House speaker Jim Wright, Jim Wright, a driven Texas Democrat who rose to the pinnacle of congressional power before ethics charges forced his resignation as speaker of the House in 1989, died on Wednesday in Fort Worth. He was 92.
The Thompson’s Harveson & Cole funeral home in Fort Worth confirmed his death, at a nursing home.
While his resignation was prompted by a yearlong ethics investigation, much of the enmity against Mr. Wright derived from the way he ran the House and saw his role as speaker.
Republicans attacked him for encouraging peace negotiations in Nicaragua, accusing him of seizing authority that properly belonged to President Ronald Reagan. They were also furious over the parliamentary tactics he used to marginalize them on the way to passing a heavy load of legislation in 1987 and 1988.
The main ethics charges against Mr. Wright were that he had improperly accepted $145,000 in gifts from a Fort Worth developer, George Mallick, through a company that they owned together, and that the royalties he received for a slim book he wrote, “Reflections of a Public Man,” were actually a dodge to evade rules limiting gifts and speaking fees. The House Ethics Committee was preparing to decide whether he was guilty or not when he resigned.Mr. Wright insisted into retirement that Mr. Mallick had no personal interest in any particular legislation, which would have made any gifts to the speaker questionable, and that in any case he and his wife had not received gifts but rather compensation for work performed for the development company. As for the book, he insisted that House ethics rules specifically exempted all copyright royalties from congressional limits on outside income.
When he announced his resignation, on May 31, 1989, Mr. Wright said he hoped his departure would heal the partisan rancor of the House.
“All of us in both political parties must resolve to bring this period of mindless cannibalism to an end,” he said.
But his resignation did nothing to avert a new era of ferocious partisanship in the House. Leaders in both parties were brought down by ethics charges, the so-called permanent campaign by members of Congress made cooperation between Republicans and Democrats nearly impossible, and House voting reached historic levels of partisan polarization.
Beyond the specifics of the ethics charges, it was clear that Mr. Wright’s bullish style of leadership in his two and half years as speaker was a crucial factor in his downfall, not only in the opposition efforts spearheaded by Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, but also in the ultimate unwillingness of some Democrats to fight for him.
His effectiveness was one cause of Republican criticism. Mr. Gingrich repeatedly accused him of ethical lapses, but Mr. Gingrich also told John M. Barry, author of the 1989 book “The Ambition and the Power”: “If he survives this ethics thing, he may become the greatest speaker since Henry Clay.”
Mr. Wright’s aggressiveness made some Democrats restive. In the very active 100th Congress, he got many major bills passed — on welfare, the environment, highways, taxes and more — but to do so he had to force members to cast tough votes.
“In essence, Wright wanted to govern the country from the House,” Mr. Barry wrote in his book. “That required overawing the Senate and confronting and defeating the White House.”
No effort by Mr. Wright matched that description as well as his drive to sponsor peace talks in Nicaragua between its leftist Sandinista government and the contras, who were seeking to overthrow it in a guerrilla war aided by the Reagan administration.
Reagan initially invited Mr. Wright to support the aid to the contras as congressional opposition to it intensified in 1987. He agreed, and they issued a joint statement.But when Mr. Wright discussed concrete proposals with Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, whom the administration distrusted and would not meet, Reagan aides accused him of trying to usurp the role of the executive branch and conduct his own foreign policy. In his diary, Reagan himself dismissed Mr. Wright’s efforts as “monkeyshines.” Mr. Wright argued that many in the Reagan administration did not want peace talks for fear they might succeed and stop any further congressional financing of the contras.
A peace agreement in Nicaragua was reached after both Mr. Wright and Reagan left office in 1989, with George Bush succeeding the president and Thomas S. Foley succeeding Mr. Wright as speaker. In an election the next year, a contra candidate defeated Mr. Ortega, and the new secretary of state, James A. Baker III, congratulated Mr. Wright. “But for you there would have been no bipartisan accord,” he wrote, “without which there would have been no election.”
Mr. Wright in 2007, in an interview for this obituary, called his role in defusing the Nicaraguan conflict the “major accomplishment” of his career — “the fact that I was able to help bring about peace in Central America after a decade of war.”
That assessment is widely shared. Jorge Castaneda, the former Mexican foreign minister and a professor at New York University, said in an interview that Mr. Wright’s leadership “led to an end of the war.”
Philip Brenner, a Latin American expert at American University in Washington, said: “He made peace possible because he got people to talk to each other. The Constitution doesn’t envision members of Congress doing this. He was stepping out of a role. He was stepping into a role the president was unwilling to assume.”
Even Roger W. Fontaine, a National Security Council staff member in the Reagan administration, said of Mr. Wright, “He deserves a lot of credit.”
“I think the Congress,” he added, “by putting pressure on the administration as well as putting pressure on the guys down there, served us well.”
Perhaps an even more important factor in the willingness of House Republicans to line up with Mr. Gingrich to challenge Mr. Wright personally was the blunt power he used as speaker. His main weapon was his control of the Rules Committee as it sent bills to the House floor under procedures that were intended to minimize or eliminate the Republicans’ chances to amend or defeat them.
In 1987, he forced a once-defeated reconciliation bill through the House by finessing the requirement that a day pass before it could be voted on a second time. He held that vote open long after the standard 15 minutes had expired so that his final arm-twisting would achieve a majority.
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Republicans were outraged. Speaking of Mr. Wright, Representative Dick Cheney of Wyoming, then the third-ranking House Republican, told an interviewer: “He’s a heavy-handed son of a bitch, and he doesn’t know any other way of operating, and he will do anything he can to win at any price, including ignoring the rules, bending the rules, writing rules, denying the House the opportunity to work its will. It brings disrespect to the House itself. There’s no sense of comity left.”Republicans remembered Mr. Wright’s tactics and employed similar ones after they won the House in 1994 and Mr. Gingrich became speaker. In an interview, Mr. Wright conceded that he might have served as their model. “I hope not,” he said.
Norman J. Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, called Mr. Wright “one of the most capable speakers of our time.” But he said Mr. Wright’s methods were harmful to the House. They “inflamed an already edgy Republican minority and helped contribute to some of the partisan turmoil after his departure,” he said.
James Claude Wright Jr. was born in Fort Worth on Dec. 22, 1922, and grew up in Weatherford, Tex. He studied at Weatherford College and the University of Texas and enlisted in the Army Air Corps the day after Pearl Harbor. He flew 30 missions over Japan as a bombardier and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Mr. Wright was elected to the Texas Legislature in 1946 but proved too liberal for his district on civil rights issues and was defeated in 1948 by a more conservative Democrat, who called him soft on Communism.
He made a comeback, however, winning two two-year terms as mayor of Weatherford, where he persuaded the City Council to bus black students to high school in Fort Worth, a trip few had been able to make on their own. Weatherford’s own schools for blacks went through only the eighth grade.
In 1954, he ran for the House of Representatives, challenging a four-term incumbent Democrat, Wingate Lewis, and defeating him comfortably. Mr. Wright went on to be re-elected 17 times.
Two fellow Texans were influential in Mr. Wright’s career: the House speaker Sam Rayburn and Lyndon B. Johnson, who served in the Senate during Mr. Wright’s first years in Congress before becoming vice president in 1961. Mr. Wright lost a special election to fill Johnson’s Senate seat that year. On Nov. 22, 1963, Mr. Wright was in the presidential motorcade in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, putting Johnson in the White House.
Mr. Wright worked hard on the House Public Works Committee to bring benefits to his district, including Trinity River flood control and the revival of the Fort Worth stockyards area. He also traveled to campaign for other Democrats and won a close three-way contest to become House majority leader in 1976, defeating Phillip Burton and Richard Bolling by winning support from Texans, Southerners and conservatives. From that position he advanced almost automatically to become speaker after Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. retired in 1987.
Mr. Wright married his college sweetheart, Mary Ethelyn Lemons, in 1942, and they had five children. The marriage ended in divorce. Mr. Wright married Betty Hay, a congressional staff member, in 1972.
She survives him, as do four children from his first marriage: a son, James, and three daughters, Virginia McGuire, Kay Nelson and Alicia Carnes; a sister, Betty Lee Wright; 15 grandchildren; and 24 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Wright returned to Fort Worth after he left the House, lectured widely and traveled to Central America.
He also wrote a weekly column for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram for more than 10 years and several books, among them “Worth It All: My War for Peace” (1993), which examined the Nicaraguan peace effort; “Balance of Power: Presidents and Congress from the Era of McCarthy to the Age of Gingrich” (1994), and “The Flying Circus: Pacific War — 1943 — as Seen Through a Bombsight” (2005).
Despite mouth cancer that cost him part of his tongue and the right half of his jaw and that shrank his voice, he continued to teach a popular course on Congress and the presidency at Texas Christian University. He said he covered “times when a popular president got almost anything he wanted,” and times when “an assertive Congress” dominated events
The Thompson’s Harveson & Cole funeral home in Fort Worth confirmed his death, at a nursing home.
While his resignation was prompted by a yearlong ethics investigation, much of the enmity against Mr. Wright derived from the way he ran the House and saw his role as speaker.
Republicans attacked him for encouraging peace negotiations in Nicaragua, accusing him of seizing authority that properly belonged to President Ronald Reagan. They were also furious over the parliamentary tactics he used to marginalize them on the way to passing a heavy load of legislation in 1987 and 1988.
The main ethics charges against Mr. Wright were that he had improperly accepted $145,000 in gifts from a Fort Worth developer, George Mallick, through a company that they owned together, and that the royalties he received for a slim book he wrote, “Reflections of a Public Man,” were actually a dodge to evade rules limiting gifts and speaking fees. The House Ethics Committee was preparing to decide whether he was guilty or not when he resigned.Mr. Wright insisted into retirement that Mr. Mallick had no personal interest in any particular legislation, which would have made any gifts to the speaker questionable, and that in any case he and his wife had not received gifts but rather compensation for work performed for the development company. As for the book, he insisted that House ethics rules specifically exempted all copyright royalties from congressional limits on outside income.
When he announced his resignation, on May 31, 1989, Mr. Wright said he hoped his departure would heal the partisan rancor of the House.
“All of us in both political parties must resolve to bring this period of mindless cannibalism to an end,” he said.
But his resignation did nothing to avert a new era of ferocious partisanship in the House. Leaders in both parties were brought down by ethics charges, the so-called permanent campaign by members of Congress made cooperation between Republicans and Democrats nearly impossible, and House voting reached historic levels of partisan polarization.
Beyond the specifics of the ethics charges, it was clear that Mr. Wright’s bullish style of leadership in his two and half years as speaker was a crucial factor in his downfall, not only in the opposition efforts spearheaded by Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, but also in the ultimate unwillingness of some Democrats to fight for him.
His effectiveness was one cause of Republican criticism. Mr. Gingrich repeatedly accused him of ethical lapses, but Mr. Gingrich also told John M. Barry, author of the 1989 book “The Ambition and the Power”: “If he survives this ethics thing, he may become the greatest speaker since Henry Clay.”
Mr. Wright’s aggressiveness made some Democrats restive. In the very active 100th Congress, he got many major bills passed — on welfare, the environment, highways, taxes and more — but to do so he had to force members to cast tough votes.
“In essence, Wright wanted to govern the country from the House,” Mr. Barry wrote in his book. “That required overawing the Senate and confronting and defeating the White House.”
No effort by Mr. Wright matched that description as well as his drive to sponsor peace talks in Nicaragua between its leftist Sandinista government and the contras, who were seeking to overthrow it in a guerrilla war aided by the Reagan administration.
Reagan initially invited Mr. Wright to support the aid to the contras as congressional opposition to it intensified in 1987. He agreed, and they issued a joint statement.But when Mr. Wright discussed concrete proposals with Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, whom the administration distrusted and would not meet, Reagan aides accused him of trying to usurp the role of the executive branch and conduct his own foreign policy. In his diary, Reagan himself dismissed Mr. Wright’s efforts as “monkeyshines.” Mr. Wright argued that many in the Reagan administration did not want peace talks for fear they might succeed and stop any further congressional financing of the contras.
A peace agreement in Nicaragua was reached after both Mr. Wright and Reagan left office in 1989, with George Bush succeeding the president and Thomas S. Foley succeeding Mr. Wright as speaker. In an election the next year, a contra candidate defeated Mr. Ortega, and the new secretary of state, James A. Baker III, congratulated Mr. Wright. “But for you there would have been no bipartisan accord,” he wrote, “without which there would have been no election.”
Mr. Wright in 2007, in an interview for this obituary, called his role in defusing the Nicaraguan conflict the “major accomplishment” of his career — “the fact that I was able to help bring about peace in Central America after a decade of war.”
That assessment is widely shared. Jorge Castaneda, the former Mexican foreign minister and a professor at New York University, said in an interview that Mr. Wright’s leadership “led to an end of the war.”
Philip Brenner, a Latin American expert at American University in Washington, said: “He made peace possible because he got people to talk to each other. The Constitution doesn’t envision members of Congress doing this. He was stepping out of a role. He was stepping into a role the president was unwilling to assume.”
Even Roger W. Fontaine, a National Security Council staff member in the Reagan administration, said of Mr. Wright, “He deserves a lot of credit.”
“I think the Congress,” he added, “by putting pressure on the administration as well as putting pressure on the guys down there, served us well.”
Perhaps an even more important factor in the willingness of House Republicans to line up with Mr. Gingrich to challenge Mr. Wright personally was the blunt power he used as speaker. His main weapon was his control of the Rules Committee as it sent bills to the House floor under procedures that were intended to minimize or eliminate the Republicans’ chances to amend or defeat them.
In 1987, he forced a once-defeated reconciliation bill through the House by finessing the requirement that a day pass before it could be voted on a second time. He held that vote open long after the standard 15 minutes had expired so that his final arm-twisting would achieve a majority.
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Republicans were outraged. Speaking of Mr. Wright, Representative Dick Cheney of Wyoming, then the third-ranking House Republican, told an interviewer: “He’s a heavy-handed son of a bitch, and he doesn’t know any other way of operating, and he will do anything he can to win at any price, including ignoring the rules, bending the rules, writing rules, denying the House the opportunity to work its will. It brings disrespect to the House itself. There’s no sense of comity left.”Republicans remembered Mr. Wright’s tactics and employed similar ones after they won the House in 1994 and Mr. Gingrich became speaker. In an interview, Mr. Wright conceded that he might have served as their model. “I hope not,” he said.
Norman J. Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, called Mr. Wright “one of the most capable speakers of our time.” But he said Mr. Wright’s methods were harmful to the House. They “inflamed an already edgy Republican minority and helped contribute to some of the partisan turmoil after his departure,” he said.
James Claude Wright Jr. was born in Fort Worth on Dec. 22, 1922, and grew up in Weatherford, Tex. He studied at Weatherford College and the University of Texas and enlisted in the Army Air Corps the day after Pearl Harbor. He flew 30 missions over Japan as a bombardier and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Mr. Wright was elected to the Texas Legislature in 1946 but proved too liberal for his district on civil rights issues and was defeated in 1948 by a more conservative Democrat, who called him soft on Communism.
He made a comeback, however, winning two two-year terms as mayor of Weatherford, where he persuaded the City Council to bus black students to high school in Fort Worth, a trip few had been able to make on their own. Weatherford’s own schools for blacks went through only the eighth grade.
In 1954, he ran for the House of Representatives, challenging a four-term incumbent Democrat, Wingate Lewis, and defeating him comfortably. Mr. Wright went on to be re-elected 17 times.
Two fellow Texans were influential in Mr. Wright’s career: the House speaker Sam Rayburn and Lyndon B. Johnson, who served in the Senate during Mr. Wright’s first years in Congress before becoming vice president in 1961. Mr. Wright lost a special election to fill Johnson’s Senate seat that year. On Nov. 22, 1963, Mr. Wright was in the presidential motorcade in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, putting Johnson in the White House.
Mr. Wright worked hard on the House Public Works Committee to bring benefits to his district, including Trinity River flood control and the revival of the Fort Worth stockyards area. He also traveled to campaign for other Democrats and won a close three-way contest to become House majority leader in 1976, defeating Phillip Burton and Richard Bolling by winning support from Texans, Southerners and conservatives. From that position he advanced almost automatically to become speaker after Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. retired in 1987.
Mr. Wright married his college sweetheart, Mary Ethelyn Lemons, in 1942, and they had five children. The marriage ended in divorce. Mr. Wright married Betty Hay, a congressional staff member, in 1972.
She survives him, as do four children from his first marriage: a son, James, and three daughters, Virginia McGuire, Kay Nelson and Alicia Carnes; a sister, Betty Lee Wright; 15 grandchildren; and 24 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Wright returned to Fort Worth after he left the House, lectured widely and traveled to Central America.
He also wrote a weekly column for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram for more than 10 years and several books, among them “Worth It All: My War for Peace” (1993), which examined the Nicaraguan peace effort; “Balance of Power: Presidents and Congress from the Era of McCarthy to the Age of Gingrich” (1994), and “The Flying Circus: Pacific War — 1943 — as Seen Through a Bombsight” (2005).
Despite mouth cancer that cost him part of his tongue and the right half of his jaw and that shrank his voice, he continued to teach a popular course on Congress and the presidency at Texas Christian University. He said he covered “times when a popular president got almost anything he wanted,” and times when “an assertive Congress” dominated events
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