Don Ritter | |
|---|---|
 Ritter in 1983 | |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromPennsylvania's15th district | |
| In office January 3, 1979 – January 3, 1993 | |
| Preceded by | Fred B. Rooney |
| Succeeded by | Paul McHale |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Donald Lawrence Ritter (1940-10-21)October 21, 1940 (age 85) New York City,New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Education | Lehigh University (BS) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS,DSc) |
Donald Lawrence Ritter (born October 21, 1940) is a formerRepublican member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromPennsylvania. From 1979 to 1993, Ritter representedPennsylvania's 15th congressional district, which then included theLehigh Valley region of the state.
Ritter was born inWashington Heights inNew York City, the son of Frank and Ruth Ritter. Ritter's father was born inHungary and lived inManhattan and laterThe Bronx. Ritter attended New York City's P.S. 70 Elementary School, the Joseph H. Wade Junior High School, P.S. 117, and theBronx High School of Science.
Ritter then attendedLehigh University inBethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he graduated with aB.S. inmetallurgical engineering in 1961. He went on to receive anM.S. fromMIT inCambridge, Massachusetts, in 1963 and anSc.D. inphysical metallurgy from MIT in 1966. He worked as a research assistant at MIT while obtaining his doctorate from 1961 to 1966.
From 1967 to 1968, Ritter was aNational Academy of Sciences scientific exchange fellow at the Baikov Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science at theAcademy of Sciences of the Soviet Union inMoscow, which was then theSoviet Union's highest scientific institution. The Academy of Science's presidentMstislav Keldysh was an engineer in theSoviet space program and a member of theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and theSupreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.
In 1968, Ritter returned to the U.S., where he became an assistant professor atCal Poly and a contract consultant forGeneral Dynamics inPomona, California.
In 1969, he returned toLehigh University inBethlehem, Pennsylvania, as ametallurgy faculty member and the university's assistant to the vice president. In 1976, he was appointed manager of Lehigh University's research program development, serving in this capacity and as an engineering consultant to private industry until 1979.
In 1979, Ritter announced his candidacy forCongress in thePennsylvania's 15th congressional district. Ritter prevailed in a five-way primary for theRepublican nomination, and then went on to upset 16-year incumbent DemocratFred B. Rooney to represent Pennsylvania's 15th Congressional District in the96th United States Congress and in six consecutive Congresses, holding the seat for seven terms, or 14 years.
Ritter represented theLehigh Valley region of easternPennsylvania, which includes the cities ofAllentown,Bethlehem, andEaston, and has hybrid economy of both heavy manufacturing companies and employees and a substantial university and college constituency.
In theU.S. House of Representatives, Ritter rose to become a senior member of two influential committees, theCommittee on Energy and Commerce and theCommittee on Science and Technology. On both committees and in his legislative initiatives and voting record, Ritter led an effort to bring a greater scientific approach to the politicized debate over environmental and energy regulation. He was often referred to by peers as the "scientist-congressman" because he was one of the fewPh.D. or Sc.D.-level scientists in history to serve in theUnited States Congress.
Ritter supportedfree markets and small government policies, though he also cast several trade votes in favor of his district'ssteel andapparel industries, both of which were then beginning to lose global market share to mostlyAsia-based foreign competitors who were benefiting from government subsidies, limited regulatory constraints, low wages, and other practices. At the same time, Ritter supported theNorth American Free Trade Agreement, which was debated and passed the House in 1993.
Ritter was the leading advocate in Congress for utilizingrisk assessment to put hazards, particularly energy and environmental ones, in more rational perspective that he believed better prioritized and reduced the risks that represented the most dangerous threats to public health and the environment. Ritter's risk assessment legislation was ultimately incorporated in theContract with America in 1994 and passed into law the following year, in 1995.
While in Congress, Ritter championed the use oftotal quality management in public policy development and management. As part of this effort, he made progress in building bridges between the U.S. Congress and some of the world's leading global total quality management thought leaders, includingW. Edwards Deming,Joseph M. Juran,Armand V. Feigenbaum, and others. In his Lehigh Valley district, he launched Quality Valley USA, which advocated the use of total quality management practices and enhanced public awareness of the economic advantages that its implementation represented for citizens, businesses, and workers.
In his eastern Pennsylvania district, Ritter promoted theLehigh River as a linear environmental center to theLehigh Valley that was central to the leisure, recreation, and creative economic development needs of his constituents. Later, along with neighboring Pennsylvania CongressmanPeter H. Kostmayer, Ritter authored legislation that created theDelaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, which has since become a primary environmental and recreational focus in the Lehigh Valley.
Ritter was a champion ofhuman rights and opposed what he saw as theSoviet Union's expansionist activity inAfghanistan,Cuba,Central America,Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. In addition to his service on theCommission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Ritter was the founding chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Baltic States and Ukraine whose co-chairmen wereDennis Hertel (D-MI) and U.S. SenatorDonald Riegle (D-MI). At theWashington Monument in 1983, Ritter addressed a memorial rally in support of millions ofUkrainians who were killed in the forced starvation employed byJosef Stalin in the man-made famine of theHolodomor in the early 1930s.[1]
Ritter speaks fluentRussian and studiedRussianliterature,culture, andhistory as a hobby at MIT. He was introduced to Russian language study by Alexander Isaacovich Lipson, a professor atHarvard and MIT at the time.
Ritter was a leader in Congress in opposition to theSoviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. He spent the next decade in Congress working with Afghans to evict the Soviet invaders. He authored the "Material Assistance to Afghanistan" legislation, also known as Ritter-Tsongas, in 1982, created the Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan (Ritter-Humphrey) to promote "material assistance" of all kinds to theAfghan resistance, convened meetings on Afghanistan with representatives of theU.S. Department of State,Defense Intelligence Agency,Central Intelligence Agency, andFederal Bureau of Investigation to enhance U.S. assistance to the Afghan resistance, and used his ranking position on theCommission on Security and Cooperation in Europe to expand the Commission's focus fromEastern Europe and the Soviet Union to also address the Soviets' illegal invasion, occupation, and destruction of Afghanistan, which violated the Soviet-signedHelsinki Accords.
Ritter enjoyed consistently high rankings fromconservative interest groups and correspondingly low rankings fromliberal ones. While his eastern Pennsylvania district was ancestrallyDemocratic, it also had a considerable tinge ofsocial conservatism and a significant number ofHungarian,Polish,Slovak, andUkrainian Americans who supported Ritter's stronganti-communism. Partly due to this, after his initial run for Congress in 1979, he was reelected six more times without serious difficulty. Even in 1982 and 1986, which were bad years for Republicans nationally, Ritter was reelected with 57 percent and 56 percent of the vote, respectively.
In1992, withRoss Perot running as an Independent andGeorge H. W. Bush only securing 36% of the vote in his failed presidential reelection bid, Ritter lost what would have been his seventh reelection in a close race against Democrat State RepresentativePaul McHale.
From 1993 to 2002, Ritter served as founder, chairman, and president of the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI), which sought greater involvement of states and localities inenvironmental policy development, which had been largely controlled at the federal level. Ritter developed and engaged grassroots involvement in support of moving some environmental policies in a more fact and science-based direction, as opposed to aWashington, D.C.–based politicized one. In support of this, NEPI engaged citizens and decision-makers from states, cities, and localities.
NEPI conducted working groups of some 40 to 50 individuals on various environmental policies and proposals, including reinventing theEPA and environmental policy being proposed by thenVice PresidentAl Gore'sReinventing Government initiative.
NEPI's initiatives sought expanded involvement of the scientific community and bipartisan representation from states and localities, which had traditionally been excluded from the development of federal environmental policies. NEPI and its collaborating institutions and participants issued an extensive number of publications. The organization's working groups and annual conferences, held in Washington, D.C., drew some 250-300 participants, including governors, mayors, state legislators, chairpersons of various Congressional Committees, Cabinet members, EPA administrators,White House officials, environmental advocacy group leaders, and leading legal and scientific figures. NEPI also conducted several working groups on the policy implications of several highly technical issues, includingbioavailability andsediments.
While heading NEPI, Ritter also founded the Afghanistan Foundation in Washington, D.C., which he chaired.[2] The Afghanistan Foundation was the only major organization paying attention to many of the concerning warning signs that were emerging inAfghanistan in the late 1990s, which led ultimately to theSeptember 11 attacks.[3]
Ritter also focused on fostering a market economy in Afghanistan, both as a businessman and investor. He co-founded the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) and theUSAID-supported Afghan International Chamber of Commerce (AICC), which later became the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries. Ritter worked withMahmud Karzai and also withHamid Karzai (brother of former Afghan presidentHamid Karzai),Ahmed Wali Karzai (who was assassinated in 2011), andQayum Karzai, the elder brother of the former president, with whom he jointly authored several opinion editorials inThe Washington Times.[4][5]
Ritter was a resident ofCoopersburg, Pennsylvania, in theLehigh Valley for 25 years, prior to his divorce from his former wife Edith Duerksen Ritter, previously ofCanada, with whom he has two children, a son, Jason Alexei, and a daughter, Kristina Larissa.
Ritter resides inWashington, D.C., andWarrenton, Virginia, with his partner Victoria Stack.
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromPennsylvania's 15th congressional district 1979–1993 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial) | ||
| Preceded byas Former U.S. Representative | Order of precedence of the United States as Former U.S. Representative | Succeeded byas Former U.S. Representative |
