Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by TMS63112 (talk | contribs) at 06:17, 19 December 2005 (rearrange for flow and POV balance). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Richard George Renzi (born June 11 1959), American politician, has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 2003, representing the 1st District of Arizona (map).

Background and family

Renzi was born and grew up in Sierra Vista, Arizona, where his father, retired U.S. Army Major General Eugene Renzi (two star general), served at Ft. Huachuca. Renzi graduated from Buena High School and was educated at Northern Arizona University with a B.S. in criminal justice in 1980, and the Catholic University with a J.D. in 2002. Before entering politics he was an insurance businessman and a U.S. Department of Defense employee in the Washington, D.C. area.

Renzi's father is the executive vice president of Mantech International, a company providing information technology services to a number of intelligence and defense-related federal government agencies; over 1/3 of Mantech International's employees have top secret government security clearances.

Rick and Roberta Renzi are the parents of 12 children.

The 2002 election

When a new congressional district was created in Arizona, Renzi bought a house in Flagstaff, Arizona so he could claim Arizona residency and run for the seat. At this time, Renzi had lived in Virginia for over 20 years since graduating from Northern Arizona University. There is no evidence he actually moved into the house, and in 2003 after Renzi was elected to Congress, the bank foreclosed on the home after Renzi missed a series of mortgage payments. During the entire period, Renzi's actual residence continued in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C.

Renzi faced a hotly contested Republican primary election which included several other candidates. He was denounced as a carpetbagger by some activists within his own party, but nonetheless won the nomination. The 2002 Democratic primary, also hotly contested, was narrowly won by George Cordova, a party outsider who won over several better-known candidates supported by the Democratic National Committee.

Renzi spent $436,590 of his own money on the election, in addition to large donations from Mantech International executives, who were the largest single source of outside money for the campaign.

The Renzi campaign was criticized for the heavy use of negative advertising attacking Cordova, which the cash-strapped Cordova campaign was unable to match. The Renzi campaign also made heavy use of automated telephone calls throughout the district with various claims and innuendos about Cordova. Renzi claimed most of the negative advertising had been placed by the Republican National Committee without his permission.

On election day, Rick Renzi defeated George Cordova by a 49%-46% margin, a difference of about 6,000 votes.

The 2004 election

In preparation for the 2004 campaign, the Democratic Party in Arizona tapped Paul Babbitt, Coconino County commissioner and the brother of Bruce Babbitt to run for the seat, and pressured all other candidates with the exception of political unknown Bob Donahue out of the primary in order to clear the way for Babbitt to run against Renzi without a costly primary contest. Paul Babbitt's campaign was named a top national priority by most major Democratic fundraisers and liberal weblogs, because a plurality of Arizona 1st Congressional District voters are registered Democrats and because Renzi was able to defeat George Cordova by only about 6000 votes in 2002. Unlike the Cordova campaign of two years prior, which received only token support from the national Democratic Party organizations, the Babbitt campaign received major support; nonetheless, the Babbitt campaign was unable to match Renzi's fundraising.

The Renzi campaign once again flooded the district with negative advertising attacking Babbitt. On election day, Renzi was reelected by a 59%-36% margin. Pundits noted a number of reasons why Babbitt performed so poorly in a plurality Democratic district. Among them were the unpopularity of the Babbitt name in some parts of the district, resentment over pressure tactics used by the state Democratic Party to pressure other candidates out of the primary, and Renzi's record of securing congressional appropriations for the district especially on the Navajo Nation. However, the most common complaint was simply that Babbitt ran a poor campaign and was unwilling to commit to a firm position on much of anything, while Renzi merely had to repeat the campaign tactics he had successfully used in 2002.

Issues and positions

In 2004, Renzi was one of a handful of members in the House to vote in favor of an amendment to pull the United States out of the United Nations.

Renzi is an opponent of stem cell research and in May of 2005, he got into an argument on the House floor with Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) which was initially reported as Renzi choking Kirk until the argument was broken up by Congressman J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), although the offices of all three Congressmen deny this. The argument ensued after Renzi had learned that Kirk and the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership commissioned secret polling in the districts of Renzi and other members of Congress who oppose stem cell research. Renzi claims that he was only yelling at Kirk: "I was yelling at him. I told him it's absolutely unprecedented that Republicans would pay for a push poll to attack another Republican on such a core belief of mine...You're not going to change my view on the issue, as a father of 12."

Renzi is generally a supporter of expanded legal immigration into the United States, and supports expansion of guest worker programs and the H1B visa. He supports increased border enforcement against illegal immigration, however.

During the 2002 election campaign, Renzi proposed that Walnut Canyon National Monument in Northern Arizona be renamed the "National Park of the American Flag" and add an American flag theme to the park including displays of U.S. flags throughout history; this was in response to proposals by local citizens that Walnut Canyon National Monument be expanded and given National Park status. Renzi's proposal was widely ridiculed and he has not promoted it since.

During debates with his Democratic and Libertarian opponents for the U.S. House in 2004, Renzi attacked the environmental movement, naming in particular those who oppose logging as a forest thinning measure and those who support the removal of Glen Canyon Dam.

Ethical Questions

While in office, Renzi has been criticized for consistently introducing and voting in favor of bills benefiting his father's defense company . In 2003, Renzi sponsored legislation (signed into law in November 2003) that dealt hundreds of millions of dollars to his father’s business while, according to environmentalists, devastating the San Pedro River. The provision exempted the Army’s Fort Huachuca base in Sierra Vista, Arizona from maintaining water levels in the San Pedro River as called for in an agreement made in 2002 with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Renzi claimed he introduced the measure to prevent the closing of the Fort and to promote its enlargement. Neither the fort nor the river is located in Renzi’s district.

A key beneficiary of Renzi’s legislation was ManTech International Corp., a Fairfax, Virginia based defense contractor where Renzi’s father, Retired Major General Eugene Renzi, is an executive vice president. ManTech had $467 million in contracts at Fort Huachuca with options for an additional $1.1 billion between 2004 through 2008. In addition, the company, which has an office in Sierra Vista, Arizona, was the largest contributor to Renzi’s 2002 congressional campaign and the second largest in his 2004 campaign.

In 2004, the Federal Election Commission concluded an audit of Rep. Renzi's campaign committee, Rick Renzi for Congress, and found that the committee had illegally financed much of the Congressman's 2002 election campaign. The FEC found that $369,090 of the loans were made using impermissible corporate funds.

Renzi also received $30,000 in campaign contributions from former majority leader Tom Delay's ARMPAC. After Delay was indicted, Democrats criticized Renzi for not returning the money or donating it to charity. .

Due to the various ethical charges that have been raised by Renzi's opponents, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, labeled Renzi on of the "13 most corrupt members of Congress"

External links

• Official website

• 1959 births
• U.S. Representatives from Arizona
• ARMPAC Recipient