Background and career
John Andrew Boehner ( BAY-nər; born November 17, 1949) is an American retired politician and lobbyist who served as the 53rd speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served 13 terms as the U.S. representative for Ohio's 8th congressional district from 1991 to 2015. The district included several rural and suburban areas near Cincinnati and Dayton. Boehner previously served as the House minority leader from 2007 until 2011, and House majority leader from 2006 until 2007. In January 2011, he was first elected Speaker and then re-elected twice. Boehner resigned from the House of Representatives in October 2015 due to opposition from within the Republican conference. In September 2016, Squire Patton Boggs, the third-largest lobbying firm in the U.S., announced that Boehner would join their firm. It was also announced that he would become a board member of Reynolds American.
Boehner was born in Reading, Ohio, the son of Mary Anne (née Hall; 1926–1998) and Earl Henry Boehner (1925–1990), the second of twelve children. His father was of German descent and his mother had German and Irish ancestry. He grew up in modest circumstances, sharing one bathroom with his eleven siblings in a two-bedroom house in Cincinnati. He started working at his family's bar at age 8, a business founded by their grandfather Andy Boehner in 1938. He has lived in Southwest Ohio his entire life. Boehner attended Cincinnati's Moeller High School and was a linebacker on the school's football team, where he was coached by future Notre Dame coach Gerry Faust. Graduating from Moeller in 1968, when United States involvement in the Vietnam War was at its peak, Boehner enlisted in the United States Navy but was honorably discharged after eight weeks because of a bad back. He earned his B.A. in business administration from Xavier University in 1977, becoming the first person in his family to attend college, taking seven years as he held several jobs to pay for his education.
Shortly after his graduation in 1977, Boehner accepted a position with Nucite Sales, a small sales business in the plastics industry. He was steadily promoted and eventually became president of the firm, resigning in 1990 when he was elected to Congress. From 1981 to 1984, Boehner served on the board of trustees of Union Township, Butler County, Ohio. He then served as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives from 1985 to 1990.
In 1990, Boehner ran against incumbent congressman Buz Lukens, who was under fire for having a sexual relationship with a minor. He was all but unknown when he entered a Republican primary that included Lukens and former congressman Tom Kindness. Despite being dramatically outspent, Boehner won with 49 percent of the vote. He then handily beat his Democratic opponent, Greg Jolivette, in the November election. He was subsequently re-elected to Congress 12 times, each by a substantial margin. Boehner's closest races were those in:
2006, when he defeated the Democratic Party candidate, U.S. Air Force veteran Mort Meier, 64% to 36%; 2008, when he defeated Nicholas Von Stein, 68% to 32%; 2010, when he garnered 66% percent of the vote in a four-way race against Democratic nominee Justin Coussoule, Constitution Party nominee Jim Condit, and Libertarian nominee David Harlow.
During his freshman year, Boehner was a member of the Gang of Seven which was involved in bringing media attention to the House banking scandal. The group also investigated the Congressional Post Office, leading to the indictment of Congressman Dan Rostenkowski. Later, he, along with Newt Gingrich and several other Republican lawmakers, was one of the engineers of the Contract with America in 1994 that politically helped Republicans during the 1994 elections during which they won the majority in Congress for the first time in four decades.
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.
