Charlie Dent

Charlie Dent

Charles Again "Charlie" Dent (* 24. May 1960 in Allentown , Pennsylvania ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . From January 2005 to May 2018 he represented the 15th congressional constituency of the state of Pennsylvania in the US House of Representatives . He is considered an influential critic of President Donald Trump and the voice of moderate Republicans.

Family, education and work

Charlie Dent is the son of Marjorie and Walter R. "Pete" Dent who worked for Bethlehem Steel . Charlie Dent grew up in Allentown in Lehigh County - where he lived all his life - and attended William Allen High School there until 1978 . He then studied Foreign Service and International Politics at the State College of Pennsylvania State University until graduation in 1982 . He completed his education in 1993 at Lehigh University in Bethlehem with a Masters in Public Administration. In the following years he was a member of the staff of Congressman Donald L. Ritter , sales representative and hotel employee.

After the end of his congressional mandate, Dent has been working as a television commentator for CNN since May 2018 .

Dent is married with three children; the family lives in Allentown.

Political career

Dent served as an MP in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1991 to 1998 ; from 1999 to 2004 he was a member of the State Senate .

In the 2004 election , Dent was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the 15th  congressional constituency of Pennsylvania, which mainly includes Allentown . There he took over from Pat Toomey on January 3, 2005 . He was a member of the Grants Committee and the Ethics Committee , which he chaired from 2015. He also sat on three sub-committees. He was also a member of the Congressional Arts Caucus and was chairman of the Congressional Cement Caucus (his constituency is home to the leading cement producers in the United States). Dent co-founded the non-partisan parliamentary groups to promote the hydrogen cell and the Delaware River .

At the beginning of September 2017, Dent announced that it would not run again in the 2018 election. He justified his step, which came one day after being challenged by State Senator Justin Simmons in the party primary , with the fact that the growing polarization and ideological rigidization made governance increasingly difficult. He considers re-election in 2018 to be very difficult, especially due to the instability in the White House. Although President Trump won the district by eight percentage points (almost 52 percent) in the 2016 presidential election , there are slightly more Democrats than Republicans registered among the electorate, and President Obama achieved a majority in this district in 2012. Dent's mandate normally ends on January 3, 2019, but he announced in mid-April 2018 that he would resign within the next few weeks. Dent last won in 2016 by 20 percentage points. After Pennsylvania's congressional electoral districts have been redesigned, the new 7th district (which largely corresponds to Dent's previous 15th) is slightly democratic according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index and is therefore particularly at risk for the Republicans. The by-election for the remaining term of his congress mandate will take place at the same time as the general election in November 2018 , in which Dents successor will be determined from January 3, 2019 in changed electoral district boundaries. Dent's resignation took effect on May 12, 2018.

Positions

Charlie Dent, who represents an electoral district in the Philadelphia metropolitan area (mainly Lehigh County ), is known as a spokesman for the moderate wing of Republicans and has repeatedly criticized President Donald Trump in 2017. As a chairman of the Tuesday Group , he represented the centrist Republicans in the House of Representatives. His consistent rejection of all attempts by the Republicans to abolish the Obamacare health care reform after the 2016 elections in the United States , and the repeated attempts by the Trump administration to impose entry bans on people from predominantly Muslim countries ( Executive Order 13769 and 13780 ). In this context, Trump accused him of "destroying" the Republican Party. Dent credits himself with advocating for "Stability, Certainty, and Predictability."

Web links

Commons : Charlie Dent  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Charlie Dent in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Charlie Dent in the nndb (English)
• Charlie Dent's Biography. In: Votesmart.org (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Joe Concha: Former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent joins CNN. In: The Hill , May 21, 2018.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Charlie Dent's Biography. In: Votesmart.org (English).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Kyle Cheney, Alex Isenstadt: GOP moderate Charlie Dent won't seek reelection to House in 2018. In: Politico , September 7, 2017 (English); Jonathan Tamari: Rep. Charlie Dent, Trump critic and leading voice of centrist GOP, to retire. in: Philly.com , September 7, 2017 (English).
4. ^ Kyle Cheney, Elena Schneider: Dent resigns, to leave Congress next month. In: Politico , April 17, 2018.
5. ^ Wolf sets special US House election on general election day. ( Memento of the original from May 2, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Philly.com , May 2, 2018. 
6. ↑ Lindsey McPherson: Charlie Dent Leaving Congress At Week's End. In: Roll Call , May 8, 2018.