John Ensign

John Ensign

John Eric Ensign (* 25. March 1958 in Roseville , California ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . For the state of Nevada , he sat in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999 and in the United States Senate from 2001 to 2011 .

Family, education and work

Ensign is the son of Sharon Lee Cipriani (died 2014) and a little-known biological father. During his childhood his family moved from California to Nevada, where his mother worked in a casino in Reno and raised her three children alone. There she married Michael S. Ensign (died 2016), a manager in the gaming industry who later became chairman of the board of directors of the Mandalay Bay Resort hotel . In addition to his siblings, Michael Ensign also adopted nine-year-old John Ensign. The family moved to Las Vegas when John Ensign was sixteen. There he attended EW Clark High School.

Ensign studied veterinary medicine at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas , Oregon State University (Bachelor of Science 1981) and Colorado State University , where he was "born again Christian ". He was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity . In 1985 he graduated with a doctorate in veterinary medicine and then opened the first 24-hour veterinary clinic in Las Vegas . He was also a hotel manager. After retiring from politics, he resumed work as a veterinarian.

Ensign lives in Las Vegas; he has three children with his wife Darlene. They divorced in July 2019. As a member of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel , Ensign was the only Pentecostal member in the US Senate. He belongs to the evangelical group Promise Keepers .

Political career

In the House of Representatives

1994 Ensign could in the code ( Primary ) of the Republican Party for elections to the House of Representatives for the first congressional district to enforce Nevada. In the election campaign that followed, he was largely behind the incumbent, Democrat James Bilbray . However, when it became known that a campaign aide Bilbray had obtained great financial benefits through laws that Bilbray had campaigned for, Ensign was able to catch up. He won the House of Representatives election by 1,400 votes. When he was re-elected in 1996 , he had a lead of seven percentage points. In the House of Representatives, Ensign campaigned for the construction of a hospital for veterans of the American military in southern Nevada, which was inaugurated in 2011.

Since he did not stand for re-election in 1998 , his term in the House of Representatives ended on January 3, 1999.

In the Senate

In 1998 Ensign stood in the US Senate election , but lost to the Democratic mandate holder Harry Reid , who had received 428 more from a total of 416,000 votes cast - with recount. Both sides had spent $ 8 million in the election campaign. Ensign ran again in the Senate election in 2000 and this time was able to prevail against the Democrat Ed Bernstein; Ensign received 55 percent of the vote, Bernstein 40. Ensign thus took the seat of outgoing Senator Richard Bryan (Democrats). In the 2006 Senate election , Ensign stood against the Democrat Jack Carter , son of former US President Jimmy Carter . Ensign won the election with 55 percent of the vote, with Carter receiving 41 percent. Ensign and the second Senator for Nevada, Reid, developed a friendly relationship despite different party affiliations and regularly campaigned jointly for the interests of Nevada. Both of them campaigned against a nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain and restrictions in the gaming industry.

John Ensign was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) from 2007 to 2009 and as such was responsible for the candidate search, coordination, fundraising and distribution of the 2008 Senate election . However, he failed to achieve his goal of winning back the majority in the Senate. When he visited Iowa - the state where presidential primaries traditionally begin - in May 2009 , it was reported that Ensign could potentially run in the 2012 election.

Affair and resignation

In June 2009 it was announced that Ensign had had an affair lasting several months with a long-time employee in 2007/08. Ensign resigned from his position as NRSC Chairman. The Senate then had Ensign's behavior investigated by an ethics committee, among other things because there was suspicion that Ensign had exploited his position to keep the scandal from becoming public: he had found a well-paid lobbyist position for his lover's husband and had campaigned for projects from which its clients benefited. In May 2011, the ethical investigation found that there was "substantial and credible evidence" that Ensign had broken federal law and referred the matter to the US Department of Justice. There the investigation was continued by the FBI and closed in 2012. The Federal Election Commission fined Ensign and his parents $ 54,000 for payments to Ensign's former mistress and husband.

In March 2011, Ensign announced that it would not run again in the 2012 Senate elections and announced on April 22 that it would resign from the Senate on May 3, 2011. This gave Nevada's Republican Governor Brian Sandoval the opportunity to appoint a successor, who acted as a temporary by-election until the extraordinary by-election , which took place at the same time as the regular election day in November . The choice fell on Congressman Dean Heller . Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington , commented on the proceedings by saying there had been pressure on Ensign to step down early in order to give an appointed successor a head start in the next election. He left his documents as a politician in the archives of the University of Nevada, Reno .

Positions

Ensign was considered socio-politically conservative and, among other things, campaigned against abortion ( Pro-Life ). He repeatedly emphasized the value of family and called on Bill Clinton to resign in 1998 in the wake of the Lewinski affair and in 2007 in Larry Craig in the wake of a sex scandal. He rejected same-sex marriages . In 2010, Ensign, influenced by activists, voted for the repeal of the Don't ask, don't tell military policy that had openly banned homosexuals from military service.

Together with the Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell ( Washington ), Arlen Specter ( Pennsylvania ) and Dianne Feinstein (California), he was instrumental in advocating the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act . This law prohibits the transport of animals from one state to another for combat purposes. He advocated less government and lower taxes as well as a strengthening of security policy with an intensified fight against terrorism and supported the Iraq war . Parents should, in his view, be given more choices about their children's education.

Web links

Commons : John Ensign  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• John Ensign in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Ensign, John. In: Our Campaigns (English)
• John Ensign's Biography. In: Vote Smart (English)
• Ensign's appearances at C-Span (English)
• Subject of John Ensign at the Las Vegas Sun (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Colton Lochhead: Gaming pioneer Mike Ensign, father of a former Nevada senator, dies at 79. In: Las Vegas Review-Journal , December 8, 2016 (with incorrect age for adoption), see Carol Elder Bruce: Report of the Preliminary Inquiry into the Matter of Senator John E. Ensign. May 10, 2011, p. 7 (PDF) .
2. ^ A Guide to the John Ensign US Senatorial Papers. ( Memento of the original from October 2, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: University of Nevada, Reno . 
3. Jump up ↑ Arena Profile: John Ensign. In: Politico , 2010; Dr. John Ensign. In: Boca Park Animal Hospital.
4. ^ Blake Apgar, Former Nevada Sen. John Ensign divorces wife. In: Las Vegas Review-Journal , July 22, 2019.
5. ↑ Randy James: Senator John Ensign, 'I Had an Affair'. In: Time , June 18, 2009.
6. ↑ David Wasserman, Larry J. Sabato: October Surprise! (And a Leadership Demise?). Bombshell Leaves Republicans with Unwanted Fall "Foley-Age". In: Sabato's Crystal Ball , University of Virginia Center for Politics, October 5, 2006.
7. ^ Statistics of the congressional election of November 8, 1994. Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives.
8. ^ Statistics of the congressional election of November 5, 1996. Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives.
9. Jump up ↑ Arena Profile: John Ensign. In: Politico , 2010.
10. ^ Statistics of the congressional election of November 3, 1998. Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives; Dennis Myers: Harry Reid. In: Online Nevada Encyclopedia , October 14, 2010.
11. ↑ Randy James: Senator John Ensign, 'I Had an Affair'. In: Time , June 18, 2009.
12. ^ Statistics of the congressional election of November 7, 2000. Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives.
13. ^ Statistics of the congressional election of November 7, 2006. Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives.
14. ^ A Guide to the John Ensign US Senatorial Papers. ( Memento of the original from October 2, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: University of Nevada, Reno . 
15. ^ Carol Elder Bruce: Report of the Preliminary Inquiry into the Matter of Senator John E. Ensign. May 10, 2011, p. 8 (PDF) .
16. ↑ Thomas Spang: Sex scandal in the US Senate. In: DerWesten , June 19, 2009.
17. ↑ Jim Rutenberg, Steve Friess: After Affair, Senator Resigns Leadership Job. In: The New York Times , June 17, 2009.
18. ^ Paul Kane, Carol D. Leonnig: Senate ethics committee: Ensign violated federal laws. In: The Washington Post , May 12, 2011; Eric Lichtblau: Documents Reveal Details of FBI Inquiry Into Nevada Senator. In: The New York Times , December 29, 2014.
19. ^ John Bresnahan: FEC fines Ensign family $ 54,000. In: Politico , May 17, 2013.
20. ^ Ensign Will Not Seek Re-election in 2012. In: RealClearPolitics.
21. ^ Gail Russell Chaddock: John Ensign resignation puts focus on Nevada elections. Will GOP have an edge? In: The Christian Science Monitor , April 22, 2011.
22. ^ A Guide to the John Ensign US Senatorial Papers. ( Memento of the original from October 2, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: University of Nevada, Reno . 
23. ↑ Randy James: Senator John Ensign, 'I Had an Affair'. In: Time , June 18, 2009.
24. ^ April Corbin: With Don't Ask, Don't Tell's repeal, gay soldiers come out of the shadows. In: Las Vegas Weekly , September 22, 2011.
25. ↑ HR137 - Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act of 2007: 110th Congress (2007-2008). In: Congress.gov.
26. Jump up ↑ Arena Profile: John Ensign. In: Politico , 2010.