Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Democrat Tom Foley (born 1929) was swept out of office in 1994 in an election many Republicans referred to as a "Republican Revolution." Foley served from the 89th to 103rd Congress (1965-1995) and was speaker from 1989 to 1995 but fell out of favor with fellow House members following his handling of the House banking scandal of the early 1990s.

Tom Foley was born on March 16, 1929, in Spokane, Washington. His father, Ralph E. Foley, was a lawyer who was Spokane County prosecutor in the 1930s before becoming a superior-court judge for 35 years, the longest tenure in Washington state history. His mother was Helen Marie Higgins.

Although Foley grew up in a middle-class neighborhood populated mainly by Republicans, he gained much sympathy for the less fortunate from his parents and experienced blue-collar life in the summers of his high school years working in the...