James Carville: Education and Career

Introduction

Chester James Carville Jr., often known as James Carville, is a prominent American political consultant, commentator, and media personality known as "The Ragin' Cajun" due to his feisty debating style and Louisiana heritage. He is a significant figure in the Democratic Party. This article delves into Carville's educational background and career trajectory, highlighting his key accomplishments and contributions to the world of politics.

Early Life and Education

Born Chester James Carville Jr., Carville was born in an Army hospital at Georgia's Fort Benning, where his father was stationed during World War II. While his mother, Lucille (née Normand), had stayed behind in Carville, Louisiana, where James was raised, she traveled to Fort Benning long enough to have her firstborn son born there. Later, Carville noted: "We were availing ourselves to free government health services." His mother, Lucille Normand Carville, was a former school teacher who spoke French at home and sold the World Book Encyclopedia door to door. His father, Chester James Carville Sr., was a postmaster and general store owner. Carville has four siblings: William Kenneth Carville, Mary Ann Carville (Olivier), Bonnie Margaret Carville (Reames), and Gail Constance Carville.

Carville attended Louisiana State University (LSU) from 1962 to 1966 but did not graduate at that time, characterizing himself as "something less than an attentive scholar." Following his military enlistment, Carville finished his studies at LSU at night, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in general studies in 1970 and his Juris Doctor degree in 1973. Carville is a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity. He later worked as a junior high school science teacher.

Early Career and Political Beginnings

After graduating from law school at Louisiana State University, James Carville practiced law for a brief period before managing his first campaign in 1982. In 1983, Carville managed Lloyd Doggett's (D) failed Texas gubernatorial campaign but, in the process, gained the name the "Ragin' Cajun" and met Paul Begala, his future consulting partner. In 1984, Carville became acquainted with his consulting partner Paul Begala when Carville managed then-Texas state legislator Lloyd Doggett's unsuccessful campaign for the open Texas Senate seat against Representative Kent Hance, and centrist former congressman Bob Krueger. During the general election, Doggett's opponent, Phil Gramm, leveraged vicious identity-based attacks on Doggett.

Rise to Prominence: Key Campaigns

Carville's first successful campaign was in 1986 with Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Robert Casey (D). Carville helped Bob Casey Sr. win election as the 42nd Governor of Pennsylvania in 1986. In the general election, Casey's Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Bill Scranton, took the lead in the polls after announcing that his campaign was pulling all negative ads and challenging Casey to do the same. In 1987, Carville led Wallace Wilkinson's (D) campaign for Kentucky governor. This was followed by Frank Lautenberg's (D-N.J.) Senate campaign, in which he defeated Pete Dawkins (R).

In 1989, Carville teamed up with former colleague Paul Begala to establish the Carville and Begala consulting firm, which focused on Democratic campaigns. Carville worked on then-Georgia Lieutenant Governor Zell Miller's (D) successful 1990 gubernatorial campaign. At Carville's counseling, Miller made a state lottery in lieu of state tax increases a central theme of his campaign. Carville attributed Miller's eleven-point primary victory over Young to the attraction of the lottery issue and its capacity to turn out white suburban voters. Miller won the nominating contest in the August 1990 runoff against Young and later defeated Johnny Isakson in the November 1990 general election. Carville consulted in 1990 for former Texas Congressman and sitting state Attorney General Jim Mattox, a bare-knuckled political brawler who routinely traveled to Huntsville to attend state executions in Texas, the most active state in carrying out the death penalty.

Carville was a close political confidant of Governor Casey. Following the crash, Carville, who was by then a close political confidant of Governor Casey, hatched a plan to offer his appointment of the Senate seat to Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca, an Allentown native who declined the offer within 24 hours. Attorney and later Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II was also considered.

The Clinton Campaign and "War Room"

Carville and Begala spearheaded Bill Clinton's (D) 1992 presidential campaign. Carville setup the "war room" in Little Rock, Ark., which served as the center of the Clinton's campaign. After Clinton's victory, Carville won Campaign Manager of the Year by the American Association of Political Consultants for his work on the Clinton campaign. Clinton appointed Carville senior political advisor to the president once he took up the presidency. In crafting an economic strategy for Clinton, Carville reprised the populist rhetoric his client, Pennsylvania Senator Harris Wofford, successfully wielded the prior year, which was distilled into a series of articles Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer. The articles were re-printed into book form: America: What Went Wrong? which became a prop Clinton brandished effectively from the stump during a time of economic recession.

While Carville was strategizing for Clinton's first presidential campaign in 1992, his wife Mary Matalin served as the deputy campaign manager for his opponent, incumbent George H.W. Bush. Carville sought to shield Clinton from Gennifer Flowers' allegations of her extramarital sexual affair, which emerged shortly before the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary. In June 1992, trailing George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot in the polls, Clinton limped toward the national convention, while the Los Angeles riots crowded him out of news coverage. Carville knew he needed to bring Clinton back into the news limelight.

Post-Clinton Era: Continued Political Involvement

In 1993, Carville was honored as Campaign District Manager of the Year by the American Association of Political Consultants. Carville continued to serve the Democratic National Committee in a political capacity during the 1990s and had an ongoing need to regularly visit the White House to speak with then President Bill Clinton on political matters. Accordingly, Carville was once one of only twenty individuals at the time who was granted a permanent "Non-Government Service" security badge, which were used for non-government employees, such as contractors, who needed regular access to the White House grounds.

Carville viewed working campaigns abroad as more commercially lucrative, and with less reputational risk than campaigns in the United States noting in 2009: "If you help elect a president and then you get involved in a governor's race and you lose, it's going to be a little bit damaging to your reputation. But if you go to Peru and you run a presidential race and you lose, no one knows or cares."

International Consulting

In 1994, Carville consulted for Fernando Henrique Cardoso in his successful 1994 campaign for the Brazilian presidency. Cardoso, a professor and Fulbright Fellow lectured in the United States during the 1980s at Columbia University on issues of democracy in Brazil. Cardoso, often nicknamed "FHC", was elected with the support of a heterodox alliance of his own Social Democratic Party, the PSDB, and two right-wing parties, the Liberal Front Party (PFL) and the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB).

Carville also consulted for Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé in Honduras. Later he became the publisher of his family's La Tribuna, a leading Honduran newspaper, and served on various corporate boards of directors, including the Central Bank of Honduras, and became involved in politics. Flores was aligned with former president Roberto Suazo Córdova's Rodista faction, the more conservative wing of the liberal party. Vowing to move Honduras past its image of being primarily a banana and coffee exporter, Flores campaigned on his "New Agenda" platform, which included a ten-point plan to stabilize the economy. Flores defeated his opponent by a 10% margin of 195,418 votes out of a total of 1,885,388 votes cast.

In 1998, Carville helped to craft a successful strategy to elect Jamil Mahuad Witt as President of Ecuador. In the wake of an economic crisis from falling oil prices and stagnant economic growth, Mahuad decreed a state of emergency, and embarked on austerity measures to stifle rampant inflation, including sales tax and gasoline tax increases, freezing bank account withdrawals, and the dollarization of the economy which included the sudden voiding and invalidation of the sucre, Ecuador's currency since 1884. In January 2000, Mahuad was forced from office in a military coup following demonstrations by Ecuadorians. Mahuad fled to exile in the United States.

Carville and colleagues endeavored to help Barak seize control of the daily debate, and boost his struggling challenge to the incumbent Netanyahu. Carville consulted for Buenos Aires Province Governor Eduardo Duhalde in his 1999 run for president of Argentina as the Justicialist Party nominee. Duhalde spent much of the campaign embroiled in a power struggle with his own party and incumbent President Carlos Menem who was barely dissuaded from running for a third term despite constitutional term limits, and a series of court rulings against him. The contest of campaigns was rather flat; there were no presidential debates, nor large campaign rallies, nor were any major changes in course promised by the frontrunner candidates. Duhalde emphasized his law and order credentials as a campaign theme.

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In 2002, through his firm Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS), Carville strategized in Bolivia on behalf of Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) party presidential candidate Gonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada. The son of a political exile, Sánchez de Lozada spent his early years in Iowa, studied at the University of Chicago, and spoke Spanish with a midwestern American accent. Sanchez de Lozada served as Bolivian president in the mid 1990s, and had a record of using shock therapy, economic liberalization, and privatization. slogan "Bolivia sí puede" ("Yes, Bolivia can") that featured negative attack ads on his opponents, particularly against Cochabamba mayor Manfred Reyes Villa. Sanchez de Lozada garnered a plurality of votes, 22.46%, against Evo Morales second place finish at 20.94%, before coming to power in August 2002 in a coalition government formed with two other political parties. Lozada resigned in October 2003 and fled to exile in the United States following the 2003 Bolivian Gas Conflict.

In early 2003, Carville worked in Venezuela as an advisor to Venezuelan business interests that had previously led an economically devastating strike in the spring of 2002 by managers of the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani hired Carville as a campaign advisor in July 2009. Ghani and Carville met in Washington in the spring of 2009 through mutual friends. Carville would not say whether he was paid to advise Ghani, whereas Ghani claimed that Carville volunteered his time. Carville remarked at the time that the 2009 Afghan presidential election is "probably the most important election held in the world in a long time," and he called his new job "probably the most interesting project I have ever worked in my life." When asked about similarities between politics in Afghanistan and politics in Louisiana, Carville responded: "Yeah, I felt a little bit at home, to be honest with you." Carville's objective was to help prevent one of Ghani's opponents, Hamid Karzai, from garnering a majority of votes, to force the election into a second round. Ghani garnered just 2.94% of the vote, with Kazai finishing just shy of a 50% majority.

In 2010, Carville worked as senior advisor to elect presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia. The Colombian-born Santos attended the University of Kansas for undergraduate studies from 1969 to 1973, graduating with a degree in economics and business. Santos later joined the DC-based think tank, the Inter-American Dialogue, and served as Colombia's Minister of Trade, and Minister of Finance and Public Credit of Colombia during the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2006, then President Alvaro Uribe appointed Santos as Colombia's Minister of Defence. Carville acted as advisor for Daniel Scioli's 2007 and 2011's campaigns for the governor of Buenos Aires.

Media Career and Other Ventures

Carville co-hosted CNN's Crossfire along with associate Paul Begala from 2002 until the show's cancellation in 2005. In 2005, Carville taught a semester of the course "Topics in American Politics" at Northern Virginia Community College. In 2006, Carville became a host on a sports radio show, 60/20 Sports, on XM Satellite Radio, with Luke Russert, son of NBC journalist Tim Russert.

Carville was the executive producer of the 2006 film All the King's Men, starring Sean Penn and Anthony Hopkins, which is loosely based on the life of Louisiana Governor Huey Long. In January 2009, Carville predicted the execution of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria in the following 18 months, noting it would be a foreign policy priority for the incoming Obama administration.

Personal Life and Marriage to Mary Matalin

While Carville was strategizing for Clinton's first presidential campaign in 1992, his wife Mary Matalin served as the deputy campaign manager for his opponent, incumbent George H.W. Bush. Carville and his wife wrote the book All’s Fair: Love, War and Running for President in 1995, which made The New York Times Bestseller list. The cross-aisle marriage of Matalin and Carville has resulted in more than two decades of political commentary on every major television network and news organization, informing Americans across the political spectrum. Following Hurricane Katrina, Matalin and Carville relocated their family from the Washington, D.C. beltway to Carville's home state of Louisiana where they have been vocal supporters of the renaissance of New Orleans. Together, they have taken part in a range of environmental, educational, economic and cultural projects in support of the Gulf Coast.

Books Authored

Carville has authored several other books, including 40 More Years, Had Enough?, Buck Up, Suck Up with Begala, and It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! Carville also wrote or cowrote several books, including We’re Right, They’re Wrong: A Handbook for Spirited Progressives (1996), …And the Horse He Rode In On: The People v. Ken Starr (1998), 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation (2009), and It’s the Middle Class, Stupid!

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