Full Name: Russell Bertrand DeWitt
Date of Birth: January 30, 1959
Place of Birth: Washington, D.C.
Place of Residence: Northampton, Massachusetts
Biography: The second son of a prominent government official and a well-known Washington socialite, Russell DeWitt was born in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood. His father, Wilson DeWitt, served in the Eisenhower Administration as Executive Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the Nixon and Ford Administrations as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, and in the Reagan Administration as the first Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. Since 1987, he has been a managing director at the Carlyle Group, and in 1989 was on the short list for Secretary of Commerce. His mother, Katrina Ludlow, heir to the Ludlow Cosmetics fortune, divorced his father in 1961. She remarried three more times, and died in a one-car collision in 1981. Young Russ attended the Sidwell Friends School in Washington for much of his education, but for high school was sent to boarding school at the Phillips Exeter Academy.
Following graduation from Exeter, he was accepted to attend Harvard University, his father's alma mater. While there, he was deeply involved in student journalism, penning articles for the Crimson and the Advocate and serving as co-editor of the University's venerable humor magazine, the Lampoon. He also joined the Hasty Pudding Theatricals and spent a semester as a DJ for WHRB, the campus radio station. In 1979, while on break between his sophomore and junior years, he penned his first novel, a satirical indictment of American foreign policy, entitled The Spread-Eagle, which followed an unnamed President of the United States in his attempts to turn public and congressional opinion in favor of an invasion of Bolivia, which has just nationalized the oil wells belonging to a prominent campaign contributor. Published by Doubleday in 1980, the book earned lavish praise as a first work of literature. In a surprise decision, it received the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. It spent six weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List. In 1981, he graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in comparative literature.
Following his graduation, he signed a three-book deal with Doubleday and used his advance to put a down payment on a townhouse in Northampton, Massachusetts. While working on his second novel, he began writing essays to make ends meet. These essays, mostly reviews of novels and short story collections, but also on the subjects of politics and foreign policy, have since been published in Esquire, The New Yorker, Harper's, the New York Review of Books, The Nation, and Vanity Fair. In 1983, he released his second novel, In the Room, a serious political thriller about wheeling and dealing regarding the nomination of a controversial retired Marine Corps general (clearly an updated version of Smedley Butler) to be Secretary of Defense. Although something more of a commercial success than his previous effort, it was not as well-reviewed. This was followed in 1987 by The Gospel Truth, another satire, this one about religion. The controversial work, which was banned from Wal-Mart after the American Family Association launched a boycott of stores carrying it, relates the story of a Manhattan waiter who declares himself the messiah and founds his own religion based on principles gleaned from self-help books. As the new religion sweeps the globe, he soon finds it hijacked by an array of money-grubbing hucksters and fanatical bigots, who seek to use it for their own ends. Despite (or perhaps because of) the controversy, the book reached number one on the Times Best Seller List and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Early in 1990, he completed his contract with Doubleday by releasing The Price of Empire, a collection of his essays.
That year, he announced his candidacy for Congress in the Second Congressional District, challenging freshman Democratic incumbent Richard Neal in the primary. Neal, a former Mayor of Springfield, had been plagued by shaky popularity due to the "corrupt bargain" nature of his nomination and election, in which the previous incumbent had tipped Neal to his retirement in such a way that his chosen successor became the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, to replace him. Throughout the campaign, he emphasized his position in favor of strict campaign finance reform, his refusal to accept PAC or lobbyist contributions or soft money, his opposition to free trade deals, and his support for steep reductions in military and foreign spending and the creation of a "peace dividend." In a three-way September primary, with Neal and activist Theodore DiMauro, he narrowly prevailed with 42% of the vote, riding the same anti-establishment wave that won the gubernatorial primary for outspoken outsider John Silber. In the November general, he was elected unopposed.
In Congress, he has distinguished himself as one of the House's leading liberal voices. A founding member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, he voted against the Gulf War, introduced legislation to create "alternative use committees" to find ways to convert military installations to peaceful purposes, pushed a bill to mount a ten-year plan to cure AIDS, and called for universal health care. In the 1992 Democratic primaries, he was only sitting member of Congress to endorse the campaign of former California Governor Jerry Brown.
Congressman Russell DeWitt continues to reside in Northampton. He is both the first open atheist and the first out bisexual to serve in Congress. He is presently in a relationship with actor Julian Brent. He has one son, Adam, born in 1987 to former girlfriend Cristina Nicchi. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the Bohemian Club, the Council for Secular Humanism, the ACLU, Common Cause, MassCann, and the Campaign for Peace and Democracy.