Retired Republican House Speaker John Boehner is set to spill on his time walking Washington’s corridors of power in a forthcoming memoir.
Boehner, 69, has already begun working on the book, tentatively titled “Notes From a Smoke-Filled Room,” after striking a deal with St. Martin’s Press’ Thomas Dunne Books, according to Politico.
“I get the question every day: What was the proudest accomplishment of your time in Congress? And I think it’s that I walked out of there in October 2015 as pretty much the same jackass I was when I walked in almost 25 years earlier. I walked out of there with no regrets … and a hell of a lot of good stories,” Boehner told Politico Monday.
“I’ve never really been interested in doing your typical political-memoir kind of book. And this won’t be that kind of book,” the Ohio Republican said. “This is going to be a book people might want to actually read, no matter where they’re coming from politically, or where they’re coming from in life.”
Boehner was first elected to Congress in 1991. He was one of the freshmen GOP lawmakers who were part of the “Gang of Seven” that helped expose the 1992 House banking scandal, inspiring the Republican Party’s “Contract with America” ahead of the 1994 midterm election cycle. Boehner, however, also faced criticism for his connections to business, industry, and lobbyists.
But Boehner, over the course of two decades, rose through House GOP ranks, reaching the speakership in 2011 to become a key Republican figure during the Obama presidency. Despite often clashing with the Obama White House, his openness to bipartisan compromise resulted in his 2015 ouster by the conservative wing of his party, namely the House Freedom Caucus.
Since leaving Washington, the President Trump critic has been active on the speaker circuit. He also accepted positions with prestigious lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs and Acreage Holdings, one of the country’s largest cannabis corporations.
Although appearing to enjoy the trappings of the capital, Boehner grew up the second eldest of 12 children in a blue-collar, German-Irish family outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the first in his family to attend college, a task that took him seven years as he juggled multiple jobs to pay his bills.
As a child, he used to mop the floors of Andy’s Cafe, the business established by his grandfather Andy Boehner in 1938 before the family sold it in 2004. His sister, Lynda Boehner-Meineke, worked behind the bar for more than 25 years before she died in March aged just 58.
“Notes From a Smoke-Filled Room” is expected to be released in the spring of 2020.
