Word: paxon
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...Republicans tired of Gingrich, Paxon, 43, is the perfect antidote. Where Gingrich has said he wants to be "the leading teacher of 21st century American civilization," Paxon sheepishly admits to being "a regular guy" and "not much of a big thinker." And while Gingrich is famous for his discourses on subjects such as the democratic possibilities of information technology, Paxon's whole political philosophy can be summed up in three phrases: cut taxes, shrink government and above all, elect Republicans. That Paxon doesn't have Gingrich's expansive intellectual range--or combativeness--suits many of Paxon's compatriots just fine...
...telegenic Paxon has the virtue of being articulate without coming across as arrogant. He says things like "Oh, geez" when asked a probing question, and "darned" is the closest thing to a curse he'll utter, even in private. But his choirboy exterior is wrapped around intense ambition. Like President Clinton, Paxon started dreaming about a career in politics at a young age. The son of an elected county judge and a mother active in the state G.O.P., he grew up in the rural town of Akron, N.Y., 25 miles east of Buffalo. By the time Paxon was a teenager...
...When Paxon decided to run for a seat in the Erie County Legislature, the local G.O.P. chairman was so sure the 23-year-old upstart would lose that he tried to recruit Paxon's mother to run instead. Paxon won, treated it like a full-time job and then went on to the state legislature, where he learned how to be a conservative Republican without alienating potential allies among the party's moderates. "With Bill, personality always transcended politics," says state senator Mike Nozzolio, a friend and former housemate during Paxon's Albany days. "He dealt with everyone...
That approach has worked well in Congress, where Paxon, who was first elected in 1988, has as close a bond with moderates like Rick White of Washington as he does with hard-liners of the Largent and Graham variety. Yet it has also opened him up to the charge that he is more committed to winning than to a set of beliefs. Paxon points to his conservative voting record--but quietly casting a vote is different from taking the lead on an ideologically loaded issue. And in his first nine years in Congress, he was never the front...
...because he hails from a region of moderate Republicans that Paxon might be able to bridge the party's moderate-conservative divide. He did so in his personal life when he married Susan Molinari, a pro-choice Republican colleague who quit Congress this year to anchor a Saturday morning news show for cbs and spend more time with their 18-month-old daughter. In his public life, he did it as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee in 1994 and 1996, when more than a third of all current House Republicans were elected. If Gingrich was the mastermind behind...