What You Didn't Know About Rep. John Boehner of Ohio
By Jennifer L. Jack
Posted 11/15/06
- John Andrew Boehner was born Nov. 17, 1949, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father owned a bar, Andy's Café, and Boehner worked there mopping floors when he was in elementary school.
- One of 12 children, he played football at the all-male Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati, an all-male school. He was the first of his family to attend go to college, attending and worked his way through Xavier University.
- Boehner met and married his wife, Debbie, while at college. They have two daughters, Lindsay and Tricia.
- He was in the Navy briefly during the Vietnam War, but a back problem prevented kept him from any combat duty and he was discharged after six weeks.
- During college, he started working at Nucite Sales, a plastics and packaging company, and he eventually became its president.
- His entry into politics came after a switch in political allegiance. Boehner was raised in a family of Kennedy Democrats, but he decided to become a Republican in the late 1970s.
- In 1982, Boehner was elected to the Union Township Board of Trustees, and two years later he became a member of the Ohio House of Representatives. Boehner moved to the U.S. House of Representatives with a win in 1990 and quickly emerged as a Republican leader, part of as a member of the "Gang of Seven," a group of representatives who that decried corruption and encouraged reform in government. He was elected majority leader on Feb. 2, 2006.
- He is tight with K Street lobbyists. Of House members who receive gifts of privately funded travel, he ranks and is one of in the top 20 members of Congress who receive gifts of privately funded travel.
- Boehner is known as one who spends time in "Smoker's Alley" outside the Speaker speaker of the House's lobby. He prefers Barclay's cigarettes. In 1996, Boehner made the news when he was criticized for handing out checks from a tobacco-affiliated PAC to his colleagues on the House floor.
- In his spare time, Boehner likes to play golf. He is a member of two clubs, Wetherington Golf & Country Club in West Chester, Ohio, and The Burning Tree Club, a men-only golf club in Bethesda, Maryland.
Sources:
Almanac of American Politics
Biography Resource Center
Political MoneyLine
Politics in America