John Jenrette

John Jenrette (1975)

John Wilson Jenrette Jr. (born May 19, 1936 in Conway , South Carolina ) is a former American politician . Between 1975 and 1980 he represented the state of South Carolina in the US House of Representatives .

Career

John Jenrette attended Loris High School until 1954 . He then graduated from Wofford College until 1958 . After studying law at the University of South Carolina at Columbia and being admitted to the bar in 1962, he worked as a city judge in North Myrtle Beach between 1962 and 1965 . He was then a trial lawyer in this city until 1969. Politically, Jenrette became a member of the Democratic Party . From 1964 to 1972 he was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives . In 1972 he ran unsuccessfully for Congress . In 1980 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in New York , where US President Jimmy Carter was nominated for re-election.

In 1974 Jenrette was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the Sixth Constituency of South Carolina . There he took over from Republican Edward Lunn Young on January 3, 1975 . He was confirmed in each of the following two congressional elections. In 1980, he was under the Abscam operation of the FBI accused of bribery and sentenced to two years in prison, of which he had to serve 13 months. For this reason he resigned on December 10, 1980 from his mandate. He had not been re-elected in the November elections of the same year, so that his time in the House of Representatives would have ended on January 3, 1981 anyway.

Jenrette gained national fame when he took the break from sitting behind a pillar on the main stairs of the Capitol during a nightly congressional debate on sex with his then-wife Rita Jenrette , an actress and journalist . The resulting scandal gave the well-known political satire group Capitol Steps its name. The marriage ended in divorce in 1981.

In 1989 Jenrette again attracted negative attention when he was sentenced to 30 days' arrest for shoplifting. Today he runs an advertising company in Florence and Myrtle Beach.

Web links

• John Jenrette in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)