The GOP’s New, Familiar Face

WASHINGTON —  Rep. John A. Boehner, with his ever-present cigarette, seems like a throwback to the days of Capitol Hill’s smoke-filled rooms.

He is hip-deep in political contributions from an industry he oversees. He was once scolded for passing out campaign checks from tobacco interests on the House floor. He was booted from a leadership post eight years ago.

But with his election Thursday as the new House majority leader, the Ohio Republican has emerged -- phoenix-like -- as his party’s agent of change in the post-Tom DeLay era.

With the GOP eager to put a spate of corruption scandals behind it, the mantle of reform may seem to rest awkwardly on Boehner’s shoulders.

His rise to power has been propelled by many of the same skills that had been used by DeLay, the Texas Republican forced to give up the majority leader’s post after he was indicted in September on money-laundering charges. Like DeLay, Boehner (pronounced BAY-ner) is a prodigious fundraiser. Like DeLay, he has worked closely with lobbyists.

But the Republicans who backed Boehner on Thursday appeared to find his qualities compelling: He is a genial backslapper, a clever political strategist, an accomplished legislator. And he is not Rep. Roy Blunt, the DeLay protege from Missouri who was Boehner’s principal rival for majority leader.

“There was a feeling, ‘We’ve got a chance to interject a little change here,’ ” Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) said. “John Boehner represented more change.”

He came to the race with a biography that included experience in a lower leadership post, and a face that -- if not fresh -- had at least been out of the limelight for many years.

His election as majority leader is the latest milestone in Boehner’s comeback after he was ousted in 1998 from the No. 4 GOP spot in the House.

Since 2001, he has been chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. In that position, he forged alliances with other panel chairmen, such as Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield). Thomas, head of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, gave Boehner a strong boost by nominating him for majority leader at the GOP’s closed-door meeting Thursday.

Boehner also has close ties with the White House. Barry Jackson, a former aide, is a deputy to Karl Rove, the president’s senior political advisor. As head of the education committee, Boehner was a key architect of one of President Bush’s signature pieces of legislation: the No Child Left Behind Act.

In that and other measures he has helped to craft, Boehner has shown more willingness to reach across the political aisle than many other House Republicans.

Still, Democrats expressed deep skepticism that in his new post, Boehner would cause a sea change in the bitter relationship between the parties.

“As the Who famously said: ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,’ ” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), referring to lyrics by the rock band.

Boehner, 56, was elected to the House in 1990 after winning the Republican primary against an incumbent, Donald E. “Buz” Lukens, who had been convicted of having sex with a 16-year-old girl.

Arriving in a Capitol that had been controlled by Democrats for decades, Boehner was one of a band of new Republicans -- known as the Gang of Seven -- who sought to put the Democrats on the defensive. They spotlighted revelations that the House bank had allowed lawmakers to write bad checks with impunity -- a scandal that resulted in the retirement and defeat of dozens of House members, mostly Democrats.

Boehner’s combativeness caught the eye of then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who brought him into a small group that was developing Republican strategy to win a majority in the House. When that goal was achieved in 1995 and Gingrich became speaker, Boehner was elected chairman of the House Republican Conference, the chamber’s No. 4 GOP post.

In that role, he cultivated close ties to the business community, part of the GOP effort to incorporate sympathetic lobbyists into its political and legislative machine. Boehner met every Thursday morning in the speaker’s Capitol suite with about a dozen of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington to coordinate plans for pushing their conservative agenda.

He also was in charge of developing the party’s public relations strategy -- a task that became increasingly difficult after the GOP’s budget dispute with President Clinton in 1995 and resulted in a partial government shutdown in 1996.

Polls showed the public largely blamed the Republicans for the dispute. And the party’s image worsened among many voters when, in 1998, it pushed for Clinton’s impeachment on charges related to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

After Republicans fared poorly in that year’s House elections, Gingrich announced his resignation from Congress. Republicans also voted Boehner out of his leadership job.

Rather than maintain a low profile, Boehner continued to operate a political action committee -- a common tool of lawmakers with leadership ambitions. Through it, he has funneled about $2.7 million in campaign contributions to Republicans since 1998, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Upon becoming chairman of the education committee, he embraced Republican efforts to shed the image that some hold of the party’s hostility to public education. He also made great strides toward changing his own image from political operative to legislative workman as he shepherded the No Child Left Behind initiative through Congress.

The committee post also helped him build his campaign war chest. Sallie Mae, the agency that helps finance federally guaranteed loans for college students, is overseen by the panel and became a key source of campaign money for Boehner.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, individuals associated with Sallie Mae gave more than any other entity to Boehner’s political action committee, providing more than $122,000 since 1998.

Boehner also has received considerable support from operators of for-profit schools and colleges -- a burgeoning but controversial sector of the education industry.

Critics who represent the nonprofit sector of education say Boehner is too beholden to those donors, and that it shows in the legislation his committee produces.

“There are two sets of interests that make money in higher education: the student loan industry and the for-profit sector of higher education,” said Barmak Nassirian, an official of the American Assn. of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “The committee has been absolutely methodical in ensuring that those interests do well, and the student interests and taxpayers interests do not.”

Kevin Smith, a Boehner spokesman, disputed Nassirian’s description of the committee’s actions and denied that contributions the lawmaker accepted had influenced the policies he supported.

Boehner’s ascent in the House has landed him far from his humble roots.

The son of a tavern owner, he grew up in Cincinnati and graduated from the city’s Xavier University -- the only one of the 12 children in his family to earn a college degree. He then started a plastics packaging company in nearby Butler County. He was serving as president of his homeowners association in the early 1980s when other members encouraged him to seek a spot on the Union Township Board of Trustees.

He won that post and, in 1984, was urged to run for the Ohio House of Representatives.

“I was 34 years old; I was making a lot of money -- bored to death,” he recently told reporters.

Boehner, a Catholic, entered the race -- which he won -- after attending Mass 10 days in a row. “It was the right decision,” he said.

Times staff writers Mary Curtius and Richard Simon contributed to this report.