Jeff Flake

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Jeff Flake (2013)

Jeffry Lane "Jeff" Flake (* 31 December 1962 in Snowflake , Arizona ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . From 2001 to 2013 he represented the eastern suburbs of Phoenix in the US House of Representatives and was a member of the United States Senate for Arizona from 2013 to 2019 . In October 2017, Flake announced, amid severe criticism of President Donald Trump , that it would not run again in the Senate election in November 2018 .

Family, education and work

Jeff Flake grew up in Snowflake, a small town that his great-great-grandfather William J. Flake , a Mormon pioneer , founded with Erastus Snow in 1878 and that bears their names. Raised up on the family ranch with ten siblings , Flake was a cowboy in his youth . His family was involved in local politics, his uncle Jake Flake was Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and was a member of the Arizona Senate .

Jeff Flake studied at Brigham Young University in Provo ( Utah ) until 1987 , where he obtained a bachelor's degree in international relations in 1986 and a master's degree in political science in 1987. In the early 1980s he worked as a missionary for the Mormons , of which he belongs like his family, in Zimbabwe and South Africa ; he is fluent in Afrikaans . After graduating in 1987, Flake briefly interned with Democratic Senator Dennis DeConcini and began his career in public relations at the Washington lobby company Shipley, Smoak & Henry . In April 1989 he became head of the Foundation for Democracy , which was involved in drawing up a constitution for Namibia . After Namibia's independence in 1990, Flake returned to the United States and initially worked in Washington, DC until 1991 in Interface Public Affairs, a company he founded and run, as a registered lobbyist for Namibian companies and campaigned for the lifting of sanctions from the time of the Apartheid one. Among his customers was the Rössing mine , which mines uranium and whose minority owner is Iran , which Flake was accused of in the 2012 Senate election campaign. From 1992 until his election in 2000, Flake was the director of the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute , a conservative think tank named after former Senator Barry Goldwater .

Jeff Flake has been married to Cheryl Flake since graduating. The couple have five children. You live in Mesa , an eastern suburb of Phoenix.

Political career

Member of the House of Representatives

In the November 2000 election , he was elected to the US House of Representatives for the 1st Congressional constituency of Arizona as the successor to Matt Salmon . He prevailed against David Mendoza, the Democratic Party candidate, with 54 percent of the vote . On January 3, 2001 he took up the mandate for this constituency, which included the Mormon-influenced eastern suburbs of Phoenix (East Valley). In the subsequent elections, Flake was re-elected every two years, most recently in 2010, with results of at least 66 percent of the vote (in some cases without opposing candidates from the Democrats) . After redistricting the constituencies, he represented Arizona's sixth congressional electoral district from January 3, 2003, which largely coincided with the previous one.

Flake served on the House of Representatives' committees on foreign affairs , mineral resources, and government control and reform . Originally a supporter of the Iraq war and the USA PATRIOT Act , he went into cautious opposition in the following years, which earned him an internal party candidate for a primary election in 2004. Flake was also a member of the judicial committee until the party leadership did not send him back to it in 2007. Flake attributed this to his internally controversial support for immigration reform. During his stays in Washington he slept in his office and kept his distance from the local politics. As early as the early 2000s, he was one of the first MPs to demand the abolition of subsidies for local individual projects (so-called "earmarking" or pejorative "pork-barrel spending"), which earned him opponents in his own party after the success of Tea Party movement though has become mainstream among Republicans and current law.

Again and again, Flake was brought up as a possible candidate for the office of Governor of Arizona or for a seat in the United States Senate .

Senator for Arizona

Flake during an election campaign in April 2012

In the summer of 2012, Flake was finally nominated by the Republicans of his state for the seat in the US Senate that his party colleague Jon Kyl had held. According to surveys, he was head to head for a long time with his competitor, the Democrat Richard Carmona . Flake received 49.2 percent of the vote on November 6, 2012 in the more Republican-dominated state, Carmona 46.2 percent. The more than 100,000 votes for the Senate candidate of the Libertarian Party (with 30,000 votes for the party candidate in the presidential election at the same time ) were taken as an indication that part of the Conservatives found flake too moderate. On January 3, 2013, Flengake took up his mandate in the Senate. He is a member of the committees on Energy and Natural Resources , Foreign Affairs , Justice and Aging and a number of sub-committees. Flake chairs the Africa and World Health Policy and Terrorism and Homeland Security subcommittees .

In the summer of 2014 Flake took along with the Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich ( New Mexico ) on the reality TV telecast Rival Survival of the Discovery Channel in part, in which both six days on a deserted island in Micronesia had to spend - and of the need Promote bipartisan collaboration. Flake was present at practice for a charity baseball game on June 14, 2017 when the Congressional baseball attack occurred, but was not injured. He was then contacted by former President Obama, with whom Flake has a good relationship and who had accompanied him to Arizona in 2011 after the shots at then Congressman Gabrielle Giffords .

In the summer of 2017, Kelli Ward , who belongs to the right wing of the party and who had run against the other Arizona Senator John McCain in 2016 , announced that she would run for his Senate seat in the party primary against Flake. A poll in September 2017 saw them in the lead by a double-digit margin - in all parts of the state. Even the possible Democratic opponent in the main election, Congressman Kyrsten Sinema , led in this poll with 47 to 40 percent against Flake, who was only 25 percent popular with the likely participants in the Republican primary election. 34 percent of Arizona voters were happy with his job, 59 percent were not.

In October 2017, Flake announced in a Senate speech that he would not stand again in the 2018 election and sharply criticized President Trump. He spoke out against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama by-election in December 2017 after Moore was accused of multiple sexual assaults against minors. Flake donated $ 100 to Democratic candidate Doug Jones for his election campaign and wrote in a tweet "Country over Party". At the Senate hearing of the controversial Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh in September 2018, Flake was considered one of the few Republican senators inclined to vote no. After hearing a woman who said that Kavanaugh tried to rape her while she was still in school, Flake and his party's colleagues on the Judiciary Committee voted on September 28, 2018 to allow the Senate plenary to vote on Kavanaugh, but attached the condition precedent that the FBI should spend a week investigating the allegations. Previously, two women had confronted him with their indignation in front of the cameras in the elevator.

Flake's Senate mandate ended on January 3, 2019. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was elected as his successor . His opposition to Trump made Flake popular among leftist and conservative opponents of the president . He does not rule out a return to politics. In March 2018 Flake said that he assumed and believed that there would be an internal party challenger for Trump in the 2020 presidential election ; that Flake himself had recently traveled to the important pre-election state New Hampshire caused speculation that Flake himself could compete, which he ruled out in January 2019.

Criticism of President Trump

Flake refused to give Trump support during the 2016 presidential campaign and became one of his toughest internal party critics during Donald Trump's presidency . On August 1, 2017, Flake published the book Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle , in which he attacked Donald Trump's politics head-on as populist and protectionist . The title adapts the title of a book by the former Conservative Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater , who is currently considered a role model in the right wing of the Republican party.

In his speech in the Senate in October 2017, in which he announced that he would not stand for re-election in 2018, he said that he would no longer “be complicit or remain silent” in view of the “ruthless, outrageous and undignified” behavior of the president. In a Senate speech on January 17, 2018, Flake commented on Trump's media criticism; their designation as "enemy of the people" ( Enemy of the People ) presented Flake in relation to Stalinism . Flake continued: "In 2017 the truth - the objective, empirical, proven truth - was abused and damaged more than ever before in the history of our country, under the responsibility of the most powerful person in our government." The constant repetition of untruths undermines trust in important institutions with destructive effects on democracy.

Despite his sharp rhetoric against Trump and appeals to uphold the norms and manners of political business, Flake has been accused of failing to offer effective criticism. In the summer of 2018, for example, he threatened to block Trump's proposals for judicial posts as long as Trump continued his protectionist customs policy, but he did not act on his threat. According to FiveThirtyEight , Flake voted with the president in over eighty percent of cases in the Senate, including controversial nominations such as Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and Neil Gorsuch as Supreme Court Justice . Shortly after the mid-term election in November 2018, Flake reiterated its threat to block the appointment of judges if a law designed to protect Mueller's special investigation is not put to the vote.

Positions

As head of the Goldwater Institute, Flake familiarized himself with conservative and libertarian ideas, influenced by the economists Friedrich Hayek and Vernon Smith and the supply-side politicians Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher . He also met the influential conservative intellectual, William F. Buckley . Flake describes himself as conservative and points out that he has voted to abolish Obamacare health care reform about 30 times . However, when it comes to issues such as dealing with illegal immigrants, he is considered moderate and is therefore criticized by conservatives in his own party. He was one of the eight senators of the so-called "Gang of Eight", who in 2013 designed a non-partisan immigration reform . While Flake has spoken out against abortions ( pro-life ) and same-sex marriages , he deviated from the party line when he supported the abolition of the military-internal directive Don't ask, don't tell in 2010 . His popularity fell in 2013 when he spoke out against tightening gun laws.

When, in March 2015, 47 of the 54 Republican US Senators undermined Obama's conduct of negotiations to control Iran's nuclear program in a public letter , he was among the seven members of his party who did not sign the letter. Unlike most Republicans, Flake supported President Obama in his efforts to normalize relations with Cuba .

Fonts

  • Conscience of a Conservative. A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. Random House, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-399-59291-1 .

Web links

Commons : Jeff Flake  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

supporting documents

  1. ^ Daniel Schorn: Rep. Flake On Cutting Congressional Pork. In: CBS News , November 2, 2006 (page 2)
  2. ^ A b c d Nash Jenkins: Fighting Donald Trump Cost Jeff Flake His Job. But he's not going quietly. In: Time , November 30, 2017.
  3. ↑ Past Becomes lobbying issue in Arizona Senate race. In: Fox News , May 13, 2012
  4. ↑ John CElock: Jeff Flake Senate Campaign: Candidate's lobbying Past Not On bios. In: The Huffington Post , May 16, 2012.
  5. ↑ Jeff Flake's Biography. In: Vote Smart
  6. ^ A b c d Gregory Lewis McNamee: Jeff Flake. In: Encyclopedia Britannica , May 29, 2015.
  7. ↑ Flake, Jeff. In: Our Campaigns.
  8. ↑ See the maps of the congressional electoral districts of Arizona until 2002 and from 2003 .
  9. ↑ Jeff Flake Election Results: Richard Carmona Defeated In 2012 Arizona Senate Race. In: The Huffington Post , Nov. 7, 2012
  10. ↑ Jeremy Duda: Vote analysis shows why Flake-Carmona race was so close. In: Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.
  11. ↑ Jordan Ray: Flake: Send Reid, McConnell to island. In: Politico , September 18, 2014.
  12. ↑ Elena Schor: Obama reaches out to Sen. Flake after shooting. In: Politico , June 14, 2017.
  13. ↑ a b Josh Delk: Poll shows Flake down huge in primary and general election. In: The Hill , September 13, 2017.
  14. ↑ Republican Sen. Jeff Flake won't seek reelection. In: CNN.com , October 24, 2017.
  15. ↑ Avery Anapol: Flake donates $ 100 to Doug Jones campaign: 'Country over Party'. In: The Hill , December 5, 2017.
  16. ↑ Seung Min Kim, John Wagner: Senate Republican leaders agree to new FBI background investigation of Kavanaugh. In: The Washington Post , September 28, 2018.
  17. ↑ Veronica Stracqualursi: Flake: 'There should be' Republican challenger to Trump in 2020. In: CNN.com , March 3, 2018
  18. ↑ John Distaso: Frequent Trump critic, potential 2020 contender, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake headed to NH. In: WMUR.com , February 27, 2018.
  19. ↑ Jeff Flake “will not be a candidate” in the 2020 presidential race. In: CBS News , January 29, 2019.
  20. ^ Jeff Flake delivers the most courageous conservative rebuttal of Trumpism yet. In: The Washington Post , August 2, 2017.
  21. ↑ US Senator: "Mr. President, I will no longer be complicit ”. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 25, 2017
  22. ↑ Jeff Flake: Enough. It is time to stand up to Trump. Guest Post. In: The Washington Post , October 24, 2017 (with video of the Senate speech).
  23. ↑ Kasie Hunt: Flake to denounce Trump media attacks as Stalinist in Senate speech. In: NBC News , Jan. 14, 2018.
  24. ↑ Jeff Flake: Trump misuses the truth like no one before. In: FAZ.net , February 18, 2018
  25. ↑ 'Our democracy will not last': Jeff Flake's speech comparing Trump to Stalin, annotated. In: The Washington Post , January 17, 2018.
  26. ↑ Joseph Flaherty: 15 Times Jeff Flake Criticized Trump, Then Nothing Happened. In: Phoenix New Times , July 17, 2018.
  27. ↑ Jeremy Herb: Republican senator threatens to vote against judges after GOP blocks vote on Mueller protection bill. In: CNN.com , 14. November 2018.
  28. ^ Republican Senators Warn Iran in Open Letter. In: Politico , March 9, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Flake, Jeff
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Flake, Jeffry Lane (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Republican Party politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Snowflake , Arizona