Dick Gephardt

Gephardt was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on January 31, 1941, the son of Loreen Estelle (née Cassell) and Louis Andrew Gephardt, a Teamster milkman; part of his ancestry is German. He graduated from the former Southwest High School in 1958. Gephardt is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. He earned his B.S. at Northwestern University in 1962 where he was president of Beta Theta Pi, the student senate, and his freshman class. He earned his J.D. at the University of Michigan Law School in 1965.

In 1965, Gephardt was admitted to the Missouri Bar. He then entered the Missouri Air National Guard, where he served until 1971. He and his wife Jane have three grown children, Matt, Katie, and Chrissy. His brother, Donald L. Gephardt, was the Dean of The College of Fine and Performing Arts at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. Gephardt was a Democratic committeeman (precinct captain) for the 14th ward in St. Louis from 1968 through 1971.

On January 3, 2005, Gephardt's three-decade political career ended with the expiration of his 14th term in the House of Representatives. That month, Gephardt started a consulting and lobbying firm, Gephardt Group, of which he is president and CEO. Gephardt also joined the international law firm DLA Piper as strategic advisor in the government affairs practice group from June 2005 to December 2009.

In his new role as a Washington lobbyist, Gephardt, on behalf of the Republic of Turkey, had been actively lobbying against the House resolution condemning the Armenian genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. While supportive of the resolution while in Congress, he later contended in his new role that facts needed to be better known before any position could be taken on this historical controversy. Gephardt served on the board of directors of the Embarq Corporation from June 2007 to July 1, 2009, when he became a member of the board of directors of CenturyLink, Embarq's successor corporation. Gephardt also serves as a director of Centene Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Spirit Aerosystems Holdings, Inc., and United States Steel Corporation. He joined Ford's board in 2009.

In July 2007, Gephardt endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, leading some to speculate that he was interested in running for vice president in 2008. DLA Piper become a major donor to Clinton's campaign, donating about $190,000. Gephardt was mentioned during the summer of 2008 as a possible vice-presidential choice for eventual nominee Senator Barack Obama. A collection of Gephardt's congressional documents, dating from 1994 to 2004, was processed from 2006 to 2007 by the Missouri Historical Society for academic use, with a grant through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In 2005, Washington University in St. Louis inaugurated the Richard A. Gephardt Institute of Public Service (now the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement), which educates students for life-long engaged citizenship and civic leadership. Since 2005, Gephardt has been a consultant to Goldman Sachs and DLA Piper. Since 2007 he has been a consultant to FTI Consulting.

In 2007, Gephardt began serving on the advisory board of the Extend Health insurance company, and then became a member of its board of directors. In 2009, Gephardt advised UnitedHealth Group, one of America's largest private insurers, in waging a strong campaign against a public option for national health care. In 2010, Gephardt was elected chair of the Board of Trustees of The Scripps Research Institute, a nonprofit institute focusing on biomedical research.

Gephardt has been significantly involved with the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. In addition to a large lobbying contract with the Medicines Company, he serves as chair of the Council for American Medical Innovation (CAMI), formed by and affiliated with PhRMA. In this capacity he hired his own firm to lobby for the organization, to push to extend patents and block generic drugs from the market. In 2016, Gephardt also co-founded a Direct primary care group called SolidaritUS Health, with the goal of increasing the accessibility of quality healthcare to working families.

Gephardt has also served as a lobbyist for Boeing. He is a labor consultant for Spirit Aerosystems and sits on its board of directors. In these roles, Gephardt has presided over an aggressive anti-union campaign that has bewildered many of his traditional political allies. In July 2011, Spirit Aerosystems walked out of negotiations with the union that represents its engineering, technical and professional workforce. The union subsequently voted down the company's last contract offer, with 96.5% voting no. The company did not change its contract offer significantly after this rejection and relations with its workforce have been contentious ever since. With negotiations at a standstill, production schedules for 2011 and 2012 were threatened. Around mid-2023 Spirit Aerosystems agreed to a new contract with its workers at the Wichita, Kansas plant. Key provisions in the contract include increased pay, workers being allowed to keep their current health plans, and removal of mandatory overtime requirements.

In October 2022, Gephardt, along with Republican former Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, launched the Council for Responsible Social Media, a project of nonprofit organization Issue One, which he had already been involved with as a member of its ReFormers Caucus. Gephardt and Healey serve as co-chairs of the project, which focuses on addressing the harmful influence social media can have on children, communities, and national security. In May 2024, Gephardt gave the commencement address and received an honorary degree at Iona University in New Rochelle, New York.

After his election to the U.S. House in 1976, Gephardt's political views gradually moved to the left. Originally, Gephardt was strongly anti-abortion and was viewed as a social conservative. He was initially extremely critical of the U.S. Supreme Court landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. He wrote on the subject in 1984:

Life is the division of human cells, a process that begins with conception. The (Supreme Court's abortion) ruling was unjust, and it is incumbent on the Congress to correct the injustice... I have always been supportive of pro-life legislation. I intend to remain steadfast on this issue.... I believe that the life of the unborn should be protected at all costs.

In 1987, when Gephardt decided to run for president, he announced that he would no longer support legislation to restrict abortion rights. He told the National Right to Life Committee; "I now do not support any Constitutional amendment pertaining to the legality of abortion." Gephardt's views on economic policy also changed over the years. He voted for Ronald Reagan's tax cuts in 1981; in the 2000s, he became a staunch opponent of similar tax cuts by President George W. Bush, saying that the enormous surplus created during the administration of Bill Clinton should have been spent on health care instead. Gephardt is widely viewed as an economic populist. He supports universal health coverage, fair trade, and progressive taxation. Although he once chaired the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, Gephardt in his later years in Congress distanced himself from the organization, finding his pro-labor views at odds with the DLC's pro-business positions.

On October 10, 2002, Gephardt was among the 81 House Democrats who voted in favor of authorizing the invasion of Iraq. He was an early supporter of the war, and cosponsor of the authorization resolution. However, three years later Gephardt said of his support for the war that "It was a mistake... I was wrong."