Ginny Brown-Waite, a longtime political veteran, focused
her congressional career on protecting the interests of
seniors and veterans in her Gulf Coast district. During her
four terms in the United States House of Representatives,
she charted an independent course by working with
Members from both parties to strengthen entitlements,
veterans’ care, and protections for women. “The bottom line
is that the voters … like their elected officials to have the
backbone of steel that Ginny Brown-Waite has,” said Florida
Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz.1
Ginny Brown-Waite was born Virginia Kniffen in
Albany, New York, on October 5, 1943. She was raised by
her mother, Charlotte Kniffen, a file clerk, who expelled
her abusive husband from their household.2 Brown-Waite
graduated from Albany’s Vincentian High School in 1961.
That same year, she was married; that union later ended in
divorce. While working for 17 years as an aide in the New
York state senate in the 1970s and 1980s, Brown-Waite
graduated with a bachelor’s degree in public administration
from the University of New York at Albany in 1976.
Brown continued her education at Russell Sage College
in Troy, New York, where she earned an MS in public
administration in 1984. Brown later married Harvey Waite,
a New York state trooper. The couple raised three daughters:
Danene, Lorie, and Jeannine.3
Brown-Waite’s career in electoral politics commenced
after she moved to Florida in 1987.4 She won election to
the Hernando County board of commissioners in 1990 and
to the Florida state senate in 1992. As a state senator, she
served three terms and chaired several committees. Brown-Waite focused on legislation dealing with welfare reform,
health care reform, and veterans’ issues. She climbed the
GOP ranks in the Florida senate, serving as majority whip
in 1999 and president pro tempore from 2001 to 2002.5
In 2002 redistricting favored Brown-Waite in the
race for Florida’s west-central seat in the U.S. House
of Representatives. She won the Republican primary
in September 2002 and commenced a “sleep-optional”
campaign against the five-term incumbent, Democrat Karen
Thurman. Brown-Waite relied on grassroots volunteers for
most of her campaigning. “We knew it was going to be won
on the ground, not the airwaves,” she said.6 In a district
populated by many retirees, Brown-Waite’s platform focused
on revamping Social Security, improving prescription
drug benefits to seniors, and cutting taxes as a catalyst for
economic growth.7 She prevailed over Thurman in a four-way campaign with 48 percent of the vote. Brown-Waite
won her subsequent re-elections with 59 percent of the vote
or greater.8
Taking her seat in the 108th Congress (2003–2005),
Brown-Waite served on the Financial Services; Veterans’
Affairs; and Budget Committees.9 Usually a reliable vote
for the Republican leadership, Brown-Waite voted to
reauthorize the USA PATRIOT Act, to enact the 2003 tax
cuts, and for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.10
A strong supporter of the GOP’s Medicare Prescription
Drug bill in 2003, she championed the program throughout
her district.11 In her freshman term, she proposed legislation
requiring the Veterans’ Administration to treat patients
seeking health care within 30 days.12 She later helped push
through the 2005 law to increase the death benefit paid to
survivors of service members killed in action.13
Yet Brown-Waite did not always toe the party line. She
was skeptical of changes to Social Security proposed by the
George W. Bush administration, and she opposed efforts to
privatize the program. I am “especially attuned to the need
for equity and making sure the Social Security recipients
are held blameless,” she said.14 She also voted with 50 other
Republicans in 2006 to override the President’s veto of
legislation expanding federally funded embryonic stem cell
research and was one of five Republicans to vote against
the effort to intervene in the case involving Terri Schiavo,
a woman who had suffered brain damage following a heart
attack and whose family was in the middle of a court battle
over the legality of taking Schiavo off life support.15
During the 109th Congress (2005–2007), the bipartisan
Congressional Women’s Caucus selected Brown-Waite and
Democrat Hilda L. Solis of California as its co-chairs. In
this position, Brown-Waite—who had grown up with an
abusive father—pressed for reauthorization of the Violence
Against Women Act.16 “[D]omestic violence affects our
most vulnerable constituents: battered women and their
families,” she stated on the House Floor.17
In 2009 she exchanged her seats on the Financial Services;
Homeland Security; and Veterans’ Affairs Committees for a
spot on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.18 She was
also named to a Republican task force on health care reform,
where she strongly opposed the Affordable Care Act.19
In August 2008, at the start of the congressional
campaign, Brown-Waite’s husband, Harvey Waite, passed
away after a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer.20
While attending bereavement counseling, she met Tony
Selvaggio, a businessman who had recently lost his wife.
They were married in late March 2010, soon after she
announced her intention to seek re-election to a fifth
term.21
In April 2010, during a congressional recess, Brown-Waite was diagnosed with a pancreatic growth similar
to what killed her husband, Harvey.22 On April 30,
2010, citing her own health challenges, Brown-Waite
announced that she would not seek re-election. Making the
announcement only hours before Florida’s filing deadline,
she tapped Hernando County sheriff Richard Nugent as
her preferred successor.23 Nugent defeated consultant Jim
Piccillo for election to the House for the 112th Congress
(2011–2013) with 67.5 percent of the vote.24
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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