cost. In a May 15, 2011, interview on Meet the Press, Gingrich repeated his long-held belief that "all of us have a responsibility to pay—help pay for health care", and suggested this could be implemented by either a mandate to obtain health insurance or a requirement to post a bond ensuring coverage. In the same interview Gingrich said "I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate." This comment caused backlash within the Republican Party.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 2005, with Hillary Clinton, Gingrich announced the proposed 21st Century Health Information Act, a bill which aimed to replace paperwork with confidential, electronic health information networks. Gingrich also co-chaired an independent congressional study group made up of health policy experts formed in 2007 to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of action taken within the U.S. to fight Alzheimer's disease.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich has served on several commissions, including the Hart-Rudman Commission, formally known as the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st century, which examined national security issues affecting the armed forces, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In 2005 he became the co-chair of a task force for UN reform, which aimed to produce a plan for the U.S. to help strengthen the UN. For over two decades, Gingrich has taught at the United States Air Force's Air University, where, as of 2010, he was the longest-serving teacher of the Joint Flag Officer Warfighting Course. In addition, he is an honorary distinguished visiting scholar and professor at the National Defense University and, as of 2012, was teaching officers from all of the defense services. Gingrich informally advised Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld on strategic issues, on issues including the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and encouraging the Pentagon to not "yield" foreign policy influence to the State Department and National Security Council. Gingrich is also a guiding coalition member of the Project on National Security Reform.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich founded and served as the chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future, a 527 group established in 2007. The group was a "fundraising juggernaut" that raised $52 million from major donors, such as Sheldon Adelson and the coal company Peabody Energy. The group promoted deregulation and increased offshore oil drilling and other fossil-fuel extraction and opposed the Employee Free Choice Act; "Politico" reported, "The operation, which includes a pollster and fundraisers, promotes Gingrich's books, sends out direct mail, airs ads touting his causes and funds his travel across the country." American Solutions closed in 2011 after he left the organization.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Other organizations and companies founded or chaired by Gingrich include the creative production company Gingrich Productions, and religious educational organization Renewing American Leadership.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: He is a fellow at conservative think tanks the American Enterprise Institute and Hoover Institution. He sometimes serves as a commentator, guest or panel member on cable news shows, such as the Fox News Channel. He is listed as a contributor by Fox News Channel, and frequently appears as a guest on various segments; he has also hosted occasional specials for the Fox News Channel. Gingrich has signed the "Strong America Now" pledge committing to promoting Six Sigma methods to reduce government spending.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich founded Advocates for Opioid Recovery together with former Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy and Van Jones, a former domestic policy adviser to President Barack Obama.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: After leaving Congress in 1999, Gingrich started a number of for-profit companies: Between 2001 and 2010, the companies he and his wife owned in full or part had revenues of almost $100 million. As of 2015, Gingrich served as an advisor to the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: According to financial disclosure forms released in July 2011, Gingrich and his wife had a net worth of at least $6.7 million in 2010, compared to a maximum net worth of $2.4 million in 2006. Most of the increase in his net worth was because of payments to him from his for-profit companies.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: The Gingrich Group was organized in 1999 as a consulting company. Over time, its non-health clients were dropped, and it was renamed the Center for Health Transformation. The two companies had revenues of $55 million between 2001 and 2010. The revenues came from more than 300 health-insurance companies and other clients, with membership costing as much as $200,000 per year in exchange for access to Gingrich and other perks. In 2011, when Gingrich became a presidential candidate, he sold his interest in the business and said he would release the full list of his clients and the amounts he was paid, "to the extent we can".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In April 2012, the Center for Health Transformation filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, planning to liquidate its assets to meet debts of $1–$10 million.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Between 2001 and 2010, Gingrich consulted for Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored secondary home mortgage company, which was concerned about new regulations under consideration by Congress. Regarding payments of $1.6 million for the consulting, Gingrich said that "Freddie Mac paid Gingrich Group, which has a number of employees and a number of offices, a consulting fee, just like you would pay any other consulting firm." In January 2012, he said that he could not make public his contract with Freddie Mac, even though the company gave permission, until his business partners in the Center for Health Transformation also agreed to that.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich Productions, which is headed by Gingrich's wife Callista Gingrich, was created in 2007. According to the company's website, in May 2011, it is "a performance and production company featuring the work of Newt and Callista Gingrich. Newt and Callista host and produce historical and public policy documentaries, write books, record audio books and voiceovers, produce photographic essays, and make television and radio appearances."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Between 2008 and 2011, the company produced three films on religion, one on energy, one on Ronald Reagan, and one on the threat of radical Islam. All were joint projects with the conservative group Citizens United. In 2011, Newt and Callista appeared in "A City Upon a Hill", on the subject of American exceptionalism.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: As of May 2011, the company had about five employees. In 2010, it paid Gingrich more than $2.4 million.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich Communications promoted Gingrich's public appearances, including his Fox News contract and his website, newt.org. By 2011 Gingrich received as much as $60,000 for a speech, and did as many as 80 in a year. One of Gingrich's nonprofit groups, Renewing American Leadership, which was founded in March 2009, paid Gingrich Communications $220,000 over two years; the charity shared the names of its donors with Gingrich, who could use them for his for-profit companies. Gingrich Communications, which employed 15 people at its largest, closed in 2011 when Gingrich began his presidential campaign.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Between 2005 and 2007, Gingrich expressed interest in running for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. On October 13, 2005, Gingrich suggested he was considering a run for president, saying, "There are circumstances where I will run", elaborating that those circumstances would be if no other candidate champions some of the platform ideas he advocates. On September 28, 2007, Gingrich announced that if his supporters pledged $30 million to his campaign by October 21, he would seek the nomination.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: However, insisting that he had "pretty strongly" considered running, on September 29 spokesman Rick Tyler said that Gingrich would not seek the presidency in 2008 because he could not continue to serve as chairman of American Solutions if he did so. Citing campaign finance law restrictions (the McCain-Feingold campaign law would have forced him to leave his American Solutions political organization if he declared his candidacy), Gingrich said, "I wasn't prepared to abandon American Solutions, even to explore whether a campaign was realistic."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: During the 2009 special election in New York's 23rd congressional district, Gingrich endorsed moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava, rather than Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, who had been endorsed by several nationally prominent Republicans. He was heavily criticized for this endorsement, with conservatives questioning his candidacy for president in 2012 and even comparing him to Benedict Arnold.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Prior to President Donald Trump leaving office in December 2020, Trump appointed Gingrich to the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee of the Pentagon as part of a series of shakeups where prominent Trump loyalists replaced former members. In February 2021, Biden-appointed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin dismissed all appointments to the committee made by Trump, including Gingrich.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In late 2008, several political commentators, including Marc Ambinder in "The Atlantic" and Robert Novak in "The Washington Post", identified Gingrich as a top presidential contender in the 2012 election, with Ambinder reporting that Gingrich was "already planting some seeds in Iowa, New Hampshire". A July 2010 poll conducted by Public Policy Polling indicated that Gingrich was the leading GOP contender for the Republican nomination with 23% of likely Republican voters saying they would vote for him.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Describing his views as a possible candidate during an appearance on "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren in March 2009, Gingrich said, "I am very sad that a number of Republicans do not understand that this country is sick of earmarks. [Americans] are sick of politicians taking care of themselves. They are sick of their money being spent in a way that is absolutely indefensible ... I think you're going to see a steady increase in the number of incumbents who have opponents because the American taxpayers are increasingly fed up."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On March 3, 2011, Gingrich officially announced a website entitled "Newt Exploratory 2012" in lieu of a formal exploratory committee for exploration of a potential presidential run. On May 11, 2011, Gingrich officially announced his intention to seek the GOP nomination in 2012.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On June 9, 2011, a group of Gingrich's senior campaign aides left the campaign en masse, leading to doubts about the viability of his presidential run. On June 21, 2011, two more senior aides left.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In response, Gingrich stated that he had not quit the race for the Republican nomination, and pointed to his experience running for 5 years to win his seat in Congress, spending 16 years helping to build a Republican majority in the house and working for decades to build a Republican majority in Georgia. Some commentators noted Gingrich's resilience throughout his career, in particular with regards to his presidential campaign.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: After then-front-runner Herman Cain was damaged by allegations of past sexual harassment, Gingrich gained support, and quickly became a contender in the race, especially after Cain suspended his campaign. By December 4, 2011, Gingrich was leading in the national polls. However, after an abundance of negative ads run by his opponents throughout December, Gingrich's national polling lead had fallen to a tie with Mitt Romney.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On January 3, 2012, Gingrich finished in fourth place in the Iowa Republican caucuses, far behind Rick Santorum, Romney, and Ron Paul. On January 10, Gingrich finished in fifth place in the New Hampshire Republican primary, far behind Romney, Santorum, Jon Huntsman, and Paul.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: After the field narrowed with the withdrawal from the race of Huntsman and Rick Perry, Gingrich won the South Carolina Republican primary on January 21, obtaining about 40% of the vote, considerably ahead of Romney, Santorum and Paul. This surprise victory allowed Gingrich to reemerge as the frontrunner once again heading into Florida.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On January 31, 2012, Gingrich placed second in the Republican Florida primary, losing by a fifteen percentage point margin, 47% to 32%. Some factors that contributed to this outcome include two strong debate performances by Romney (which were typically Gingrich's strong suit), the wide margin by which the Gingrich campaign was outspent in television ads, and a widely criticized proposal by Gingrich to have a permanent colony on the moon by 2020 to reinvigorate the American Space Program.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: It was later revealed Romney had hired a debate coach to help him perform better in the Florida debates.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich did, however, significantly outvote Santorum and Paul. On February 4, 2012, Gingrich placed a distant second in the Nevada Republican caucuses with 21%, losing to Romney who received over 50% of the total votes cast.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On February 7, 2012, Gingrich came in last place in the Minnesota Republican caucuses with about 10.7% of the vote. Santorum won the caucus, followed by Paul and Romney.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On Super Tuesday Gingrich won his home state, Georgia, which has the most delegates, in "an otherwise dismal night for him". Santorum took Tennessee and Oklahoma, where Gingrich had previously performed well in the polls, though Gingrich managed a close third behind Romney.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On April 4, the Rick Santorum campaign shifted its position and urged Gingrich to drop out of the race and support Santorum.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On April 10, Santorum announced the suspension of his campaign. Following this announcement, The Newt 2012 campaign used a new slogan referring to Gingrich as "the last conservative standing". Despite this, on April 19, Gingrich told Republicans in New York that he would work to help Romney win the general election if Romney secured the nomination.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: After a disappointing second place showing in the Delaware primary on April 24, and with a campaign debt in excess of $4 million, Gingrich suspended his campaign and endorsed front-runner Mitt Romney on May 2, 2012, on whose behalf he subsequently campaigned (i.e. stump speeches and television appearances).


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich later hosted a number of policy workshops at the GOP Convention in Tampa presented by the National Republican Committee called "Newt University". He and his wife Calista addressed the convention on its final day with a Ronald Reagan-themed introduction.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Because FEC regulations prevent campaigns from ceasing operations until they settle their debts, the Newt Gingrich campaign was never formally dissolved. In 2016, the campaign filed a proposal to shut down without paying back its outstanding debt to 114 businesses and consultants; the FEC rejected this proposal. By then, the campaign still owed $4.6 million in debt, with only $17,000 being raised by the campaign committee over the previous year.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich supported Donald Trump more quickly than many other establishment Republicans. After having consulted for Trump's 2016 campaign, Gingrich encouraged his fellow Republicans to unify behind Trump, who had by then become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Gingrich reportedly figured among Trump's final three choices to be his running mate; the position ultimately went to Governor of Indiana Mike Pence.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Following Trump's victory in the presidential election, speculation arose concerning Gingrich as a possible secretary of state, chief of staff or advisor. Eventually, Gingrich announced that he would not be serving in the cabinet. He stated that he didn't have the interest in serving in any role related to the Trump administration, stressing that as a private citizen he would engage with individuals for "strategic planning" rather than job-seeking.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In May 2017, he promoted a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party had Seth Rich, an employee for the Democratic National Committee, killed during the 2016 presidential race.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich attended his wife's swearing-in as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See at the White House in October 2017. According to journalist Robert Mickens, Newt Gingrich served as the de facto ambassador or the "shadow ambassador" while Callista Gingrich, as paraphrased by McKay Coppins of "The Atlantic", "is generally viewed as the ceremonial face of the embassy".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: While ballots were being counted during the 2020 election, Gingrich supported President Trump in his attempt to win re-election and called on him to stop the vote counts after unsubstantiated allegations of fraud emerged. After the 2020 election, Gingrich made false claims of election fraud and refused to acknowledge Joe Biden's victory. He called for the arrest of poll workers in Pennsylvania following the election.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In January 2022, Gingrich told Fox News presenter Maria Bartiromo that members of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol faced a real risk of jail after Republicans take over Congress, accusing them of breaking laws without explaining which laws were broken:


title: Newt Gingrich

text: “I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down, ... and the wolves are going to find out that they’re now sheep and they’re the ones who are in fact, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking”,


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In July 2022, he was featured at an America First Policy Institute conference promoting a "Trump-inspired platform for the 2024 GOP presidential nominee".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: As of August 2022, Gingrich was advising Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans for the 2022 midterm elections, according to journalist Dana Milbank.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich is most widely identified with the 1994 Contract with America. He is a founder of American Solutions for Winning the Future. More recently, Gingrich has advocated replacing the Environmental Protection Agency with a proposed "Environmental Solutions Agency".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: He favors a strong immigration border policy and a guest worker program. In terms of energy policy, he has argued in favor of flex-fuel mandates for cars sold in the U.S. and promoted the use of ethanol generally. In August 2021 Gingrich was said to have echoed the Great Replacement theory during a Fox News interview.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich has taken a dim view of internationalism and the United Nations. He said in 2015, "after several years of looking at the UN, I can report to you that it is sufficiently corrupt and sufficiently inefficient. That no reasonable person would put faith in it."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich's later books take a large-scale policy focus, including "Winning the Future", and the most recent, "To Save America". Gingrich has identified education as "the number one factor in our future prosperity", and has partnered with Al Sharpton and Education Secretary Arne Duncan on education issues. Although he previously opposed gay marriage, in December 2012, Gingrich suggested that Republicans should reconsider their opposition to it.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 2014, Gingrich sent a letter to Dr. John Koza of National Popular Vote, Inc. endorsing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, under which participating states would award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote of the United States.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On July 14, 2016, Gingrich stated that he believes that Americans of Muslim backgrounds who believe in Sharia law should be deported, and that visiting websites that promote the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or Al-Qaeda should be a felony. Some observers have questioned whether these views violate the free speech and free exercise of religion clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: On July 21, 2016, Gingrich argued that members of NATO "ought to worry" about a U.S. commitment to their defense. He expanded, saying, "They ought to worry about commitment under any circumstances. Every president has been saying that the NATO countries do not pay their fair share". He also stated that, in the context of whether the United States would provide aid to Estonia (a NATO member) in the event of a Russian invasion, he "would think about it a great deal".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: According to "Science" magazine, Gingrich changed his view on climate change "from cautious skeptic in the late 1980s to believer in the late 2000s to skeptic again during the [2016] campaign."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In January 2022, Gingrich characterized the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack as "basically a lynch mob" that was violating laws and trampling on civil liberties, suggesting committee members might be jailed if Republicans took control of the House in that year's election.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, he wed Jacqueline May "Jackie" Battley (February 21, 1936 – August 7, 2013), his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old and she was 26. They had two daughters: Kathy, who is president of Gingrich Communications, and Jackie Sue, who is an author, conservative columnist and political commentator.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Throughout his congressional campaign in 1974, Gingrich was having an affair with a young volunteer. An aide who worked with Gingrich throughout the 1970s stated that "it was common knowledge that Newt was involved with other women during his marriage to Jackie." In the spring of 1980, Gingrich filed for divorce from Jackie after beginning an affair with Marianne Ginther. Jackie later said in 1984 that the divorce was a "complete surprise" to her.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In September 1980, according to friends who knew them both, Gingrich visited Jackie in the hospital the day after she had undergone surgery to treat her uterine cancer; once there, Gingrich began talking about the terms of their divorce, at which point Jackie threw him out of the room. Gingrich disputed that account. Although Gingrich's presidential campaign staff continued to insist in 2011 that Jackie had requested the divorce, court documents from Carroll County, Georgia, indicated that Jackie had in fact asked a judge to block the process, stating that although "she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce ... she does not desire one at this time [and] does not admit that this marriage is irretrievably broken."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: According to L. H. Carter, Gingrich's campaign treasurer, Gingrich said of Jackie: "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer." Gingrich has denied saying it. Following the divorce, Jackie had to raise money from friends in her congregation to help her and the children make ends meet; she later filed a petition in court stating that Gingrich had failed to properly provide for his family. Gingrich submitted a financial statement to the judge, which showed that he had been "providing only $400 a month, plus $40 in allowances for his daughters. He claimed not to be able to afford any more. But in citing his own expenses, Gingrich listed $400 just for 'Food / dry cleaning, etc.'—for one person." In 1981, a judge ordered Gingrich to provide considerably more; in 1993, Jackie stated in court that Gingrich had failed to obey the 1981 order "from the day it was issued." Jackie, a deacon and volunteer in the First Baptist Church of Carrollton, Georgia, died in 2013 in Atlanta at the age of 77.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1981, six months after his divorce from Jackie was final, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther. Marianne helped control their finances to get them out of debt. She did not, however, want to have the public life of a politician's wife. Gingrich's daughter Kathy described the marriage as "difficult".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In 1993, while still married to Marianne, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, more than two decades his junior. Gingrich was having this affair even as he led the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury related to Clinton's own extramarital affair. Gingrich filed for divorce from Marianne in 1999, a few months after she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The marriage produced no children. On January 19, 2012, Marianne alleged in an interview on ABC's "Nightline" that she had declined to accept Gingrich's suggestion of an open marriage. Gingrich disputed the account.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In August 2000, Gingrich married Callista Bisek four months after his divorce from Marianne was finalized. He and Callista live in McLean, Virginia.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: In a 2011 interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Gingrich addressed his past infidelities by saying, "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate." In December 2011, after the group Iowans for Christian Leaders in Government requested that he sign their so-called "Marriage Vow", Gingrich sent a lengthy written response. It included his pledge to "uphold personal fidelity to my spouse".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Raised as a Lutheran, Gingrich was a Southern Baptist in graduate school. He converted to Catholicism, the faith of his third wife Callista Bisek, on March 29, 2009. He said: "over the course of several years, I gradually became Catholic and then decided one day to accept the faith I had already come to embrace". He decided to officially become a Catholic when he saw Pope Benedict XVI, during the Pope's visit to the United States in 2008: "Catching a glimpse of Pope Benedict that day, I was struck by the happiness and peacefulness he exuded. The joyful and radiating presence of the Holy Father was a moment of confirmation about the many things I had been thinking and experiencing for several years." At a 2011 appearance in Columbus, Ohio, he said, "In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: The Catholic Church recognizes his third marriage as a valid marriage, based on an annulment granted for his second marriage and the passing of his wife from his first.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich has expressed a deep interest in animals. Gingrich's first engagement in civic affairs was speaking to the city council in his native Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as to why the city should establish its own zoo. He authored the introduction to "America's Best Zoos" and claims to have visited more than 100.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich has shown enthusiasm towards dinosaurs. "The New Yorker" said of his 1995 book "To Renew America": "Charmingly, he has retained his enthusiasm for the extinct giants into middle age. In addition to including breakthroughs in dinosaur research on his list of futuristic wonders, he specified 'people interested in dinosaurs' as a prime example of those who might benefit from his education proposals."


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Space exploration has been an additional interest of Gingrich since a fascination with the United States/Soviet Union Space Race started in his teenage years. Gingrich wants the U.S. to pursue new achievements in space, including sustaining civilizations beyond Earth, but advocates relying more on the private sector and less on the publicly funded NASA to drive progress. Since 2010, he has served on the National Space Society Board of Governors.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: During the 2012 election campaign, "Artinfo" noted that Gingrich has expressed appreciation for the work of two American painters. He has described James H. Cromartie's painting of the U.S. Capitol as "an exceptional and truly beautiful work of art"; in Norman Rockwell's work, he saw the embodiment of an America circa 1965, at odds with the prevailing sentiment of the modern day "cultural elites".


title: Newt Gingrich

text: CNN announced on June 26, 2013, that Gingrich would join a new version of "Crossfire" re-launching in fall 2013, with panelists S. E. Cupp, Stephanie Cutter, and Van Jones. Gingrich represented the right on the revamped debate program. The show was cancelled the following year.


title: Newt Gingrich

text: Gingrich co-wrote the following alternate history novels and series of novels with William R. Forstchen.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in New York where he acknowledged his homosexuality as an adolescent, but chose to pursue sexual relationships with secrecy and discretion well into his adult years. His experience in the counterculture of the 1960s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and the expression of sexuality.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972 and opened a camera store. Although he had been restless, holding an assortment of jobs and moving house frequently, he settled in The Castro, a neighborhood that was experiencing a mass immigration of gay men and lesbians. He was compelled to run for city supervisor in 1973, though he encountered resistance from the existing gay political establishment. His campaign was compared to theater; he was brash, outspoken, animated, and outrageous, earning media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the "Mayor of Castro Street". Voters responded enough to warrant his running for the California State Assembly as well. Taking advantage of his growing popularity, he led the gay political movement in fierce battles against anti-gay initiatives. Milk was elected city supervisor in 1977 after San Francisco reorganized its election procedures to choose representatives from neighborhoods rather than through city-wide ballots.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk served almost eleven months in office, during which he sponsored a bill banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment on the basis of sexual orientation. The Supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11–1, and it was signed into law by Mayor George Moscone. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significant openly LGBT official ever elected in the United States". Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: "What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us." Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk was born in the New York City suburb of Woodmere, to William Milk and Minerva Karns. He was the younger son of Lithuanian Jewish parents and the grandson of Morris Milk, a department store owner who helped to organize the first synagogue in the area. As a child, Harvey was teased for his protruding ears, big nose, and oversized feet, and tended to grab attention as a class clown. While he was in school, he played football and developed a passion for opera. Under his name in the high school yearbook, it read, "Glimpy Milk—and they say WOMEN are never at a loss for words".


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk graduated from Bay Shore High School in Bay Shore, New York, in 1947 and attended New York State College for Teachers in Albany (now the State University of New York at Albany) from 1947 to 1951, majoring in mathematics. He also wrote for the college newspaper. One classmate remembered, "He was never thought of as a possible queer—that's what you called them then—he was a man's man".


title: Harvey Milk

text: After graduation, Milk joined the United States Navy during the Korean War. He served aboard the submarine rescue ship as a diving officer. He later transferred to Naval Station, San Diego to serve as a diving instructor. In 1955, he resigned from the Navy at the rank of lieutenant, junior grade, forced to accept an "other than honorable" discharge and leave the service rather than face a court-martial because of his homosexuality.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk's early career was marked by frequent changes; in later years he would take delight in talking about his metamorphosis from a middle-class Jewish boy. He began teaching at George W. Hewlett High School on Long Island. In 1956, he met Joe Campbell, at the Jacob Riis Park beach, a popular location for gay men in Queens. Milk pursued Campbell passionately. Even after they moved in together, Milk wrote Campbell romantic notes and poems. Growing bored with their New York lives, they decided to move to Dallas, Texas, but they were unhappy there and moved back to New York, where Milk got a job as an actuarial statistician at an insurance firm. Campbell and Milk separated after almost six years; it would be his longest relationship.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk tried to keep his early romantic life separate from his family and work. Once again bored and single in New York, he thought of moving to Miami to marry a lesbian friend to "have a front and each would not be in the way of the other". However, he decided to remain in New York, where he secretly pursued gay relationships. In 1962, Milk became involved with Craig Rodwell, who was 10 years younger. Though Milk courted Rodwell ardently, waking him every morning with a call and sending him notes, Milk was uncomfortable with Rodwell's involvement with the New York Mattachine Society, a gay-rights organization. When Rodwell was arrested for walking in Riis Park, and charged with inciting a riot and with indecent exposure (the law required men's swimsuits to extend from above the navel to below the thigh), he spent three days in jail. The relationship soon ended as Milk became alarmed at Rodwell's tendency to agitate the police.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk abruptly stopped working as an insurance actuary and became a researcher at the Wall Street firm Bache & Company. He was frequently promoted despite his tendency to offend the older members of the firm by ignoring their advice and flaunting his success. Although he was skilled at his job, co-workers sensed that Milk's heart was not in his work. He started a romantic relationship with Jack Galen McKinley and recruited him to work on conservative Republican Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. Their relationship was troubled. When McKinley first began his relationship with Milk in late 1964, McKinley was 16 years old. He was prone to depression and sometimes threatened to commit suicide if Milk did not show him enough attention. To make a point to McKinley, Milk took him to the hospital where Milk's ex-lover, Joe Campbell, was himself recuperating from a suicide attempt, after his lover Billy Sipple left him. Milk had remained friendly with Campbell, who had entered the avant-garde art scene in Greenwich Village, but Milk did not understand why Campbell's despondency was sufficient cause to consider suicide as an option.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Since the end of World War II, the major port city of San Francisco had been home to a sizable number of gay men who had been expelled from the military and decided to stay rather than return to their hometowns and face ostracism. By 1969 the Kinsey Institute believed San Francisco had more gay people per capita than any other American city; when the National Institute of Mental Health asked the institute to survey homosexuals, the Institute chose San Francisco as its focus. Milk and McKinley were among the thousands of gay men attracted to San Francisco. McKinley was a stage manager for Tom O'Horgan, a director who started his career in experimental theater, but soon graduated to much larger Broadway productions. They arrived in 1969 with the Broadway touring company of "Hair". McKinley was offered a job in the New York City production of "Jesus Christ Superstar", and their tempestuous relationship came to an end. The city appealed to Milk so much that he decided to stay, working at an investment firm. In 1970, increasingly frustrated with the political climate after the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, Milk let his hair grow long. When told to cut it, he refused and was fired.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk drifted from California to Texas to New York, without a steady job or plan. In New York City he became involved with O'Horgan's theater company as a "general aide", signing on as associate producer for "Lenny" and for Eve Merriam's "Inner City". The time he had spent with the cast of flower children wore away much of Milk's conservatism. A contemporary "New York Times" story about O'Horgan described Milk as "a sad eyed man—another aging hippie with long, long hair, wearing faded jeans and pretty beads". Craig Rodwell read the description of the formerly uptight man and wondered if it could be the same person. One of Milk's Wall Street friends worried that he seemed to have no plan or future, but remembered Milk's attitude: "I think he was happier than at any time I had ever seen him in his entire life." Rosa von Praunheim's documentary short film "Homosexuals in New York" shows Milk exuberant as a protester on Christopher Street Day 1971 in New York.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk met Scott Smith, 18 years his junior, and began another relationship. Milk and Smith returned to San Francisco, where they lived on money they had saved. In March 1973, after a roll of film Milk left at a local shop was ruined, he and Smith opened a camera store on Castro Street with their last $1,000.


title: Harvey Milk

text: In the late 1960s, the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) and the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) began to work against police persecution of gay bars and entrapment in San Francisco. Oral sex was still a felony, and in 1970, nearly 90 people in the city were arrested for having sex in public parks at night. Mayor Alioto asked the police to target the parks, hoping the decision would appeal to the Archdiocese and his Catholic supporters. In 1971, 2,800 gay men were arrested for public sex in San Francisco. By comparison, New York City recorded only 63 arrests for the same offense that year. Any arrest for a morals charge required registration as a sex offender.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Congressman Phillip Burton, Assemblyman Willie Brown, and other California politicians recognized the growing clout and organization of homosexuals in the city, and courted their votes by attending meetings of gay and lesbian organizations. Brown pushed for legalization of sex between consenting adults in 1969 but failed. SIR was also pursued by popular moderate Supervisor Dianne Feinstein in her bid to become mayor, opposing Alioto. Ex-policeman Richard Hongisto worked for 10 years to change the conservative views of the San Francisco Police Department, and also actively appealed to the gay community, which responded by raising significant funds for his campaign for sheriff. Though Feinstein was unsuccessful, Hongisto's win in 1971 showed the political clout of the gay community.


title: Harvey Milk

text: SIR had become powerful enough for political maneuvering. In 1971 SIR members Jim Foster, Rick Stokes, and "Advocate" publisher David Goodstein formed the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, known as simply "Alice". Alice befriended liberal politicians to persuade them to sponsor bills, proving successful in 1972 when Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon obtained Feinstein's support for an ordinance outlawing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Alice chose Stokes to run for a relatively unimportant seat on the community college board. Though Stokes received 45,000 votes, he was quiet and unassuming, and did not win. Foster, however, shot to national prominence by being the first openly gay man to address a political convention. His speech at the 1972 Democratic National Convention ensured that his voice, according to San Francisco politicians, was the one to be heard when they wanted the opinions, and especially the votes, of the gay community.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk became more interested in political and civic matters when he was faced with civic problems and policies he disliked. One day in 1973, a state bureaucrat entered Milk's shop Castro Camera and informed him that he owed $100 as a deposit against state sales tax. Milk was incredulous and traded shouts with the man about the rights of business owners; after he complained for weeks at state offices, the deposit was reduced to $30. Milk fumed about government priorities when a teacher came into his store to borrow a projector because the equipment in the schools did not function. Friends also remember around the same time having to restrain him from kicking the television while Attorney General John N. Mitchell gave consistent "I don't recall" replies during the Watergate hearings. Milk decided that the time had come to run for city supervisor. He said later, "I finally reached the point where I knew I had to become involved or shut up".


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk received an icy reception from the gay political establishment in San Francisco. Jim Foster, who had by then been active in gay politics for ten years, resented that the newcomer had asked for his endorsement for a position as prestigious as city supervisor. Foster told Milk, "There's an old saying in the Democratic Party. You don't get to dance unless you put up the chairs. I've never seen you put up the chairs." Milk was furious that Foster had snubbed him for the position, and the conversation marked the beginning of an antagonistic relationship between the "Alice" Club and Harvey Milk. Some gay bar owners, still battling police harassment and unhappy with what they saw as a timid approach by Alice to established authority in the city, decided to endorse him.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk had drifted through life up to this point, but he found his vocation, according to journalist Frances FitzGerald, who called him a "born politician". At first, his inexperience showed. He tried to do without money, support, or staff, and instead relied on his message of sound financial management, promoting individuals over large corporations and government. He supported the reorganization of supervisor elections from a citywide ballot to district ballots, which was intended to reduce the influence of money and give neighborhoods more control over their representatives in city government. He also ran on a culturally liberal platform, opposing government interference in private sexual matters and favoring the legalization of marijuana. Milk's fiery, flamboyant speeches and savvy media skills earned him a significant amount of press during the 1973 election. He earned 16,900 votes—sweeping the Castro District and other liberal neighborhoods and coming in 10th place out of 32 candidates. Had the elections been reorganized to allow districts to elect their own supervisors, he would have won.


title: Harvey Milk

text: From early in his political career, Milk displayed an affinity for building coalitions. The Teamsters wanted to strike against beer distributors—Coors in particular—who refused to sign the union contract. An organizer asked Milk for assistance with gay bars; in return, Milk asked the union to hire more gay drivers. A few days later, Milk canvassed the gay bars in and surrounding the Castro District, urging them to refuse to sell the beer. With the help of a coalition of Arab and Chinese grocers the Teamsters had also recruited, the boycott was successful. Milk found a strong political ally in organized labor, and it was around this time that he began to style himself "The Mayor of Castro Street". As Castro Street's presence grew, so did Milk's reputation. Tom O'Horgan remarked, "Harvey spent most of his life looking for a stage. On Castro Street he finally found it."


title: Harvey Milk

text: Tensions were growing between the older citizens of the Most Holy Redeemer Parish and the gays who were entering the Castro District. In 1973, two gay men tried to open an antique shop, but the Eureka Valley Merchants Association (EVMA) attempted to prevent them from receiving a business license. Milk and a few other gay business owners founded the Castro Village Association, with Milk as the president. He often repeated his philosophy that gays should buy from gay businesses. Milk organized the Castro Street Fair in 1974 to attract more customers to the area. More than 5,000 attended, and some of the EVMA members were stunned; they did more business at the Castro Street Fair than on any previous day.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Although he was a newcomer to the Castro District, Milk had shown leadership in the small community. He was starting to be taken seriously as a candidate and decided to run again for supervisor in 1975. He reconsidered his approach and cut his long hair, swore off marijuana, and vowed never to visit another gay bathhouse again. Milk's campaigning earned the support of the teamsters, firefighters, and construction unions. His store, Castro Camera became the center of activity in the neighborhood. Milk would often pull people off the street to work his campaigns—many discovered later that they just happened to be the type of men Milk found attractive.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk favored support for small businesses and the growth of neighborhoods. Since 1968, Mayor Alioto had been luring large corporations to the city despite what critics labeled "the Manhattanization of San Francisco". As blue-collar jobs were replaced by the service industry, Alioto's weakened political base allowed for new leadership to be voted into office in the city. In 1975, state senator George Moscone was elected mayor. Moscone had been instrumental in repealing the sodomy law earlier that year in the California State Legislature. He acknowledged Milk's influence in his election by visiting Milk's election night headquarters, thanking Milk personally, and offering him a position as a city commissioner. Milk came in seventh place in the election, only one position away from earning a supervisor seat. Liberal politicians held the offices of the mayor, district attorney, and sheriff.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Despite the new leadership in the city, there were still conservative strongholds. In one of Moscone's first acts as mayor, he appointed a police chief to the embattled San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). He chose Charles Gain, against the wishes of the SFPD. Most of the force disliked Gain for criticizing the police in the press for racial insensitivity and alcohol abuse on the job, instead of working within the command structure to change attitudes. By request of the mayor, Gain made it clear that gay police officers would be welcomed in the department; this became national news. Police under Gain expressed their hatred of him, and of the mayor for betraying them.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk's role as a representative of San Francisco's gay community expanded during this period. On September 22, 1975, President Gerald Ford, while visiting San Francisco, walked from his hotel to his car. In the crowd, Sara Jane Moore raised a gun to shoot him. A former Marine who had been walking by grabbed her arm as the gun discharged toward the pavement. The bystander was Oliver "Bill" Sipple, who had left Milk's ex-lover Joe Campbell years before, prompting Campbell's suicide attempt. The national spotlight was on him immediately. On psychiatric disability leave from the military, Sipple refused to call himself a hero and did not want his sexuality disclosed. Milk, however, took advantage of the opportunity to illustrate his cause that public perception of gay people would be improved if they came out of the closet. He told a friend: "It's too good an opportunity. For once we can show that gays do heroic things, not just all that ca-ca about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms." Milk contacted a newspaper.<ref name="latimes2/13/89">Morain, Dan (February 13, 1989). "Sorrow Trailed a Veteran Who Saved a President and Then Was Cast in an Unwanted Spotlight", "The Los Angeles Times", p. 1.</ref>


title: Harvey Milk

text: Several days later Herb Caen, a columnist at "The San Francisco Chronicle", exposed Sipple as gay and a friend of Milk's. The announcement was picked up by national newspapers, and Milk's name was included in many of the stories. "Time" magazine named Milk as a leader in San Francisco's gay community. Sipple was besieged by reporters, as was his family. His mother, a staunch Baptist in Detroit, now refused to speak to him. Although he had been involved with the gay community for years, even participating in Gay Pride events, Sipple sued the "Chronicle" for invasion of privacy. President Ford sent Sipple a note of thanks for saving his life. Milk said that Sipple's sexual orientation was the reason he received only a note, rather than an invitation to the White House.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Keeping his promise to Milk, newly elected Mayor George Moscone appointed him to the Board of Permit Appeals in 1976, making him the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. Milk considered seeking a position in the California State Assembly. The district was weighted heavily in his favor, as much of it was based in neighborhoods surrounding Castro Street, where Milk's sympathizers voted. In the previous race for supervisor, Milk received more votes than the currently seated assemblyman. However, Moscone had made a deal with the assembly speaker that another candidate should run—Art Agnos. Furthermore, by order of the mayor, neither appointed nor elected officials were allowed to run a campaign while performing their duties.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk spent five weeks on the Board of Permit Appeals before Moscone was forced to fire him when he announced he would run for the California State Assembly. Rick Stokes replaced him. Milk's firing, and the backroom deal made between Moscone, the assembly speaker, and Agnos, fueled his campaign as he took on the identity of a political underdog. He railed that high officers in the city and state governments were against him. He complained that the prevailing gay political establishment, particularly the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, were shutting him out; he referred to Jim Foster and Stokes as gay "Uncle Toms". He enthusiastically embraced a local independent weekly magazine's headline: "Harvey Milk vs. The Machine". The Alice B. Toklas Club made no endorsement in the primary — neither Milk nor Agnos — while other gay-aligned clubs and groups endorsed Agnos or did dual endorsements.


title: Harvey Milk

text: Milk's continuing campaign, run from the storefront of Castro Camera, was a study in disorganization. Although the older Irish grandmothers and gay men who volunteered were plentiful and happy to send out mass mailings, Milk's notes and volunteer lists were kept on scrap papers. Any time the campaign required funds, the money came from the cash register without any consideration for accounting. The campaign manager's assistant was an 11-year-old neighborhood girl. Milk himself was hyperactive and prone to fantastic outbursts of temper, only to recover quickly and shout excitedly about something else. Many of his rants were directed at his lover, Scott Smith, who was becoming disillusioned with the man who was no longer the laid-back hippie he had fallen in love with.


title: Harvey Milk

text: If the candidate was manic, he was also dedicated and filled with good humor, and he had a particular genius for getting media attention. He spent long hours registering voters and shaking hands at bus stops and movie theater lines. He took whatever opportunity came along to promote himself. He thoroughly enjoyed campaigning, and his success was evident. With the large numbers of volunteers, he had dozens at a time stand along the busy thoroughfare of Market Street as human billboards, holding "Milk for Assembly" signs while commuters drove into the heart of the city to work. He distributed his campaign literature anywhere he could, including one of the most influential political groups in the city, the Peoples Temple. Milk accepted Temple volunteers to work his phones. On February 19, 1978, Milk wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter defending cult leader Jim Jones as "a man of the highest character" when asked. Milk's relationship with the Temple was similar to other politicians' in Northern California. According to "The San Francisco Examiner", Jones and his parishioners were a "potent political force", helping to elect Moscone (who appointed him to the Housing Authority), District Attorney Joseph Freitas, and Sheriff Richard Hongisto. When Milk learned Jones was backing both him and Art Agnos in 1976, he told friend Michael Wong, "Well fuck him. I'll take his workers, but, that's the game Jim Jones plays." But to his volunteers, he said: "Make sure you're always nice to the Peoples Temple. If they ask you to do something, do it, and then send them a note thanking them for asking you to do it."


title: Harvey Milk

text: The race was close, and Milk lost by fewer than 4,000 votes. Agnos taught Milk a valuable lesson when he criticized Milk's campaign speeches as "a downer ... You talk about how you're gonna throw the bums out, but how are you gonna fix things—other than beat me? You shouldn't leave your audience on a down." In the wake of his loss, Milk, realizing that the Toklas Club would never support him politically, co-founded the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club.


title: Harvey Milk

text: The fledgling gay rights movement had yet to meet organized opposition in the U.S. In 1977 a few well-connected gay activists in Miami, Florida, were able to pass a civil rights ordinance that made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal in Dade County. A well-organized group of conservative fundamentalist Christians responded, headed by singer Anita Bryant. Their campaign was titled Save Our Children, and Bryant claimed the ordinance infringed her right to teach her children Biblical morality. Bryant and the campaign gathered 64,000 signatures to put the issue to a county-wide vote. With funds raised in part by the Florida Citrus Commission, for which Bryant was the spokeswoman, they ran television advertisements that contrasted the Orange Bowl Parade with San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade, stating that Dade County would be turned into a "hotbed of homosexuality" where "men ... cavort with little boys".


title: Harvey Milk

text: Jim Foster, then the most powerful political organizer in San Francisco, went to Miami to assist gay activists there as election day neared, and a nationwide boycott of orange juice was organized. The message of the Save Our Children campaign was influential, and the result was an overwhelming defeat for gay activists; in the largest turnout in any special election in the history of Dade County, 70% voted to repeal the law.