Peter King

Peter Thomas King (born April 5, 1944) is the U.S. Representative for NY's 2nd congressional district, serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party and represents the central Long Island district that includes parts of Nassau and Suffolk counties.

King currently serves as the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security and drew attention in early 2011 for holding hearings on the extent of radicalization of Muslim Americans. He also sits on the Financial Services Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He will step down after his seventh year as Homeland Security Chair because of self-imposed Republican term limits. He will still remain a member of the committee.

Early life, education, and career
King was born in Manhattan and raised in Sunnyside, Queens, New York. He is of Ulster-Scots and Irish descent. His father, Peter King, was a New York City police officer.

King graduated from St. Francis College in Brooklyn in 1965 and earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1968. He then worked for the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office until 1974.

King served in the 165th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard from 1968 until he was honorably discharged in 1974.

Early political career
King first sought public office in 1977, running for an at-large seat on the Hempstead, New York Town Council and winning with the backing of the then-powerful Nassau County Republican Party machine led by Joseph Margiotta.

In 1981, he successfully ran for Nassau County Comptroller again with Margiotta's support. The next year, when several prominent Republican politicians, led by then Senator Alfonse D'Amato, sought to displace Margiotta, King joined them in this internal Republican dispute; at one point, he was the only Nassau politician to do so. King was re-elected in 1985 and 1989. As Comptroller, he displayed independence, often criticizing the budget proposals of County Executives Francis Purcell and later County Executive Thomas Gulotta, both Republicans.

During the 1990s King enjoyed a close relationship with the Muslim community in his congressional district. King often gave speeches at the Westbury Islamic Center, held book signings in the prayer hall, took in Muslim interns, and was one of the few Republicans who supported U.S. intervention in the 1990s to help Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. The Muslim community thanked King for his work by making him the guest of honor for the 1993 opening of a $3 million prayer hall. For years, a picture of King cutting the ceremonial ribbon hung on the bulletin board by the mosque's entrance.

Political positions
King voted for the 2008 Wall Street bailout, saying it was "necessary for the financial health of New York and his district." He opposed the 2009 economic stimulus package and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. He supports congressional earmarks.

On May 27, 2010, the House of Representatives moved to vote to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell; King voted against the repeal of this policy.

He was endorsed by the Brady Campaign in 2006 and 2008. In 2008, the Brady Campaign endorsed five Republicans for Congress (The others are Chris Shays, Michael Castle, Mark Kirk, and Chris Smith).

King has been a vocal opponent of illegal immigration. He opposed John McCain's 2007 effort to enact a path to citizenship for current illegal immigrants.

Although he supported John McCain for president in 2000 and despite his earlier disagreements with George W. Bush, King later became a Bush supporter. King also opposed McCain's calls for an end to torture methods used during terrorist suspect interrogations. The New York Times wrote in 2006 that King had been "the Patriot Act's most fervent fan." In 2008, he told the Times, "Look, we have not been attacked in seven years and it's not because of luck."

He supported the Iraq War from 2002 on. King supported President Obama's order to kill Osama Bin Laden, saying that he knows it is a "tough decision" to make in the Situation Room. He also approved of Obama's surprise trip to Afghanistan in May 2012.

King has opposed President Barack Obama's executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Since 2009 King has argued against holding terrorist trials in New York City saying that enormous security risks and financial costs would accompany the public trials. In April 2011, he called for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign due to Holder's plans to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged co-conspirators in the September 11, 2001 attacks from Guantanamo to New York City for trials in U.S. federal court. King denounced Holder's plan "as the most irresponsible decision ever made by any attorney general." Holder had recently backed off, announcing that the trials would be held in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.

King continued to challenge Holder in April 2011, demanding to know why the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), its co-founder Omar Ahmad, the Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust. and other unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, were not being prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice. In a letter to Holder, King wrote he had recently learned that the decision had been made by high-ranking Justice Department officials "over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas", adding that "there should be full transparency into the Department’s decision." Holder responded that the decision not to prosecute had been made during the Bush administration. The U.S. Attorney in Dallas said he alone had been responsible for the decision, which had been made based on an analysis of the law and the evidence, with no political pressure involved.

In December 2009, King commented on reports that accused attempted airline bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had admitted to being trained and equipped in Yemen and on then pending plans to release several Guantanamo prisoners to Yemen: "I don't think Guantanamo should be closed, but if we're going to close it I don't believe we should be sending people to Yemen where prisoners have managed to escape in the past .... Obviously, if [Abdulmutallab] did get training and direction from Yemen, it just adds to what is already a dangerous situation", he said. |

King criticized the activities of WikiLeaks and in December 2010 suggested that the group be designated a "terrorist organization" and treated as such by U.S. agencies.

In 2011, Rep. King became a co-sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

King praised Obama's nominations of Leon Panetta for United States Secretary of Defense and General David Petraeus for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency saying, "Director Panetta has done an outstanding job at the CIA, and General Petraeus has distinguished himself as one of the great American military leaders. Both men ... will be instrumental as we continue to combat the terrorist threat.”

Support for the IRA
King actively supported the Irish republican movement in the 1980s, and frequently traveled to Northern Ireland to meet with senior members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, many of whom he counted as friends. King compared Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams to George Washington and asserted that the "British government is a murder machine", but he did not meet Gerry Adams until 1984, four years after his open support for the IRA began.

King and the IRA made the strangest of political couples. While King was an opponent of legalized abortion, a fiscal conservative, and a prominent supporter of English First - which campaigned against federal funds for bilingual education - the IRA and Sinn Féin are close to supporting abortion rights, have campaigned to give the Irish language official parity with English, and were in a pseudo-Marxist phase when King made his alliance with them.

He became involved with NORAID, an organization that the British, Irish and U.S. governments had accused of financing IRA activities and providing them with weapons. Regarding the 30 years of violence during which the IRA killed over 1,700 people, including over 600 civilians, King said, "If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it". This was despite the death of American Kenneth Salvesen, and the wounding of another, Mark McDonald, in the 1983 IRA Harrods bombing of December 1983 which resulted in six deaths and ninety injuries.

He also called the IRA "the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland." This was despite the fact that the democratically-elected SDLP (the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland up to 2003) opposed all violence and spoke for most of Northern Ireland's Catholics during the Troubles. The party's policies under John Hume led directly to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Sinn Féin supported the IRA, with both groups refusing to support the Principle of consent which was central to the 1998 Agreement. Sinn Féin finally gained more votes than the SDLP in the Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2003.

Speaking at a pro-IRA rally in 1982 in Nassau County, New York, King pledged support to "those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry." In 1985, the Irish government boycotted New York's annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations in protest at King serving as Grand Marshal of the event; the Irish government condemned him as an "avowed" supporter of IRA terrorism. At the parade he again offered words of support for the IRA.

A Northern Irish judge ejected King from his courtroom, describing King as "an obvious collaborator with the IRA". Although some organizations reported that King was banned from appearing on British TV for his pro-IRA views and refusing to condemn IRA activity, he was merely not interviewed.

In 1993, King lobbied for Gerry Adams to be a guest at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton. In 2000, he called then-presidential candidate George W. Bush a tool of "anti-Catholic bigoted forces," after Bush visited Bob Jones University in South Carolina, described by King as "an institution that is notorious in Ireland for awarding an honorary doctorate to Northern Ireland's tempestuous Protestant leader, Ian Paisley."

King stopped supporting the IRA after being offended by Irish public opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but in 2008, King spoke in favor of bail for a fugitive IRA member, Pól Brennan, who had escaped from prison in the U.K. 15 years earlier during the Maze Prison escape, and who had been apprehended in Texas.

At a September 2011 hearing in England concerning terrorism, King said that the IRA used British torture as a recruiting tool, but that it has no parallels with American treatment of suspects after 9/11. Labour MP David Winnick commented to King that "there’s been some surprise in the United States but also in Britain that you have a job looking into and investigating into terrorism" and added that King "seems to be an apologist for terrorism."

Comments about American mosques
In 2004, King claimed in an interview with conservative talk radio host Sean Hannity that "no American Muslim leaders are cooperating in the war on terror," and that "80-85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists .... This is an enemy living amongst us." The Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced the comments as "Islamophobic bigotry" and Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe called on President George W. Bush to "condemn this latest example of hate-filled language." In a September 2007 interview with the website Politico.com, King said that "There are too many mosques in this country... There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them." King later said he meant to say that too many mosques in the United States do not cooperate with law enforcement.

Radicalization hearings
In December 2010, King announced that when he became chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee he would hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims. While allowing that, "The overwhelming majority of Muslims are outstanding citizens," he also claimed that some Islamic clerics were telling their congregations to ignore extremism and to refrain from helping investigators. King cited Justice Department statistics showing that over the previous two years, 50 U.S. citizens had been charged with major acts of terrorism, and all were motivated by radical Islamic ideologies.

The first hearing, held on March 10, 2011, was entitled "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response." The hearing included testimony from Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is one of two Muslims in the U.S. Congress, Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia, and Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca. Others to provide testimony included Dr. M Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim and Founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; Melvin Bledsoe, whose son, a Muslim convert, is serving a life sentence for killing one Army soldier and wounding another in the 2009 Little Rock recruiting office shooting; and Abdirizak Bihi, the Director of the Somali Education and Social Advocacy Center. The Council on American Islamic Relations submitted a statement to the committee.

In an article for the National Review, King announced that his second and third Homeland Security Committee hearings on radicalization would focus on foreign money coming into American mosques and al Shabab’s efforts to recruit young Muslims men in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The second hearing was set for mid-May while the third was tentatively scheduled for July. King also said that he will continue to hold radicalization hearings as long as he is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Reactions
Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, responded by saying that "none of these [law enforcement and intelligence] officials have backed King’s assertions that the Muslim community has not been helpful in thwarting terrorist attacks." Thompson also wrote King demanding that the scope of the hearings be widened to include all extremist groups in the United States, irrespective of ideology. Los Angeles County sheriff Lee Baca said that there was nothing to support King's claims of non-cooperation by American Muslims. Baca invited King to Los Angeles to show the cooperation between Muslim-Americans and law enforcement.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) in a letter to King claimed that his call was sweeping and misguided, and called for a meeting with him to discuss his initiatives, the proposed hearings, and the efforts of the Muslim American community in fighting radicalization.

The Council on American Islamic Relations joined 50 other organizations, including Amnesty International, the Sikh Coalition, the Japanese American Citizens League and Unitarian Universalist Service Committee in signing a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi comparing the hearings to those held by Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and calling them "divisive and wrong", and "an affront to fundamental [American] freedoms"

Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the conservative religious organization American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which opposed the building of the Park 51 mosque, declared his support for King and the hearings, and remarked "This hearing isn’t about profiling — it’s about protecting our homeland."

Frank Gaffney, Founder and President of the American Center for Security Policy, praised King for holding a hearing "about an issue that has long been deemed politically untouchable", and opined that King had indeed shown there is "a problem of 'extremism' within the American Muslim community."

Several members of Congress, including Republican Representatives Mike Rogers of Alabama and Joe Walsh of Illinois, wrote letters showing their support for King's hearings. Rogers wrote that radicalization could happen anywhere in the United States, and thus it is an issue all Americans have to deal with. Walsh added, “Homegrown terrorists are the number one threat facing American families right now, and it would be irresponsible and negligent not to try and identify the causes of their radicalization.”

Comments about Michael Jackson
On July 5, 2009, shortly after the death of Michael Jackson, King made a video statement chiding the media for its coverage of Jackson's death: ""Let’s knock out the psychobabble. He was a pervert, a child molester, he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country? I just think we’re too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say we don’t need Michael Jackson. He died, he had some talent, fine. There’s men and women dying every day in Afghanistan. Let’s give them the credit they deserve."

Due to the high-profile nature of Jackson's death, King's statement generated national media coverage. In reaction to the controversy, King said, "I believe I'm articulating the views of a great majority of the American people".

Comments about the Occupy Wall Street movement
On October 7, 2011, King commented on the Occupy Wall Street movement: "We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy. I’m taking this seriously in that I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can’t allow that to happen."

Committee assignments
King's committee assignments for the 112th United States Congress are:
 * Committee on Homeland Security
 * As Chair of the full committee, Rep. King may serve as an ex officio member of all subcommittees.
 * Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
 * Subcommittee on Terrorism, HUMINT, Analysis and Counterintelligence
 * United States House Committee on Financial Services

1986 NYS Republican ticket

 * Governor: Andrew O'Rourke
 * Lieutenant Governor: E. Michael Kavanagh
 * Comptroller: Edward Regan
 * Attorney General: Peter T. King
 * U.S. Senate: Alfonse D'Amato

1992 to 2008
When Democratic Congressman Robert Mrazek announced his short-lived candidacy for Senate against Republican incumbent Alphonse D'Amato in 1992, King ran for the then vacant 3rd Congressional District seat. Despite being outspent 5-to-1, King won 50% to 47%. From 1993-2008, he sometimes faced only token opposition, while in other races, he ran against those who could self-finance their campaigns. Although King was outspent in those races, he would ultimately win by double-digit margins. In 2006, originally Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg intended to run against King. When he dropped out shortly after his announcement, fellow legislator Dave Mejias ran instead. While some pundits believed this race would be close due to dissatisfaction with Bush, King defeated Mejias 56% to 44%. King again sought re-election to Congress in 2008. The Democrats fielded 25-year-old newcomer Graham Long in a long-shot bid to defeat King. King won the 2008 election with 64% of the vote.

Speculation of a 2010 Senate campaign
After briefly contemplating running for Governor of New York in 2010, King announced that he was seriously thinking of running for the U.S. Senate in a special election for the last two years of the term won in 2006 by Hillary Clinton, who had since been appointed Secretary of State. King had contemplated running for Senate in 2000 against Hillary Clinton, and even created an exploratory committee in 2003 to challenge Chuck Schumer. Both times he ended up deciding against them. King said there would be no primary with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as the latter would instead opt to throw his support behind King and possibly explore a gubernatorial bid.

When Kirsten Gillibrand, the Congresswoman representing New York's 20th congressional district in the House, was appointed to fill the seat until the special election by Governor David Paterson, King said he would consider holding off on making a run for the seat: "If he appointed Caroline Kennedy, I was ready to file papers right away because she’s a superstar and you can’t let her build a head of steam – and she was totally unqualified in my perspective. With Kirsten, she’s entitled to be given an opportunity to build a record for the state." However, two days after the Gillibrand pick, King demanded Paterson justify his selection of the congresswoman, saying there were more qualified candidates. In August 2009, King ruled out a senate run; however, in January 2010, he said he was reconsidering a run. Although polls showed King doing favorably against Gillibrand if he chose to run, King ultimately decided to run for re-election for congress, which he won with 72% of the vote.

Electoral history
Third party candidates omitted, so percentages may not add up to 100%.

Personal life
King resides in Seaford, New York with his wife, Rosemary King, with whom he has two adult children and one grandson. King has two siblings, Kevin and Barbara. He is an author of three novels that are loosely based on his years in Congress: Terrible Beauty, Deliver Us From Evil, and Vale of Tears.

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