Gordon John Humphrey (born
October 9, 1940) is a New Hampshire
politician who served two terms in the Senate as a Republican from 1979 to
1990, and twice ran for Governor of New Hampshire, though
both bids were unsuccessful.
Humphrey
was born October 9, 1940, in Bristol, Connecticut
. His first career path was in aviation: he
served in the United States Air
Force for several years and, following college (George
Washington University
and the University of
Maryland, College Park
), he became a professional pilot. Despite
being only a local Republican activist holding no political office,
in 1978 Humphrey won election to the Senate by narrowly defeating
three-term incumbent
Thomas J.
McIntyre by barely two percent.
Humphrey was easily reelected in 1984, defeating five-term
Democratic congressman
Norman
D'Amours.
In the
Senate Humphrey served on the Committee on Foreign Relations, and
the Armed Services Committee, and was a leader in the Congressional
Task Force on Afghanistan
, which shaped U.S. policy regarding the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. He voted against the federal budget all 12
years he was a member of the Senate, each time because the proposed
budget ran a deficit.
Humphrey declined to run for a third term in 1990, having promised
only to serve two. He instead ran for and won a seat in the
New Hampshire State
Senate, the only former U.S. Senator to sit in a state senate.
He served one term. There were reports of his making a possible run
for president on the Republican ticket in both 1988 and 1992.
Neither one happened.
Humphrey returned to New Hampshire politics in 2000 by challenging
incumbent Governor
Jeanne Shaheen.
Shaheen, a Democrat, was considered vulnerable in the wake of a
State Supreme Court decision requiring the state to play a larger
role in funding education, which many saw as a path toward
instituting a statewide income or sales tax. Humphrey pledged to
block attempts to enact such taxes, but was narrowly defeated in a
contentious campaign.
He ran for the Republican nomination for governor again in 2002,
but businessman
Craig Benson eventually
won the nomination and the governor's race. Humphrey finished
third, and said that the campaign would be his last.
In 2004,
Humphrey entered the field of radio broadcasting, purchasing an AM
station in Concord, WKXL
.
He lives
in Chichester, New
Hampshire
with his wife, Patricia, and their two
children.
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