Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist (born October 19, 1956, Sharon, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American political activist and strategist for conservative and libertarian causes, especially the reduction of taxes. As president of the lobbying organization Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), he built a coalition of interest groups that had a profound influence on Republican Party policy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Norquist was raised in suburban Boston. His father, an executive at Polaroid, instilled in him an appreciation for fiscal conservatism, and at age 12 Grover volunteered for Richard M. Nixon’s 1968 presidential election campaign. At Harvard University he honed his political views as a member of the campus libertarian association, and he graduated in 1978 with a degree in economics. Norquist then took a position with the National Taxpayers Union, an organization that advocated for tax relief and smaller government, and he quickly rose to become its executive director. After returning to Harvard to complete an M.B.A. (1981), he was appointed the national executive director of the College Republicans, in the process forging key contacts with other young right-wing activists.

In 1983 Norquist began working at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as an economist and a speechwriter. Two years later he established, at the request of the administration of Pres. Ronald Reagan, an adhoc organization called Americans for Tax Reform, which mobilized support for a congressional bill proposing broad revisions to the U.S. tax code. After Reagan signed the bill into law as the Tax Reform Act of 1986—which, among other changes, considerably lowered the top rate of federal income taxation of individuals—Norquist continued to lead ATR as an independent nonprofit enterprise. In an effort to preserve the enacted tax cuts, he wrote a short pledge that committed those legislators who signed it not to raise taxes. The pledge became popular among congressional Republicans, and George H.W. Bush’s promise of “no new taxes” was a central feature of his 1988 presidential campaign. (As president, Bush reversed his promise, but, according to Norquist, Bush’s eventual defeat in the 1992 election strengthened the pledge as an instrument of accountability.)

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In the late 1980s Norquist traveled as a private citizen to such countries as Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua to aid anticommunist movements, thereby carrying out the so-called Reagan Doctrine of U.S. foreign policy. In 1993, having returned to Washington, D.C., he launched a series of weekly strategy meetings, initially to organize opposition to Pres. Bill Clinton’s ultimately unsuccessful plan for universal health care. The following year Norquist teamed with Rep. Newt Gingrich and others to develop a “Contract with America,” a concise blueprint of the Republicans’ legislative goals that was seen as a key factor in the party’s resounding success in the 1994 midterm elections. In the wake of these victories, Norquist’s weekly meetings expanded in size. By downplaying divisive social issues, he managed to draw together seemingly disparate factions of the Republican Party that were nevertheless united in their belief in a limited role for government. In recognition of this commonality, Norquist dubbed his supporters—who included not only congressional Republicans but also representatives of the National Rifle Association and the Christian Coalition, as well as myriad business leaders—the Leave Us Alone Coalition.

During the campaign in 1999–2000 for the Republican presidential nomination, Norquist helped rally support for candidate George W. Bush. After Bush was elected president, Norquist, acting as an unofficial liaison between the White House and the conservative power structure, played a significant role in helping enact tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. At the same time, he occasionally veered from Bush administration policy, notably criticizing the USA PATRIOT Act (2001) for its restrictions on civil liberties. In addition, his frequent attempts to reach out to Muslims were greeted skeptically by some Republicans, especially after the September 11 attacks. Although Norquist’s access to power lessened when Bush left office in 2009, his crusade against taxes found renewed favour within the Tea Party movement that emerged during the administration of Pres. Barack Obama. By the early 2010s nearly every Republican member of Congress, as well as hundreds of state politicians, had signed the ATR pledge, and Norquist found himself at the centre of debate over whether taxes needed to be increased to tackle the growing federal debt.

Norquist was also known for founding (1997) the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, a campaign to name after the former president a public site or geographic feature in every county of the United States. He was the author of Rock the House (1995), an account of the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress; Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives (2008), in which he outlined his political philosophy; and End the IRS Before It Ends Us: How to Restore a Low Tax, High Growth, Wealthy America (2015).