Jim Leach

Jim Leach

James Albert Smith "Jim" Leach (born October 15, 1942 in Davenport , Iowa ) is an American politician . Between 1977 and 2007 he represented the state of Iowa in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Jim Leach attended Davenport public schools. He then studied at Princeton University until 1964 and then at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC and from 1966 to 1968 at the London School of Economics .

Leach became a member of the Republican Party . Between 1965 and 1966 he was on the staff of Donald Rumsfeld , who was then a Congressman for Illinois . In the years that followed, Leach was entrusted with a number of diplomatic missions. From 1968 to 1969 he worked for the Foreign Ministry . In 1971 and 1972 he was a member of the American delegation to a UN disarmament conference in Geneva and to the UN General Assemblies. In the further course of the 1970s Leach held other political offices. He was a member of a commission that dealt with international educational and cultural issues. In 1974 and 1976 he was a delegate to regional Republican conventions in Iowa.

In the 1976 congressional elections, Leach was elected to the United States House of Representatives in Washington in the first constituency of Iowa, where he succeeded Democrat Edward Mezvinsky on January 3, 1977 . After 14 re-elections, he was able to complete 15 consecutive terms in Congress until January 3, 2007. Since 2003 he has represented the second district as the successor to Jim Nussle . In financial terms he was considered to be rather conservative, in social and foreign policy matters as liberal. In 1991 he supported the Second Gulf War . In 2002, he was one of only six Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted against the Iraq war . But after this was decided, he did not want to endanger the financing of the war and in 2003 voted against tax cuts. On some ethical issues he was closer to the Democrats than to his own party. Between 1995 and 2001, Leach was Chairman of the Finance Committee . In the 2006 elections he was defeated by David Loebsack .

After serving in the House of Representatives, Jim Leach became a board member of several nonprofits and lectured at Princeton University. Between 2007 and 2008 he was acting head of the political department at Harvard University , the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government . In August 2008, Leach joined the Democratic Party and gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention . In this year's presidential election, he supported the successful candidate Barack Obama . In June 2009, Leach was named chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities by the now-elected President Obama . Leach has a son and a daughter with his wife Elisabeth. The family lives in Iowa City and Princeton.

He holds an honorary doctorate from the Financial University of the Government of the Russian Federation and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2010 .

Web links

• Jim Leach in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)