Michael Forbes (politician)
Michael Patrick Forbes (born July 16, 1952) is an American former politician from the state of New York. Forbes represented a Long Island district in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001, first as a Republican (until 1999) and then as a Democrat. He was an influential member of the House Appropriations Committee throughout his tenure on Capitol Hill. Forbes left Congress after being defeated in the 2000 Democratic primary election. In 2005, he relocated his family to Round Rock, Texas. Since leaving politics, Forbes has devoted his life to service in the Roman Catholic Church. He was ordained in 2013 as a permanent deacon by Most Reverend Joe S. Vasquez, Bishop of Austin. Former Congressman, now Deacon Forbes, was invited to become a fellow in the Inspired Leadership Initiative at the University of Notre Dame for the 2023-2024 academic year. He and his wife, Barbara, reside in Granger, Indiana, where they are also closer to Barbara's family. Early life and career Michael Patrick Forbes of Granger, Indiana and Quogue, Long Island, was born on 16 July 1952 at Riverhead, Long Island, New York, to Kenneth and Jane (née Morrissey) Forbes. He is the grandson of Carrie Bowman, a Broadway actress, and T. Harold Forbes, an actor and Vaudeville song and danceman who became a well-known newspaper publisher in New Rochelle and Long Island, New York. Forbes holds degrees from the SUNY Albany, Saint Paul University, the University of Ottawa, and the University of Mary. He studied American history, political science, bioethics and canon law, and received an honorary Doctor of Law from Long Island University. Forbes got his start in politics as an assistant to New York State Assembly Speaker Perry B. Duryea Jr. He was a close advisor and senior aide to U.S. Senator Al D'Amato and U.S. Rep. Connie Mack III. In 1979, Forbes joined the George H.W. Bush presidential campaign as a campaign operative in Upstate New York and again, in 1987, successfully campaigned statewide in Maine for Bush to succeed Ronald Reagan. President Bush appointed Forbes to a senior post at the United States Small Business Administration in 1989. He served four years, leaving in 1993 when the Clinton administration came into office. Forbes remains involved as a former founding board member, and volunteer of the not-for-profit Camp Agawam, an alumni-owned boys summer camp in Raymond, Maine. He and his older brother, Ken, his father, Ken Sr., and Forbes’s sons, Ted, Sam, Max, and most of their male relatives spent their summers on Agawam’s Crescent Lake dating from the camp’s founding in 1919. Forbes first attended Agawam in 1965. Congress In 1994, Forbes ran on three ballot lines for the House of Representatives: Republican, Conservative, and Right to Life. Campaigning as a fiscal conservative, he defeated incumbent George Hochbrueckner by six percentage points. Forbes was honored with a seat on the powerful Appropriations committee, unusual for a freshman Representative, after defeating an incumbent congressman and because of his close ties to the