WASHINGTON -- Rep. John A. Boehner, with his ever-present cigarette, seems like a throwback to the days of Capitol Hill's smoke-filled rooms.
He is hip-deep in political contributions from an industry he oversees. He was once scolded for passing out campaign checks from tobacco interests on the House floor. He was booted from a leadership post eight years ago.
But with his election yesterday as the new House majority leader, the Ohio Republican has emerged as his party's agent of change in the post-Tom DeLay era.
With the GOP eager to put a spate of corruption scandals behind it, the mantle of reform might seem to rest awkwardly on Boehner's shoulders.
His rise to power has been propelled by many of the same skills that were honed by DeLay, the Texas Republican forced to give up the majority leader's post after he was indicted in September on money-laundering charges. Like DeLay, Boehner is a prodigious fundraiser. Like DeLay, he has worked closely with lobbyists.
But the Republicans who backed Boehner yesterday appeared to find his other qualities more compelling: He is genial, a clever strategist, an accomplished legislator. And he is not Rep. Roy Blunt, the DeLay protege from Missouri who was Boehner's rival for majority leader.
He came to the race with a biography that included the seasoning of a former leader and a face that - if not fresh - had at least been out of the limelight for many years.
Indeed, his election as majority leader is the latest milestone in Boehner's comeback after being ousted from a lower-level leadership post in 1998.
Since 2001, he has been chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. In that post, he forged alliances with other committee chairmen.
Boehner also has close ties with the White House. As education committee chairman, Boehner was a key architect of one of Bush's signature first-term achievements: the No Child Left Behind law.
Boehner, 56, took his House seat in 1991 after winning the Republican primary against an incumbent who had been convicted of having sex with a 16-year-old girl.
Arriving in a Capitol that had been controlled by Democrats for decades, Boehner was one of a band of new Republican members that sought to throw the majority party onto the defensive.
Boehner's combativeness caught the eye of Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who brought him into a small group plotting how the GOP could win the House. When that goal was achieved in 1995 and Gingrich became House speaker, Boehner was elected chairman of the House Republican Conference.
In that role, Boehner cultivated close ties to the business community in the GOP bid to make sympathetic lobbyists part of its political and legislative machine.
He also was in charge of developing the party's public relations strategy - a task that became increasingly difficult after the GOP's budget dispute with President Bill Clinton in 1995 and 1996 resulted in a partial government shutdown.
Polls showed the public largely blamed the Republicans for the dispute. And the party's image worsened among many voters when, in 1998, it pushed for Clinton's impeachment on charges stemming from the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
After Republicans fared poorly in that year's House elections, Gingrich announced his resignation from Congress. But restive Republicans also voted Boehner out of his leadership job.
Rather than maintain a low profile, Boehner continued to operate a political action committee - a common tool of lawmakers with leadership ambitions.
Upon becoming head of the education committee, he embraced Republican efforts to shed the party's image of being hostile to public education.
The committee post also helped him build campaign funds. Sallie Mae, the agency that helps finance federally guaranteed loans for college students, is overseen by his panel and has become a key source of campaign money for him.
Critics who represent the nonprofit sector of education say Boehner is too beholden to those donors - and that it shows in the legislation his committee produces.
Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Boehner, denied that the contributions he accepts have any influence on the policies he supports.
Boehner's ascent in leadership lands him far from his humble roots. The son of a tavern owner, he grew up in Cincinnati - the only one of 12 children to earn a college degree.
Boehner's political career began when he was elected president of his homeowners association and members encouraged him to seek a spot on the Union Township Board of Trustees.
In 1984 he was running a plastics packaging company - which still operates today - when some constituents urged him to run for the statehouse.
"I was 34 years old, I was making a lot of money, bored to death," Boehner recently said.
Janet Hook and Faye Fiore write for the Los Angeles Times.
