Conservative radio talk show host and onetime Illinois U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh is mounting a challenge against President Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination. Here’s some background on the long-shot candidate.
Over the years, he has had a number of careers
The North Barrington native grew up in an Irish Catholic household with nine children, seven of them boys. He graduated in 1980 from Barrington High School, where he was senior class president and active in sports. He earned a degree in English from the University of Iowa and, some years later, a master’s in public policy from the University of Chicago.
In the mid-’80s, Walsh gave acting a go. He told the Tribune in 2011 that he studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York and places out West. Before being elected to Congress, he was a community college teacher, fundraiser, researcher and worker at financial firms, public records show.
He was once an Illinois congressman
Walsh served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Illinois’ 8th District, from 2011 to 2013. He made his first bid for Congress in 1996 and another failed bid for office — for the Illinois House — in 1998.
His political breakthrough came in 2010 when he rode the tea party wave to beat three-term incumbent Melissa Bean by 290 votes out of more than 202,000 cast. His victory returned the district, which covered much of Lake County, part of northwest Cook County and eastern McHenry County, to its GOP roots during a year that Democrats, nationally, were trounced.
Walsh wasted no time in Washington trying to stand out in a robust Republican freshman class. On TV, he delivered aggressive sound bites and became a vocal scold of the Obama administration.
Now, he’s a conservative radio show host
Months after his stint in Congress ended, “The Joe Walsh Show” began airing on Chicago radio waves.
“I intend to do with this program what I did as a U.S. congressman – speak plainly, speak directly, not worry about political correctness, and engage in respectful, engaging debate with all viewpoints,” Walsh told the Northwest Herald at the time.
Today, the show is syndicated around the country and available as a podcast.
His career has included many controversies, big and small
On Oct. 26, 2016, Walsh expressed his support for Trump on Twitter and seemed to call for taking up arms if the Republican lost to Hilary Clinton, writing “if Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket. You in?”
In the summer of 2016, Walsh ran afoul of Twitter after he responded to a shooting in Dallas that killed five police officers. “This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you,” he tweeted. He stood by his tweet, saying it had been misinterpreted.
Walsh was one of the many politicians fooled by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in his Showtime satire series “Who is America?” Walsh appeared in a segment called “KILL OR BE KILLED” in which the actor, playing a fake Israeli “anti-terror expert” offered a solution to America’s school shootings problem: arming toddlers with weapons in a new program called “Kinderguardians.” Walsh told CNN he was duped by Cohen telling him he was “getting an award” for being a great supporter of Israel, then was asked to read off a teleprompter about “some of the innovative products that Israel invented.” He said as he read it, he thought, “Well, this is kind of crazy, but it is Israel and Israel is strong on defense.” Later, “we found out this whole thing was made up.”
In June 2014, Walsh was briefly taken off the air when he used racial epithets in discussing the controversy over the name of the Washington Redskins NFL team.
In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Walsh shared his own version on his radio show, telling listeners that he had a dream that “young black males and females graduate from high school,” and that “young black men don’t become daddies until after they’re married, and until after they have a job.”
In his failed 2012 reelection bid, Walsh said his Democratic opponent, now Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs when her aircraft was shot down during the Iraq War in 2004, was not one of the nation’s “true heroes.”
In a May 2011 interview with Slate, Walsh said Obama was elected because of his race that voters chose him “because he pushed that magical button: a black man who was articulate, liberal, the whole white guilt, all of that.”
Shortly after being elected in 2010, Walsh had a very public child support dispute with his ex-wife, which they settled in 2012. Laura Walsh had filed a lawsuit alleging that Joe Walsh owed $117,437 in overdue child support. As part of their settlement, both said that Joe Walsh was never “a deadbeat dad.”
The Tribune examined Walsh’s driving record and found that from 1989 to 2009 he was cited for traffic offenses 17 times and his license was suspended while he was serving in Congress because his high-risk car insurance policy lapsed.
Travis M. Andrews of the Washington Post contributed.
