29 Facts About Mickey Edwards

Marvin Henry "Mickey" Edwards was born on July 12,1937 and is an American politician who was a Republican member of the US House of Representatives, serving Oklahoma's 5th congressional district from 1977 to 1993.

Mickey Edwards taught at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School and was a regular commentator for NPR's All Things Considered.

Mickey Edwards left the GOP in 2021, and has publicly supported Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 and 2024.

Mickey Edwards served as a reporter and editor at the Oklahoma City Times from 1958 to 1963, engaged in advertising and public relations from 1963 to 1968 and was a magazine editor from 1968 to 1973.

Not long after graduating from OU, Mickey Edwards registered to vote for the first time, as a Republican.

Mickey Edwards did so in an era when the GOP barely existed in Oklahoma; at the time, the Democrats held both Senate seats, a majority of the state's congressional delegation, every statewide elected office, and a nine-to-one supermajority in the state legislature.

Mickey Edwards recalled that when he registered to vote, registration officials tried to talk him out of it, but he refused.

In 1974, Mickey Edwards ran as a Republican for a seat in the US House of Representatives.

Mickey Edwards challenged the Democratic incumbent John Jarman, who had held the seat for 24 years.

Mickey Edwards raised almost no money, and spent only $30,000 for the entire cycle.

Mickey Edwards was the first Republican elected to represent this district in over half a century.

Mickey Edwards was a member of the House Republican leadership, serving as the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, the party's fourth-ranking leadership position.

Mickey Edwards failed even to make the runoff, finishing third behind State Representative Ernest Istook and former federal prosecutor Bill Price.

Mickey Edwards was one of three founding trustees of The Heritage Foundation and the national chairman of the American Conservative Union.

Mickey Edwards has served on the board of directors of the Constitution Project and was the director of the congressional policy task forces advising Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign.

In 2002, Mickey Edwards gave a $250 contribution to Tom Cole, a Republican candidate for Congress from Oklahoma.

Mickey Edwards endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and left the Republican Party after the storming of the United States Capitol, saying the GOP had become "a cult" devoted to Donald Trump.

Mickey Edwards endorsed Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election.

Mickey Edwards taught courses on Congress, political leadership, issue advocacy, election strategies, conservative political theory, and the constitutional separation of powers.

Mickey Edwards has served as a visiting professor at Georgetown University.

Mickey Edwards was a lecturer of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and a member of the Princeton Project on National Security.

Mickey Edwards co-authored "Winning the Influence Game: What Every Business Leader Should Know About Government" and "Financing America's Leadership: Protecting American Interests and Promoting American Values".

In 2009, along with former Congressman Chris Shays from Connecticut, Edwards criticized the Republican Party for neglecting what they characterized as the constitutional abuses perpetrated by the George W Bush administration.

Mickey Edwards is a contributor at The Bulwark, an anti-Trump news and opinion website.

On January 13,2021, Mickey Edwards published an article in The Bulwark chronicling his decades of commitment to the Republican Party and declaring his departure from the GOP.

Mickey Edwards stated that he had left the party due to changes that he had witnessed in the previous four years, principally the claims that the 2020 election had been tainted by fraud.

Mickey Edwards was born in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on July 12,1937, and spent most of his early years in the southside Capitol Hill section of Oklahoma City, where his father, Eddie Mickey Edwards, managed a shoe store.

When Mickey Edwards was 19, a gunman armed with a sawed-off rifle confronted him as he went to deposit the shoe store's earnings at the bank.

Mickey Edwards was previously married to Miss Oklahoma Lisa Reagan, a singer and composer from Oklahoma City.