2006 New Member Profiles
Kentucky's 3rd District: John Yarmuth (D)
The Almanac of American Politics
© National Journal Group Inc.
| John Yarmuth |
| Born: |
November 4, 1947 |
| Family: |
Wife, Catherine; one child |
| Religion: |
Jewish |
| Education: |
Attended Georgetown University; Yale University, B.A. 1969 |
| Career: |
Stockbroker; congressional aide; newspaper and magazine publisher; public-relations specialist; columnist; TV talk-show host |
Elected
Office: |
None
|
John Yarmuth will head to Washington in January after defeating five-term GOP Rep.
Anne Northup, a consistent target of Democrats who was accustomed to winning nerve-racking election battles.
Yarmuth, a Louisville native, was a Republican when he graduated from Yale in 1969. He worked briefly as a stockbroker and as an aide to Sen. Marlow Cook, R-Ky., but when Cook lost re-election in 1975, Yarmuth returned home to found a magazine, Louisville Today, that published until 1982. He lost bids for alderman in 1975 and county commissioner in 1981, and later went into public relations.
In 1985, Yarmuth became a Democrat, saying that he disagreed with the Reagan administration's views. In 1990, he founded the Louisville Eccentric Observer Weekly and became its publisher, editor, and columnist. For 15 years, he wrote a column called Hot Coals, trumpeting Democratic positions. Starting in 2003, he also promoted his liberal views on a weekly TV talk show about politics.
Yarmuth suspended his columns and talk-show appearances when he announced his challenge to Northup in January. Although he had declared in 2002 that he wouldn't run for office again, he changed his mind, he said, because of what he considered a weak Democratic field.
In the May 16 Democratic primary, he faced three opponents: Iraq war veteran and lawyer Andrew Horne; engineer James Moore; and perennial candidate Burrel Charles Farnsley. Yarmuth won with 54 percent of the vote, easily beating the second-place finisher, Horne, who got 32 percent.
In the general election campaign, Northup outraised Yarmuth 2-to-1 by the end of September. Yet Yarmuth worked to link the incumbent to Republicans' problems nationwide and called her a "rubber stamp" for President Bush. In a district that Democratic presidential nominees John Kerry and Al Gore both won narrowly, she just couldn't hang on.
