Former House Speaker Jim Wright dies at 92

Former House Speaker Jim Wright, the Texas Democrat and first speaker in history to be forced out of office midterm, died today. He was 92.

Wright represented a Fort Worth-area congressional district for 34 years starting in 1955. He was living in a nursing home in the area at the time of his death.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Wright, who was 19, left college to enlist in the U.S. Army and flew combat missions in the South Pacific. He served in the Texas House and was elected mayor of his hometown Weatherford, Texas, in 1950. He was a confidant of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was a senator during Wright’s early years in Congress. Both men rode in the presidential motorcade Nov. 22, 1963, the day of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.

In Congress, Wright was most proud of legislation he sponsored to create a “pay-as-we-go” interstate highway system and water conservation efforts. He played an important role in foreign policy, helping President Jimmy Carter draft the 1978 Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt. He also worked on a peace settlement in Nicaragua, famously getting involved against the wishes of President Ronald Reagan.

After being the Democratic majority leader in the House for a decade, he rose to the speakership in January 1987 to replace Tip O’Neill, D-Mass.

In the late 1980s, then-Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., started a campaign against Wright to expose corruption in his financial affairs. The House Ethics Committee eventually charged Wright with 69 violations of rules about reporting and accepting gifts and limits on outside income. Wright announced his resignation in a floor speech on April 30, 1989, decrying what he called “this manic idea of a frenzy of feeding on other people’s reputation.” But critics said Wright fueled partisanship in Congress by ignoring Republicans while he was speaker.

After leaving Congress, Wright made speeches around the country and was a consultant for a petroleum company. For nearly 20 years he taught a popular political science course at Texas Christian University.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.