Karl Rove

Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) is an American Republican political consultant, policy advisor, and lobbyist.

In 1965, his family moved to Salt Lake City, where Rove entered high school, becoming a skilled debater.

Encouraged by a teacher to run for class senate, Rove won the election.

As part of his campaign strategy he rode in the back of a convertible inside the school gymnasium sitting between two attractive girls before his election speech.

While at Olympus High School, he was elected student council president his junior and senior years.

Rove was also a Teenage Republican and served as Chairman of the Utah Federation of Teenage Republicans.

During this time, his father got a job in Los Angeles and visited the family during holidays.

Rove's mother suffered from depression and had contemplated suicide more than once in her life.

Rove has stated that although he loved his mother, she was seriously flawed, undependable and, at times, unstable.

Rove began his involvement in American politics in 1968.

Bennett was reelected to a third six-year term in November 1968.

Through Rove's campaign involvement, Bennett's son, Robert "Bob" Foster Bennett—a future United States Senator from Utah—would become a friend.

Williams would later become a mentor to Rove.

That position, and contacts from the 1968 Bennett campaign, helped him secure a job in 1970 on Ralph Tyler Smith's unsuccessful re-election campaign for Senate from Illinois against Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson III.

In December 1969, after a heated fight with his wife, the man Rove had known as his father left the family and divorced Rove's mother soon afterwards.

Rove's mother moved back to Nevada, and his siblings briefly lived with relatives after the divorce.

Rove learned from his aunt and uncle that the man who had raised him was not his biological father; both he and his older brother Eric were the children of another man.

Rove has expressed great love and admiration for his adoptive father and for "how selfless" his love had been.

Rove's father and mother expressed deep regret over the failure of the marriage and briefly tried dating each other after the divorce, but they refused to explain the breakup of the marriage, only stating that they still "loved each other dearly."

Rove was unable to convince his parents to get back together, as they were adamant about the divorce, a situation which Rove still does not understand.

Rove's relationship with his adoptive father was briefly strained for a few months following the divorce, but they maintained a very close relationship for the rest of his life.

In the fall of 1969, Rove entered the University of Utah, on a $1,000 scholarship, as a political science major and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.

Through the university's Hinckley Institute of Politics, he got an internship with the Utah Republican Party.

Rove had only infrequent contact with his mother in the 1970s.

She frequently withheld child support checks and spent them for herself.

She and her second husband lost most of their money due to poor financial decisions on her part and his gambling and overspending.

In the fall of 1970, Rove used a false identity to enter the campaign office of Democrat Alan J. Dixon, who was running for Treasurer of Illinois.

He stole 1000 sheets of paper with campaign letterhead, printed fake campaign rally fliers promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing", and distributed them at rock concerts and homeless shelters, with the effect of disrupting Dixon's rally.

(Dixon eventually won the election.) Rove's role would not become publicly known until August 1973 when Rove told The Dallas Morning News.

On September 11, 1981, Rove's mother died by suicide north of Reno, Nevada, shortly after she decided to divorce her third and final husband, to whom she had been unhappily married for only three months.

Prior to his White House appointments, he is credited with the 1994 and 1998 Texas gubernatorial victories of George W. Bush, as well as Bush's 2000 and 2004 successful presidential campaigns.

Rove has also been credited for the successful campaigns of John Ashcroft (1994 U.S. Senate election), Bill Clements (1986 Texas gubernatorial election), Senator John Cornyn (2002 U.S. Senate election), Governor Rick Perry (1990 Texas Agriculture Commission election), and Phil Gramm (1982 U.S. House and 1984 U.S. Senate elections).

Since leaving the White House, Rove has worked as a political analyst and contributor for Fox News, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal.

Rove was born on Christmas Day in Denver, Colorado, the second of five children, and was raised in Sparks, Nevada.

His parents separated when he was 19 years old and the man whom Rove knew as his father was a geologist.

In 1999 he said, "It was a youthful prank at the age of 19 and I regret it."

In a 2002 Deseret News interview, Rove explained, "I was the Olympus High chairman for (former U.S. Sen.) Wallace F. Bennett's re-election campaign, where he was opposed by the dynamic, young, aggressive political science professor at the University of Utah, J.D. Williams."

In his 2004 victory speech, Bush referred to Rove as "the Architect".

He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation on August 31, 2007.

He has also headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives.