About Gary Condit

Gary Condit was the cofounder and leader of the moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats that held the balance of power in Washington during Bill Clinton’s second term.

This brief but productive period marks the only time in American history that an organized group of congressional members successfully drove policy around the entrenched partisan interests of the two dominant political parties.

Condit’s public career began in California. The partnership that made it tick, however, had its roots in an Oklahoma high school where Gary Condit and Carolyn Berry met, fell in love, and began a lifetime relationship that would produce two children, Chad and Cadee.

Condit’s career path to Washington began as the youngest Vietnam-era mayor in America, and weaved its way through a lost battle with California’s legendary self-described “Ayatollah of the Legislature,” Speaker Willie Brown.

As he did in Sacramento, Condit wasted no time before charting his own course on the national stage. He opposed NAFTA, despite intense lobbying from his own district’s wine industry and President Clinton himself. He voted against the landmark repeal of Glass-Steagall protections and was one of a handful of members who voted for the first war in Iraq and against the ill-fated second intervention triggered by intelligence community claims of weapons of mass destruction.

Condit’s conflict with the intelligence community began with the CIA orchestrated intervention in Yugoslavia. In the aftermath of that war, Condit, a member of the House intel committee, was a persistent force in compelling the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević.

Condit was at the apex of a career marked by extraordinary bipartisan influence in both Washington and in the California Capitol. All of that derailed when, in May 2001, Chandra Levy, disappeared.