As a former House Republican staffer said at the time: “When you get beat for a leadership post, you go away and that’s it.’’
But Boehner didn’t go away.
Through a blend of a tenacious personality, relentless ambition, a talent for raising campaign money and a salesman’s gift for persuasion, Boehner became only the third Ohio lawmaker ever to occupy the speakership. He followed up that 1998 defeat with years of effort followed by an improbably comeback, becoming House majority leader in 2006 and then speaker in 2011.
“He could have walked away,’’ former Republican Congressman David Hobson, of Springfield, said in 2011. “He did something most people didn’t think he had the capability of doing: He became a very good legislator. Some people are destroyed by defeat. But he didn’t allow that defeat to destroy him as a legislator.”
On Friday, the 65-year-old Cincinnati native and lifelong Southwestern Ohio resident announced that he will resign from the speakership and the House on Oct. 30.
“That’s the code I’ve always lived by: if you do the right things for the right reasons, the right things will happen,” Boehner said at a press conference Friday. “And I know good things lie ahead for this House and this country.”
Friends say Boehner considered leaving last year. But 2014’s surprise primary election defeat of his majority leader, Virginia representative Eric Cantor, derailed those plans.
The announcement Friday came as a shock to many. And the resignation comes also after murmurs in recent weeks from some conservative House Republicans, who expressed a desire to replace Boehner in the House’s top job.
Boehner’s job was a consistently challenging one, dealing with a domestically energetic Democratic administration on one side and a stubborn group of restless Republican House members on the other.
GOP lawmakers displeased with his leadership discussed the latest attempt to replace Boehner as recently as Thursday at a closed party meeting, according to media reports.
There were fears as well of another government “shut down” this fall, the second on his watch. (The first happened in 2013.)
Some Republicans want to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding and are willing to interrupt non-mandatory federal operations to pursue that objective.
Boehner wanted to reform the House
When the Republicans controlled the House during the late 1990s, Boehner was lightly regarded by many commentators who saw him as a mediocre legislator with an indifferent work ethic.
“He’s a country club Republican” who is “always at the country club,” one former House Democrat, who asked not to be named, said in 2011.
Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough once said on his MSNBC television show that “so many Republicans tell me this is a guy that is not the hardest worker in the world. Every Republican I talk to says John Boehner, by 5 or 6 o’clock at night, you can see him at bars.”
Those same critics said he also was the unlikeliest of reformers. Too slick, they said, too close to lobbyists, too addicted to golf, too lucky and too interested in having a good time. He was seen as a perpetually tanned guy who cries anytime he talks about growing up in Southwestern Ohio.
They pointed out that, for two decades in Washington, he had raised huge sums of money from business groups. He once appalled critics by passing around tobacco-lobbyist contribution checks to GOP colleagues on the House floor just before a vote.
He also has the reputation of being a sharp-edged partisan. He was one of the few lawmakers to take a political opponent to court. Boehner sued Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., charging that he leaked to The New York Times a transcript of a cellular-phone call Boehner made in 1996.
“He’s always underestimated,” Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Genoa Twp., once said. “Part of it is his style. He doesn’t have a hair out of place, his tie is perfectly tied. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the work ethic of a rugged linebacker, because he does.”
1998 defeat a blessing in disguise
In the heady days of the 1994 Republican revolution, Newt Gingrich had risen to speaker and Boehner was elected to the No. 4 post in Republican leadership. But after Republicans lost five congressional seats in 1998, unhappy conservatives demanded a change in leadership and they focused their anger on Boehner.
In a post-election closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Republicans toppled Boehner by a vote of 121-102. As he and his staff walked through the Cannon Office Building corridors to return to his office, Boehner said to no one in particular, “This could be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
In a 2001 interview, Boehner said that “you have to understand, I’m an optimist. I can see the brighter side of any human being or any event. Sometimes, you just get dealt a bad hand. So, you just have to accept it and move on.’’
Within a day of the dinner at the Washington restaurant of Sam and Harry’s, Boehner was ready to chart a course back. He outlined some ideas to his top aide, Barry Jackson.
“Let me do a little work,’’ Jackson told him.
The next week, Jackson flew to Cincinnati with an 11-page, single-spaced memo and met with Boehner at his home in West Chester Twp .
As a first step, Jackson recommended that Boehner quickly schedule a series of public events in Cincinnati. In his confidential memo, Jackson wrote that “we need to end any speculation that you are quitting…. People should know you have not forgotten how to be a ‘regular’ congressman and that you take that role very seriously.”
Next, Jackson wrote that “if we are to reclaim our position in leadership, we must repair our reputation with the national media and, in particular, national commentators.”
Jackson pointed out that while national news organizations had reported favorably on Boehner in the mid-1990s, by 1998 it was “common knowledge’’ among reporters that “you were incapable of being elected speaker and were, indeed, the weakest member of leadership.”
And finally, Jackson wrote that “high-profile legislative initiatives are vital to our success.’’ In blunt language, Jackson was telling Boehner he had to prove to Republican members that he could write and pass a law.
In 2001, Boehner took the consolation job of chairing the education committee and quickly got a break: President George W. Bush pressed for passage of a landmark education bill known as No Child Left Behind, and Boehner’s committee had to write the measure.
Forming a businesslike relationship with Democrat George Miller of California, Boehner helped win passage of the bill, prompting former Boehner aide Terry Holt to say that “his comeback was established when the president signed No Child Left Behind.”
Bush signed the law in Boehner’s district, at Hamilton High School in January 2002.
In 2006, Boehner scraped together the votes to become majority leader, replacing Tom DeLay of Texas, an implacable opponent who had engineered Boehner’s 1998 defeat. While the Republicans lost the House in 2006, they retained Boehner as minority leader.
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