Thomas Foley

Thomas Foley, born in 1929, American political leader, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (1989-1995). Thomas Stephen Foley was born in Spokane, Washington, and educated at Gonzaga University and at the University of Washington, from which he received a law degree in 1957. Foley practiced law in Spokane until he was named deputy prosecutor of Spokane County (1958) and then assistant state attorney general (1960). Appointed in 1961 by Washington's Democratic U.S. Senator Henry M. Jackson to serve as special counsel to the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Foley was encouraged by Jackson to challenge the long-standing incumbency of the Republican representative from Washington's heavily Republican Fifth Congressional District in the 1964 election. Foley won the seat in Congress and retained it through 15 successive elections. Beginning with his support of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, Foley's voting record was generally liberal, favoring the Equal Rights Amendment and legal abortion but opposing gun control, capital punishment, and prayer in public schools.

In 1974 Foley attained his first leadership position in the House of Representatives as chairman of the Democratic Study Group. In this position he was instrumental in unseating powerfully entrenched committee chairmen but declined to push for the ouster of W. R. Poage, the conservative Democratic chairman of the Agriculture Committee on which Foley himself was the second-ranking Democrat. He won his colleagues' esteem for his graceful handling of Poage's unsuccessful bid for reelection as chairman and his own ascension to the chairmanship of the committee, which he headed until he became majority whip in 1981. As such, his conciliatory and genteel style was unusual but effective. Liked and respected also for his evenhandedness and integrity, Foley was elevated in 1987 to majority leader, serving on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and on the Committee on the Budget. With the resignation of House Speaker Jim Wright following charges of ethics infractions in 1989, Foley was elected Speaker of the House.

As Speaker, Foley expressed opposition to the use of U.S. military force in the 1991 conflict with Iraq, but he supported U.S. intervention in Somalia in 1992. Among the controversial and inflammatory issues thrust upon Foley while he was Speaker were the demands by House Democrats in 1991 that he launch a full investigation of the arms-for-hostages deal allegedly transacted during the Reagan presidential campaign of 1980 and the 1992 scandal involving substantial overdrafts on accounts at the House Bank. In the 1994 congressional elections, Foley was defeated in his bid for reelection. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton as chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 1996. In November 1997 he became the U.S. ambassador to Japan.