Paul Gosar

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Paul Gosar (Official Photo of the 112th US Congress)

Paul Anthony Gosar (* 27. November 1958 in Rock Springs , Wyoming ) is an American politician of the Republican Party and, since January 3, 2011 Member of the US House of Representatives from Arizona . He has represented the 4th congressional electoral district in the west of the state since 2013 .

Family, education and work

The son of a teacher grew up with nine siblings, many of whom continue to live in Wyoming; his brother Pete ran for the Democrats as a gubernatorial candidate in Wyoming in 2014 . The father Antone Gosar applied unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the lower house of the Wyoming State Legislature in 2002 .

Paul Gosar studied after attending high school in Pinedale from 1977 to 1981 at Creighton University and graduated in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science . He then completed postgraduate studies in dentistry at the Creighton Boyne School of Dentistry , graduating in 1985 as Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) and then working as a dentist from 1985 to 2010, starting in 1989 in his own practice in Flagstaff .

He lives in Prescott with his wife Maude . They have two daughters and one son. The Catholic was involved in the American Dental Association and was chairman of the Arizona Dental Association . He is involved in the Little League as a coach .

Political career

Gosar is one of the representatives of the conservative Tea Party movement within the Republican Party. As such, he ran in the 2010 election for the rural 1st congressional constituency of Arizona for the House of Representatives of the United States and beat the Democratic mandate holder Ann Kirkpatrick . In the election campaign, he rejected joint debates with Kirkpatrick and other candidates.

He took up his seat in the US House of Representatives on January 3, 2011. After the 2010 census , his previous constituency was rearranged in such a way that the political balance became significantly tighter. After Kirkpatrick had announced that he would apply again in the 2012 election , Gosar decided to run in the newly designed 4th congressional electoral district of Arizona , which encompasses the rural west of the state and is clearly dominated by the Republic ( Cook Partisan Voting Index : R + 21) . In 2012, 2014 and 2016 he was elected for this district, each with well over 65 percent of the vote; his mandate runs until January 3, 2019.

Gosar is or was a member of the committees for mineral resources and government control and a total of six sub-committees.

Positions and controversies

During his first election campaign, Gosar presented himself as an opponent of abortions and a proponent of a liberal gun law and the offshore extraction of oil . He called for the reduction of taxes and the budget deficit , the use of soldiers from the US Army to secure the border with Mexico as well as the repeal of the 2010 health reform . In 2015 he tried several times in vain to initiate impeachment proceedings against Gina McCarthy , the head of the EPA's environmental protection agency. The speech given by Pope Francis to the United States Congress in September 2015 was boycotted by the Catholic Gosar because of the Pope's statement that climate change needed countermeasures . Instead of advocating "flawed climate policy ", the Pope should rather use his time to combat "persecution [...] slavery, belittling and rape of Christian women and children" and "deliberately planned genocide of unborn children through planned parenthood ". As Speaker of the House in 2015 supported Gosar the Tea Party candidate Daniel Webster , as a presidential candidate in 2016 Ted Cruz and in the code for the United States Senate in 2018 parteiintern Kelli Ward .

Gosar is considered a loyal supporter of President Trump and, like him, calls for a tightening of immigration policy and the construction of a border wall to Mexico . Various actions and positions by Gosar attracted a lot of attention. In October 2017 he spread the conspiracy theory of Alex Jones , after which the right-wing demonstrations in Charlottesville were a plan of the left, to incite to racial unrest and harm President Trump. They were also financed by George Soros . Thereupon relatives asked him in an open letter to apologize to Soros for the unsubstantiated defamation. One of his brothers called Gosar an embarrassment for the family.

In January 2018, Gosar called for so-called Dreamer (people who entered the USA illegally as children, see DACA ), who were invited to the State of the Union Address , to be arrested on site. In July 2018, Gosar traveled to London at the invitation and expense of the Middle East Forum and appeared at an Islamophobic event at which Tommy Robinson from the English Defense League also spoke. Gosar met Steve Bannon , Raheem Kassam and Nigel Farage on the trip . Before the 2018 election , Gosar's Democratic candidate, David Brill, published several campaign spots in which six of Gosar's nine siblings call to vote for Brill. You justify your brother's rejection with his inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants with anti-Semitic undertones and his positions on environmental and health policy. His sister Grace said in one of these spots that it was difficult not to see her brother as a racist.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jeff Simon: Here's what it's like to be a Democrat in Wyoming. In: CNN.com , April 8, 2016; Joseph Flaherty: Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar's Siblings Endorse Rival in New Campaign Ads. In: Phoenix New Times , September 21, 2018. See Gosar, Antone “Tony”. In: Our Campaigns ; Gosar, Pete. In: Our Campaigns.
  2. ↑ Paul Gosar's Biography. In: Vote Smart.
  3. ↑ Gosar, Paul. In: Our Campaigns.
  4. ↑ Arizona's Rep. Gosar is trying to impeach EPA boss. In: AZCentral.com (English).
  5. ^ Matthew Daly: Arizona congressman Paul Gosar to boycott pope's speech. In: AZCentral.com , September 18, 2015.
  6. ^ What Congressman Paul Gosar Got Wrong About the Pope . In: Huffington Post , June 10, 2015. Retrieved September 22, 2018.
  7. ↑ Gosar, Paul. In: Our Campaigns.
  8. ↑ Derek Hawkins: Arizona congressman repeats claim that Charlottesville violence was left-wing plot. In: The Washington Post , October 6, 2017.
  9. ^ Congressman suggests Charlottesville was George Soros – backed conspiracy. In: Vice.com (English).
  10. ↑ Gosar Siblings Do Not Support Rep. Paul Gosar's statements on George Soros. In: The Kingman Daily Miner , October 24, 2017.
  11. ^ Antonia Noori Farzan: Paul Gosar Demands Dreamers Be Deported from The State of the Union Address Tonight. In: Phoenix New Times , January 30, 2018; Joseph Flaherty: Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar's Far-Right London Trip Funded by Fringe Group. In: Phoenix New Times , August 10, 2018.
  12. ^ Joseph Flaherty: Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar's Siblings Endorse Rival in New Campaign Ads. In: Phoenix New Times , September 21, 2018.
  13. ↑ Six siblings warn against choosing one's own brother . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 22, 2018. Retrieved September 22, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Gosar, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gosar, Paul Anthony
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician (Republican Party)
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Rock Springs , Wyoming