Rick Renzi

Renzi also said he owned more than 400 acre in northern Arizona through a real estate development and improvement business, in addition to a small vineyard and ranch in Sonoita, Arizona, west of Sierra Vista, in the 8th congressional district, and a home in Kingman.

During the campaign, Renzi said "Let the chips fall where they may if I'm a carpetbagger."

Renzi won a hotly contested Republican primary election against five other candidates; his closest opponents were Lewis Noble Tenney, a former Navajo County supervisor, and conservative radio personality Sydney Ann Hay of Munds Park.

Renzi outspent his primary opponents by a substantial sum of money.

He invested $585,000 of his own money and raised another $100,000 to run radio and TV ads throughout the district.

Renzi received 24.4 percent of the 46,585 votes cast in the Republican primary, with half of his votes coming from Yavapai County.

Richard George Renzi (born June 11, 1958) is an American politician who was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives representing Arizona's 1st congressional district from 2003 until 2009.

He attended high school in Annandale, Virginia, before moving to Sierra Vista, Arizona, in 1975, where his father, U.S. Army Major General Eugene Carmen Renzi (d. 2008), served at Fort Huachuca.

Renzi graduated from Buena High School and attended Northern Arizona University (NAU), earning a B.S. in criminal justice in 1980.

He played football for NAU and was a starting offensive lineman.

Renzi and his wife, Roberta S. Renzi, are the parents of 12 children.

Like Renzi's siblings, his children all have forenames that begin with the letter "R".

Where Renzi lived and what he did throughout the 1986–1997 period is unclear.

In 1989, Renzi started Renzi & Company (now called the Patriot Insurance Agency), a company that offers insurance to nonprofit organizations such as crisis pregnancy centers, pregnancy care clinics, maternity homes, PTAs, PTOs, and local service organizations.

The AP article also said "Renzi made much of his money while living in Burke, Virginia, about 20 minutes from downtown Washington. He has owned a $765,000 two-story, six-bedroom home on five acres there since 1991, according to Fairfax County, Virginia, property records."

In 1997 or 1998, Renzi began to take law courses at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. He finished his coursework in December 2001 and graduated with a J.D. in 2002.

While he was studying law, he claimed he was an unpaid intern in Senator Jon Kyl's office for two months in 1999, and in 2001 he spent several months as an unpaid intern for Representative Jim Kolbe.

Senator Kyl later questioned the accuracy of Renzi's description of his work in Kyl's office, saying he was never employed there.

Renzi moved his official residence from Virginia to Arizona in 1999, registering to vote in Santa Cruz County.

(There was no incumbent for the seat, in a new district created after the 2000 census gave the state two more Representatives.)

In 2001, he bought a $216,000 home in Flagstaff, moving his voting registration there in December of that year.

In a letter to the Arizona Daily Sun in July 2002, Renzi said "The only time I have not lived in Arizona is when I served our nation overseas on a Defense Department program, or when I entered law school at age 39" [which would be 1997 or 1998].

However, according to an August 2002 Associated Press article, Renzi said that between college, starting in the late 1970s, and his return some 20 years later, he had lived in Flagstaff for only a total of seven years.

In 2002, Renzi acknowledged that he returned to Arizona with the intention of running for Congress, but defended his state ties.

He noted that between college and his return to Arizona, he lived in Flagstaff for a total of seven years.

There is proof Renzi was living in Arizona after college because, Renzi and his wife did have several children who were born in Sierra Vista, AZ.

The 2002 Democratic primary, also hotly contested, was narrowly won by George Cordova, a party outsider who ran against several better-known candidates, including Stephen Udall, Diane Prescott and Fred DuVal.

In 2006, Renzi said that he decided to enter politics because of his experiences as a member of National Association of Professional Insurance Agents.

Renzi was a property/casualty agent and a member of PIA of Virginia & D.C. He said his first taste of the political process was attending a PIA Federal Legislative Summit.

"I had a chance to interact with a lot of the congressmen and Senators, and I fell in love with it", Renzi said.

On April 19, 2007, the FBI raided his family business, and he temporarily resigned from the House Intelligence Committee.

The charges for personal gain of over $700,000 were filed in 2008.

On April 27, Renzi denied printed claims he was considering resigning office; however, on August 23, Renzi announced he would not be a candidate for re-election in 2008.

On February 22, 2008, Renzi was indicted on 35 counts connected to land deals.

He pleaded not guilty.

In 2013, he was convicted on federal criminal charges against him for his involvement in a land-swap deal.

On June 12, 2013, Renzi was convicted on 17 of 32 counts in his corruption case.

On October 28, 2013, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

After numerous examples of Prosecutorial Misconduct came to light in a 119-page Inspector General complaint, Renzi was pardoned by President Donald Trump on January 20, 2021.

Renzi is one of five siblings born into an Italian-American family in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.