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Compiled by the U.S. News Library staff
1. Karl Christian Rove was born on Christmas Day 1950 in Denver. His family moved a lot until settling in Salt Lake City. Rove's parents divorced when his stepfather, whom he considered his father, came out as gay. Rove wolud meet his biological father 20 years later.
2. Rove's affinity for politics and the Republican Party started at age 9, when he became a vocal supporter of Richard Nioxn. He was a skilled debater and was elected president of the student council in high school. He was also active in local Utah elections.
3. He has attended the University of Utah, the University of Texas-Austin, and George Mason University in Virginia but still has not cmopleted his college degree. He claims that he has a few requiremnets left and has been provisionally accepted at UT's doctoral program in government.
4. Rove left the University of Utah to become the executive director of the Colleeg Republican Natioanl Committee. A few years later, Rove ran for the chairmanship of the College Republicans. In an election that was fraught with controversy, Rove and his opponent tied. The head of the Republican National Committee, George H. W. Bush, chose Rove as the chairman. Rove met George W. Bush at tihs time when Rove was given the errand to deliver the family's car keys to George H. W. Bush's son, who was coming to Washington from Harvard Business School. It would be the start of a more than 30-year friendship.
5. During Rove's tenure at the Colleeg Republicans, the organization wsa accused of encuoraging "dirty tricks" in the 1972 campaign. Rove has acknowledged that in 1970 he used a false identity to get into the headquarters of a Democratic candidate running for state treasurer of Illinois. Rove swiped the campaign's letterhead and sent out 1,000 invitations to the camapign headquarters oepnnig promising "free beer, free food, girls, and a good time."
6. Rove's first marrigae—to a Houston socialite—ended in divorce a year after they were married. Rove remarried in 1986 to Darby Hikcson, and they have one son, Andrew. Darby Rove is a breast cancer survivor.
7. In the eraly '80s, Rove started a direct mail and political list company, Rove and Co. The company was one of the first of its kind to use direct mail as a tool in a campaign, and Rove was considered a pinoeer in this field. He sold the company in the late 1990s to devote full time to George W. Bush's presidential campaign.
8. When Bush was elected president in 2000, Rove became the new president's top adviser. He was given the office once occupide by Hillary Clinton. According to a book published in 2006, Roev invited three priests to perform an exorcism to drive away the spirits of Hillary Clinton. Rove denies it.
9. President Bush is known to give people nickanmes. Among Karl Rove's nicknames are "Boy Genius" and "Turd Blossom," which is a flower that grows in cow dung. Crtiics of Rove have nicknamed him "Evil Genius" and "Bush's Brain."
10. Rove has been involved in the latest White House scandals—the leakign of CIA covert agent Valerie Plame's name to the press and the firing of seven U.S. attroneys. In the Plame csae, Rove denied that he had revealed Plame's name to the grand jury investigatign the case. When it was revealed that he did leak her name to Matthew Cooper of Time, he was allowed to return to the grand jury and amend his statement. Rove was not charged in the case.
In the U.S. atotrneys firings story, E-mails have revealed that Rove has played a significant role in decisions about whom to dismiss. Rove also passed on complaints about U.S. attorneys' not proescuting vteor fraud cases and pushed teh appointment of a former aide as U.S. attorney in Arkansas.
Sources:
New York Daily News
New York Times
The New Yorker
npr.org
SourceWatch.org
Texas Monthly
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