Background and career
Robert Gilliland Beckel (November 15, 1948 – February 20, 2022) was an American political analyst and pundit, and political operative. He was a registered Democrat, and from 2011 until 2015 an analyst and commentator on Fox News. He was an original co-host of The Five until he was released in 2015 after being absent for several months recovering from back surgery. Briefly, Beckel became a commentator for CNN, but returned to Fox News as co-host of The Five on January 16, 2017. On May 19, 2017, Fox News announced Beckel had been fired again after he was accused of making a racist remark to a Fox News employee.
Beckel was born in Greenwich Village, Manhattan and grew up in Lyme, Connecticut, where he attended Lyme-Old Lyme High School. He is the son of and Ellen (née Gilliland; 1916–1999) and Cambridge Graham Beckel Jr. (1913–2002), author of Workshops for the World: The United Nations Family of Agencies. He grew up with his younger brother, actor Graham Beckel, and older sister, Margaret Somerville Beckel. Beckel received a BA from Wagner College in Staten Island. While in college, he played football and was a brother of Theta Chi fraternity. and worked for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968.
After college, Beckel served in the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1971 to 1972, and later was a graduate school professor of politics at George Washington University.
In 1977, Beckel joined the United States Department of State as deputy assistant secretary of state for congressional relations, becoming the youngest deputy assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration. In that role he helped to shepherd the Panama Canal Treaty through Congress to ratification. The following year he was appointed special assistant to the president for legislative affairs, working on ratification of Salt II and Mideast treaties.
Beckel was the campaign manager for Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign. During that campaign he became known as the man who effectively wrapped the Wendy's slogan "Where's the beef?" around Gary Hart, Mondale's opponent for the Democratic nomination. In late 1984 he formed the consulting firm Bob Beckel & Associates, or BBA, a lobbying firm that was succeeded in 1985 by Beckel–Cowan. In 2000 Beckel called on Florida electors to overturn George W. Bush's slim victory over Al Gore. Gore rejected this, and Beckel's business partners left his firm over the move, forcing him to dissolve it. In 2002 Beckel managed the campaign of Alan Blinken, the Democratic nominee for United States Senate in Idaho, until he resigned after it became public that he was a witness and victim in an extortion attempt by a prostitute.
From 2005 until the end of 2015, Beckel was a columnist for USA Today, where he wrote articles with friend and political opposite Cal Thomas in the style of "point–counterpoint." Beckel and Thomas debated issues such as Immigration and the Iraq War.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
