Gingrich's Deep Ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Mike Brown/Reuters Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1998 in Ireland, where he helped promote a program sponsored by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His campaign said he had been invited by Habitat for Humanity. WASHINGTON - On a trip to Ireland in 1998, Speaker Newt Gingrich researched his Irish roots, discussed the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland and entertained speculation about his presidential ambitions. He even donned work gloves and blue jeans to help build a home in Belfast for a good-will project. Two of the sponsors for part of the Ireland trip were frequent partners of Mr. Gingrich: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae - the government-backed housing industry giants that Mr. Gingrich has denounced as he fights to stay in contention against Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries. Mr. Gingrich has faced many questions recently about the more than $1.6 million in consulting fees he got from Freddie Mac since leaving Congress in 1999. But part of the relationship started years earlier, as records and interviews show that Mr. Gingrich, as House leader in the 1990s, aligned himself with Freddie and Fannie on a number of key issues - defending them in Congress against political attacks, joining with them on housing projects and seeing top aides go work for them. While Mr. Gingrich has minimized his past connections to the two closely related companies on the campaign trail, his Congressional record shows that his political and financial ties to the firms run deeper and farther back than he has acknowledged publicly and, in fact, set the stage for the lucrative consulting work that followed. Mr. Gingrich, whose campaign declined to comment on his ties with Fannie and Freddie while in Congress, has been blistering in his recent criticism of the mortgage finance companies. He has blamed them in part for the 2008 housing collapse, said they should now be "broken up," and in an October debate he declared that Representative Barney Frank should be "in jail" for associating with lobbyists close to Freddie. But while in Congress, Mr. Gingrich had kind words for the companies. Announcing a housing partnership in Atlanta in 1995, for instance, he held up Fannie as "an excellent example of a former government institution fulfilling its mandate while functioning in the market economy." He was far from Fannie and Freddie's only Congressional supporter in those years; before the stain of the 2008 housing collapse, the companies" allies were legion. But Mr. Gingrich's help was seen as particularly crucial after the Republicans took control of the House in 1994, as Freddie and Fannie tried to turn back rising hostility from some Republicans over their mission, structure and financing. Once he became speaker in 1995, Mr. Gingrich's support loomed large as the companies sought to shore up flagging confidence among the Republicans and bolster the case for home ownership, officials said. "Whenever you could get Republicans who supported you, it was important, and the more prominent the Republican, the better," said William Maloni, a senior vice president at Fannie Mae until 2004. Newt would have been important. Mr. Gingrich's senior advisers were important as well, with a handful of his aides and confidants going on to work for Freddie and Fannie or for lobbying groups that represented them. Of particular significance, several officials said, was Fannie's hiring of Arne L. Christenson, Mr. Gingrich's chief of staff, as a top executive and lobbyist in 1999. "From their perspective, hiring someone who could beef up their Republican credentials made perfect sense," said Jack Howard, policy director for Mr. Gingrich at the time. Mr. Christenson did not return a call seeking comment. In a showdown critical to the companies" fortunes, Mr. Gingrich played an important behind-the-scenes role in helping block a proposal in 1995 that would have forced Fannie and Freddie - rather than taxpayers - to pay potentially billions of dollars in increased fees, according to interviews and press accounts at the time. At the time, Representative Jim Leach, a senior Republican from Iowa who led the House banking committee and was a fierce critic of Fannie and Freddie, wanted the companies to pay the bulk of about $4.8 billion to finance a reserve for ailing savings and loan institutions. Jack Styczynski contributed research.