Rick Renzi

Richard George Renzi
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's 1st district
In office 2003 - Present
Preceded by	Jeff Flake
Personal details
Political party	Republican

Richard George Renzi (born June 11 1958) is an American politician and has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 2003, representing the 1st District of Arizona (map). He is currently under federal investigation.

Early life, education, and family

Renzi was born to an Italian-American family in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. He attended high school in Annandale, Virginia before moving to Sierra Vista, Arizona in 1975, where his father, now-retired U.S. Army Major General Eugene Renzi (two star general), served at Fort Huachuca. Renzi graduated from Buena High School and then attended Northern Arizona University, receiving a B.S. in criminal justice in 1980.

Renzi's father is now the executive vice president of Mantech International, a company providing information technology services to a number of intelligence and defense-related federal government agencies. More than one-third of Mantech International's employees have top secret government security clearances.

Career prior to Congress

In 1989, Renzi started Renzi & Company (now called the Patriot Insurance Agency), a company that offers insurance to nonprofit organizations such as crisis pregnancy centers, pregnancy care clinics, maternity homes, PTAs, PTOs, and local service organizations. In 2006, Renzi said that he decided to enter politics because of his experiences as a member of National Association of Professional Insurance Agents. Renzi was a property/casualty agent and a member of PIA of Virginia & D.C. He said his first taste of the political process was attending a PIA Federal Legislative Summit. "I had a chance to interact with a lot of the congressmen and Senators, and I fell in love with it", Renzi said.

Where Renzi lived and what he did in the 1986-1997 period is unclear. In a letter to the Arizona Daily Sun in July 2002, Renzi said "The only time I have not lived in Arizona is when I served our nation overseas on a Defense Department program, or when I entered law school at age 39" [which would be 1997 or 1998]. But according to an August 2002 Associated Press article, Renzi said that between college, starting in the late 1970s, and his return some 20 years later, he had lived in Flagstaff for only a total of seven years. The AP article also said "Renzi made much of his money while living in Burke, Virginia, about 20 minutes from downtown Washington. He has owned a $765,000 two-story, six-bedroom home on five acres there since 1991, according to Fairfax County, Virginia, property records."

In 1997 or 1998, Renzi began to take law courses at the The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. He finished his coursework in December 2001 and graduated with a J.D. in 2002. While he was studying law, he was an also an unpaid intern in Senator Jon Kyl's office for two months in 1999, and in 2001 he spent several months as an unpaid intern for Representative Jim Kolbe.

2002 election to the U.S. House of Representatives

Move to Arizona

Renzi moved his official residence from Virginia to Arizona in 1999, registering to vote in Santa Cruz County. In 2001, he bought a $216,000 home in Flagstaff, moving his voting registration there in December of that year.

In 2002, Renzi acknowledged that he returned to Arizona with the intention of running for Congress, but defended his state ties. He noted that between college and his return to Arizona, he lived in Flagstaff for a total of seven years. Renzi also said he owned more than 400 acres in northern Arizona through a real estate development and improvement business, in addition to the a small vineyard and ranch in Sonoita, Arizona, west of Sierra Vista, in the 8th congressional district, and a home in Kingman. During the campaign, Renzi said "Let the chips fall where they may if I'm a carpetbagger."

Primaries

Renzi won a hotly contested Republican primary election against five other candidates; his closest opponents were Lewis Noble Tenney, a former Navajo County supervisor, and conservative radio personality Sydney Ann Hay of Munds Park. The 2002 Democratic primary, also hotly contested, was narrowly won by George Cordova, a party outsider who ran against several better-known candidates supported by the Democratic National Committee. (There was no incumbent for the seat, in a new district created after the 2000 census gave the state two more Representatives.)

General campaign

Renzi received significant support from the national Republican party in the race: President Bush visited twice, including a fundraiser; Vice President Cheney appeared at a fund-raising luncheon;; Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton visited the district to support Renzi; and so did Mel Martinez, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Renzi campaign was criticized for the heavy use of negative advertising attacking Cordova, which the cash-strapped Cordova campaign was unable to match. The Renzi campaign also made heavy use of automated telephone calls throughout the district with various claims and innuendos about Cordova. Renzi said most of the negative advertising had been placed by the Republican National Committee without his permission.[3]

During the 2002 election campaign, Renzi proposed that Walnut Canyon National Monument in Northern Arizona be renamed the "National Park of the American Flag" with the addition an American flag theme to the park, including displays of U.S. flags throughout history. This was in response to proposals by local citizens that Walnut Canyon National Monument be expanded and given National Park status. Renzi's proposal was widely ridiculed, and he has not promoted it since.

On election day, Renzi defeated Cordova by 49 percent to 46 percent, a difference of about 6,000 votes.

Campaign finances

Renzi spent $436,590 of his own money on the election, in addition to large donations from Mantech International executives, who were the largest single source of outside money for the campaign.[4]

In 2004, the Federal Election Commission completed an audit of Renzi's campaign committee, "Rick Renzi for Congress." The audit found that Renzi's campaign overstated its cash on hand by about $64,000, and that employers or occupations for 200 contributors were not listed, though required by law. The FEC also concluded that the committee had illegally financed much of the campaign with $369,090 of loans that came from "impermissible" corporate funds. Most of those loans were part of the $436,000 that Renzi put into his own campaign. Renzi was fined $1,000 in November 2005 by the FEC for underreported receipts stemming from what his campaign called a software glitch.

2004 re-election

In preparation for the 2004 campaign, the Democratic Party in Arizona tapped Paul Babbitt, Coconino County commissioner and the brother of Bruce Babbitt, to run for the seat and pressured all other candidates with the exception of political unknown Bob Donahue to bow out of the primary in order to clear the way for Babbitt to run against Renzi without a costly primary contest. Paul Babbitt's campaign was named a top national priority by most major Democratic fundraisers and liberal weblogs, because a plurality of Arizona 1st Congressional District voters are registered Democrats and because Renzi won so narrowly in 2002. Unlike the Cordova campaign in 2002, which received only token support from the national Democratic Party organizations, the Babbitt campaign received major support; nonetheless, it was unable to match Renzi's fundraising.[5]

During debates with his Democratic and Libertarian opponents, Renzi attacked the environmental movement, naming in particular those who opposed logging as a forest-thinning measure and those who supported the removal of Glen Canyon Dam.

The Renzi campaign again flooded the district with negative advertising, attacking Babbitt. Renzi was reelected by a 59 percent to 36 percent margin. Pundits noted a number of reasons why Babbitt performed so poorly in a plurality Democratic district. Among them were the unpopularity of the Babbitt name in some parts of the district, resentment over pressure tactics used by the state Democratic Party to push other candidates out of the primary, and Renzi's record of securing congressional appropriations for the district, especially on the Navajo Nation. However, the most common complaint was simply that Babbitt ran a poor campaign and was unwilling to commit to a firm position on much of anything, while Renzi merely had to repeat the campaign tactics he had successfully used in 2002.

Issues and positions

In 2002, in response to a question about spiraling health care costs, Renzi said "In order to keep health insurance costs competitive, we must allow the self-employed to take annual tax deductions for their health-care costs. We must change the health insurance industry by allowing employees to purchase their own health-care policy. This would allow for personal ownership of health-care policies, which would provide portability, more choice and thus more competition, which leads to lower health-care premiums."

Renzi was named one of the American Legion's "Unsung Heroes" of the 108th Congress. American Legion National Commander John Brieden noted that "The 108th Congress passed a record increase in Department of Veterans Affairs health care funding for the current fiscal year, and it reduced the number of service-disabled military retirees subject to a 'disability tax' on their retired pay." Brieden said "I commend Representative Renzi for taking a leadership role in making that happen."

In 2004, Renzi and Representative Jon Porter introduced legislation to split the Ninth Circuit court, currently the largest circuit in the U.S., which includes Arizona, into three smaller circuits. John Ensign of Nevada introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

Renzi is generally a supporter of expanded legal immigration into the United States and supports expansion of guest worker programs and the H1B visa. He does, however, strongly support using technology to enforce border security.

In 2004, Renzi was one of a handful of members in the House to vote in favor of an amendment to pull U.S. military support out of the United Nations. He voted, however, in favor of continued U.S. membership in the international organization. In June 2006, the House accepted an amendment proposed by Renzi to increase tribal law enforcement funding by $5 million and decrease spending for international organizations such as the United Nations by the same amount.

2006 re-election campaign

Renzi faced no opposition from his own party in the Republican primary. Five Democratic Party candidates ran in the 2006 primary in September, which was won by Ellen Simon, an attorney and community activist. David Schlosser will also be in the November general election, on the Libertarian Party ticket. [6].

In mid-August CQPolitics changed their rating of this race from Safe Republican to Leans Republican. The most recent Cook Political Report rating was: Leans Republican.

Controversy

In September 2006, Renzi was named one of the "20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress" in a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; he was also listed in the first report by the organization in January 2006, when he was one of 13 named members. The organization said "His ethics issues stem from the outside income earned by his administrative assistant and from legislation he sponsored that benefitted his father"

Father's company

Renzi has been criticized for consistently introducing and voting in favor of bills benefiting his father's defense company, ManTech International Corp., a Fairfax, Virginia-based defense contractor,[7]. Renzi’s father, Retired Major General Eugene Renzi, is an executive vice president of the firm. ManTech had $467 million in contracts at the Army's Fort Huachuca with options for an additional $1.1 billion between 2004 through 2008. In addition, the company, which has an office in Sierra Vista, Arizona, was the largest contributor to Renzi’s 2002 congressional campaign and the second largest in his 2004 campaign.

In 2003, Renzi sponsored legislation (signed into law in November 2003) that dealt hundreds of millions of dollars to his father’s business while, according to environmentalists, devastating the San Pedro River. The provision exempted the Fort Huachuca, in Sierra Vista, Arizona, from maintaining water levels in the San Pedro River as called for in an agreement made in 2002 with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Renzi claimed he introduced the measure to prevent the closing of the Fort and to promote its enlargement. Neither the fort nor the river is located in Renzi’s Congressional district.

On October 25, 2006, just two weeks before Election Day, The New York Times reported that Renzi federal authorities have opened an inquiry into the case. According to the Times, the "officials said the inquiry was at an early stage and that no search warrants had been issued, suggesting that investigators had yet to determine whether there was a basis to open a formal investigation or empanel a grand jury." [8]

2005 land swap

According to the Phoenix New Times, in 2002 Renzi sold off a half-interest in his real estate investment business to a fellow investor, James Sandlin, for $200,000. Renzi used the money for his 2002 congressional campaign. After Renzi was elected, he sold the remainder of the business to Sandlin, for somewhere between $1 million and $5 million.

In October 2005, three years after the business transaction with Sandlin, Renzi announced he'd be introducing a bill in Congress that would include a land swap of some land owned by Sandlin (not in Renzi's district) for federal land near Florence where a developer wanted to build. A week after Renzi's announcement, Sandlin sold his land for $4.5 million, a much higher price than he paid for it.

Renzi told the New Times that he did nothing wrong and that sometime after his announcement he recused himself from the bill after a lobbyist's questioned his connection to Sandlin. The land swap never became law.

On October 24, 2006, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona has opened an investigation into the land swap deal. According to a law enforcement official, "who spoke on condition of anonymity while the inquiry is ongoing, said the investigation has been under way for a few months and is still in its very early stages." [9]

Employment of Patty Roe

In December 2005, Renzi hired Patty Roe, the wife of Jason Roe, the chief of staff of Representative Tom Feeney (R-FL), as his full-time administrative assistant. In that position, she is paid $95,000 per year. Renzi also pays her $5,000 per month ($60,000 per year) as a fundraising consultant (she ran her own consulting business before being hired by Renzi).

To be in compliance with the rules, Roe must be doing all her fundraising work before she clocks in to work as Renzi's administrative assistant, or after she checks out, and she can't make or receive a single fundraising-related call in her House office. Renzi's spokesman Vartan Djihanian said that this is the case: "Whatever fundraising she does," he said, "is on her time."

Roe also received about $30,000 in fundraising fees in 2006 from four other House members: Tom Feeney; Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, both of Florida; and Patrick McHenry of North Carolina. Renzi's office said those payments were for services rendered in 2005.

Reported floor fight

Renzi is an opponent of embryonic stem cell research. In May of 2005, he engaged in an argument on the House floor with Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) The argument ensued after Renzi had learned that Kirk and the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership commissioned secret polling in the districts of Renzi and other members of Congress who oppose stem cell research. Renzi said, "I was yelling at him. I told him it's absolutely unprecedented that Republicans would pay for a push poll to attack another Republican on such a core belief of mine... You're not going to change my view on the issue, as a father of 12."

Funds from DeLay's PAC

Renzi also received $30,000 in campaign contributions from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ARMPAC. After DeLay was indicted in 2005, Democrats criticized Renzi for not returning the money or donating it to charity. [10]. Republicans have said that the charges against DeLay are politically motivated.

Personal

Rick and Roberta Renzi are the parents of 12 children, the most of any member of Congress. All of his children have first names that begin with the letter R. [11]

External links

• Official website
• Voting record maintained by the Washington Post