Tom Foley dies at 84; ex-House speaker was congressman for 30 years
Tall and courtly, Tom Foley served 30 years in a U.S. House where partisan confrontation was less rancorous than today and where Democrats dominated for decades. He crowned his long political career by becoming speaker, only to be toppled when Republicans seized control of Congress in 1994, turned out by angry voters with little taste for incumbents.
The first speaker to be removed from office by his constituents since the Civil War, Foley died Friday at his home in Washington, D.C., of complications from a stroke, according to his wife, Heather. He was 84.
Foley, who grew up in a politically active family in Spokane, Wash., represented that agriculture-heavy area for 30 years in the House, including more than five years in the speaker’s chair.
In that job, he was third in line of succession to the presidency and was the first speaker from west of the Rocky Mountains.
As speaker, he was an active negotiator in the 1990 budget talks that led to President George H.W. Bush breaking his pledge to never agree to raise taxes.
He was also at the helm when, in 1992, revelations that many lawmakers had been allowed to overdraw their checking accounts at the House bank provoked a wave of anger against incumbents. In 1993, he helped shepherd President Clinton’s budget through the House.
He never served a day as a member of the House’s minority party. The Republican capture of the chamber in the 1994 gave them control for the first time in 40 years, and Foley, it turned out, was their prize victim.
He was replaced as speaker by his nemesis, Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., leader of a group of rebellious younger Republicans who rejected the less-combative tactics of established GOP leaders.
Foley was defeated in 1994 by 4,000 votes by Spokane attorney George Nethercutt, a Republican who supported term limits, which the speaker fought. Also hurting Foley was his ability to bring home federal benefits, which Nethercutt used against Foley by accusing him of pork-barrel politics.
Foley later served as U.S. ambassador to Japan for four years in the Clinton administration.
Thomas Stephen Foley was born in the eastern Washington town of Spokane on March 6, 1929. His father, Ralph, was a judge for decades and a school classmate of Bing Crosby’s. His mother, Helen, was a teacher.
Foley attended Gonzaga University in Spokane before earning bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Washington. He worked as a prosecutor, assistant state attorney general, and as counsel for Washington’s Democratic Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson.
His mentor Jackson urged Foley to run for the House in 1964, which turned out to be a landslide year for the Democrats. Foley worked with leadership to get plum committee assignments. He eventually rose to majority leader, and the downfall of Jim Wright of Texas lifted him to the speaker’s chair, where he served from June 1989 until January 1995.
Foley said his proudest achievements were farm bills, hunger programs, civil liberties, environmental legislation and civil rights bills. Helping individual constituents also was satisfying, he said. Even though his views were often considerably to the left of his mostly Republican constituents, he said he tried to stay in touch.
After leaving Congress, he joined a blue chip law firm in Washington, D.C., by one account earning $400,000, plus fees he earned serving on corporate boards.
Foley and his wife, who was his unpaid political adviser and staff aide, had no children. She survives him, as does a sister.
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