Josh Gottheimer
Joshua S. Gottheimer is an American lawyer, writer, and public policy adviser serving as the U.S. Representative for. The district includes a swath of exurban and rural territory west of New York City.
Gottheimer was active in the Democratic Party as a speechwriter for Bill Clinton and as an adviser to the presidential campaigns of Wesley Clark, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. He has also worked for Burson-Marsteller, the Federal Communications Commission, Ford Motor Company, and Microsoft.
On November 8, 2016, Gottheimer defeated incumbent Republican Scott Garrett. On November 6, 2018, he defeated his Republican challenger John McCann by a double-digit margin. Some media outlets have called him a "human fundraising machine" due to his ability to raise money.
Early life and career
Gottheimer was born in Livingston, New Jersey, on March 8, 1975. At the age of 16, Gottheimer served as a United States Senate Page for Frank Lautenberg, a Senator from New Jersey. Through high school and college, Gottheimer held internships with C-SPAN, the Secretary of the United States Senate, and Tom Foley, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.Gottheimer graduated from West Essex High School, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School. While at the University of Pennsylvania, he served on the "rapid response team" for Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign. Following Clinton's reelection, Gottheimer attended Pembroke College, Oxford on a Thouron Award, studying toward a DPhil in modern history. He joined the Clinton administration as a speechwriter in 1998, at the age of 23, working in the administration until its end in 2001. While attending law school, Gottheimer worked as an adviser for Wesley Clark's 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, and Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. After the 2004 election, Gottheimer worked for the Ford Motor Company and then became executive vice president for Burson-Marsteller. From 2010 to 2012, he worked for the Federal Communications Commission, where he led an initiative related to broadband internet. He then joined Microsoft as a strategist.
Congressional career
Elections
In the 2016 elections, Gottheimer ran for the House of Representatives in, a seat held by Republican Scott Garrett. Gottheimer's friend Cory Booker joined him when he officially announced his candidacy.Gottheimer attracted more attention than previous challengers to Garrett due to his fundraising ability and ties to the Clintons. The New York Times ran a prominent article about his Clinton ties, describing him as a protégé of the Clintons and noting that Bill and Chelsea Clinton had appeared at a recent Manhattan fundraiser for Gottheimer at which Chelsea introduced him as "something of a family member." His campaign's 2015 financial filings, in which Gottheimer reported raising around $1 million through the end of September, showed that "about one dollar in six came directly from fellow alumni of the Clinton White House and campaigns...or from major donors and employees of consulting firms tied closely to the Clintons." Among those who donated were three former Clinton press secretaries and two former Clinton chiefs of staff.
The 5th had historically been one of the more Republican districts in New Jersey, but redistricting after the 2010 census had made it slightly more Democratic by pushing it further into Bergen County. During the campaign, Garrett criticized Gottheimer "for taking a donation from Ibrahim Al-Rashid, the son of a Saudi multimillionaire who pleaded guilty in 2014 to simple assault of his estranged wife." Gottheimer and national Democrats attacked Garrett for his social conservatism, particularly comments he made about openly gay Republican candidates, arguing that these views showed Garrett was too conservative for the district.
Gottheimer defeated Garrett, primarily on the strength of a strong showing in the district's share of Bergen County, home to over three-fourths of the district's voters. He won Bergen by over 33,800 votes, more than double his overall margin of almost 14,900 votes. It was the most expensive House race in New Jersey history. He was sworn in on January 3, 2017.
Gottheimer was reelected in 2018, defeating Republican nominee John McCann with 56% of the vote. While he lost three of the district's four counties, Gottheimer won a second term on the strength of carrying the district's share of Bergen County by over 51,000 votes, more than his overall margin of 41,300 votes.
Tenure
He is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, the New Democrat Coalition, and the Climate Solutions Caucus. In the first session of the 115th United States Congress, Gottheimer was ranked the eighth most bipartisan member of the House by the Bipartisan Index, a metric published by The Lugar Center and Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy. In January 2018, Gottheimer was one of six House Democrats who voted with Republicans for a short-term spending bill in an attempt to stave off a federal government shutdown.He is the Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
Committee assignments
- Committee on Financial Services
- *Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion
- *Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets
- *Subcommittee on National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy
Political positions
Anti-Moocher Bill
On April 15, 2017, Gottheimer announced that he would be introducing the "Anti-Moocher Bill," under which states receiving more federal dollars than they contribute to the national treasury would pay their "fair share." "Why should Alabama get our federal tax dollars and get a free ride, while we're left holding the bag with higher property taxes?" he asked. "It just doesn't make sense."Bipartisanship
Gottheimer has pointed to his work with the Problem Solvers Caucus as proof that he is not "ideologically rigid." He has also said that members of Congress are more bipartisan than people think. "I think there's a bit of perception that no one talks to each other," he said. "I think people are eager to work together, but the structure doesn't encourage it. The system doesn't encourage it."Health care
He said that "we need to fix the Affordable Care Act," also known as Obamacare. "There's plenty wrong with it, whether it's the medical device tax or the Cadillac tax." But he also felt that the GOP replacement bill did not reflect an effort "to reach across the aisle."Infrastructure
Gottheimer supports New Jersey infrastructure projects, including the Lackawanna Cut-Off and the Gateway Tunnel.Syria
Gottheimer said that he thought President Donald Trump "took the appropriate steps" in striking Syria in response to the 2018 use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. "There's room the president has to deal with a crisis, and I believed, if you looked at the heinous crimes and atrocities committed, poisoning your own children, that demanded a response, and I'm glad he responded."Trump and Russia
Gottheimer called for an independent commission to probe alleged ties between Trump and Russia.Trump and Ukraine
Of the possibility of impeaching Trump, Gottheimer said, "We need to make sure this is fact-driven and evidence-based. You can't prejudge something that is so solemn and obviously could have a big historical impact on our country, and you need to keep the country together."Electoral history
Books
He is the editor of Ripples of Hope, a collection of American civil-rights speeches. The text of one of the speeches included in the book, which was delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma on January 25, 1965, was previously unpublished. Gottheimer acquired the text from an Alabama police consultant who had transcribed it from FBI surveillance tapes.He is also co-author, with Mary Frances Berry, of Power of Words, a book about Barack Obama's speeches. "Even those who don't agree with his policies can recall the first time they heard Obama, the candidate, thunder away to a crowd of adoring listeners," wrote Berry and Gottheimer in their introduction. "Obama's words helped create a movement. Americans hung on his every word."