from Wikipedia concerning Karl Rove -- Democrats R Us Returns

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Date Posted: 02:19:02 03/13/10 Sat
Author: Bob
Subject: from Wikipedia concerning Karl Rove

Rove was born the second of five children in Denver, Colorado, and later raised in Sparks, Nevada. His biological father left the family when Rove and his older brother were children. His mother, Reba Louise (n�e Wood), was a gift shop manager, and his mother's second husband, Louis Claude Rove Jr. (1928�2004), whom Rove knew as his father, was a geologist whose ancestry was Norwegian. Rove has four siblings, Eric, Reba, Olaf, and Alma.

His family moved to Salt Lake City in 1965 when Rove was entering high school. He became a skilled debator. Rove described his high school years as "I was the complete nerd. I had the briefcase. I had the pocket protector. I wore Hush Puppies when they were not cool. I was the thin, scrawny little guy. I was definitely uncool." Put up by a teacher to run for class senate, he beat his opponent by riding in the back of a convertible sandwiched between two attractive girls inside the school gymnasium, right before his election speech. While at Olympus High School, he was elected student council president his junior and senior years.

Rove began his involvement in American politics in 1968. In a 2002 Deseret News interview, Rove explained, "I was the Olympus High chairman for (former United States Senator) Wallace F. Bennett's re-election campaign, where he was opposed by the dynamic, young, aggressive political science professor at the University of Utah, J.D. Williams." Bennett was reelected to a third six-year term. Through Rove's campaign involvement, Bennett's son, Bob Bennett � a future United States Senator from Utah � would become a friend. Williams would later become a mentor to Rove.

In December 1969, the man Rove had known as his father left the family, and divorced Rove's mother soon afterward; it later became known he was homosexual. After his parents' divorce, Rove learned from his aunt and uncle that the man who had raised him was not his biological father; both he and his older brother Eric were the children of another man. Rove has expressed great love and admiration for his adoptive father and for "how selfless" his love had been. In 1981 Rove's mother committed suicide in Reno, Nevada.

College and the Dixon campaign incident
In the fall of 1969, Rove entered the University of Utah, on a $1,000 scholarship, as a political science major and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. As with many others of his generation, enrollment in college protected him from being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Through the University's Hinckley Institute of Politics, he got an internship with the Utah Republican Party. That position, and contacts from the 1968 Bennett campaign, helped him land a job in 1970 on Ralph Tyler Smith's unsuccessful re-election campaign for Senate from Illinois. Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson III won.

In the fall of 1970, Rove used a false identity to enter the campaign office of Democrat Alan J. Dixon, who was running for Treasurer of Illinois. He stole 1000 sheets of paper with campaign letterhead, printed fake campaign rally fliers promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing", and distributed them at rock concerts and homeless shelters, with the effect of disrupting Dixon's rally. (Dixon eventually won the election). Rove's role would not become publicly known until August 1973. Rove told the Dallas Morning News in 1999, "It was a youthful prank at the age of 19 and I regret it."

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