page_title: Frank Fahrenkopf
section_title: RNC
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Fahrenkopf / Career / RNC
caption_attribution_description: English: President Ronald Reagan and Frank Fahrenkopf (4-24) Meeting with Frank Fahrenkopf President Ronald Reagan, Edmund Morris, and Jim Kuhn (25-26) Talking to unidentified secretary
context_page_description: Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and lobbyist who was chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1983 to 1989. Fahrenkopf is co-founder, and currently co-chairman, of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which conducts the United States general election presidential and vice presidential debates. In the private sector, Fahrenkopf most recently served as the American Gaming Association's first president, and retired from the position in 2013.
context_section_description: In January 1983, Fahrenkopf was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee. Betty Heitman of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, served as his co-chairwoman from 1983-87. In 1983, Fahrenkopf was a founder of the National Endowment for Democracy, where he served as vice chairman and a board member from 1983-93. In 1984, he founded the International Republican Institute, on which he continues to serve as a board member. In 1986 he co-founded the Commission on Presidential Debates with Democratic National Committee chairman Paul G. Kirk.
  Fahrenkopf served for many years as chairman of the Pacific Democrat Union and vice chairman of the International Democrat Union, a worldwide association of conservative political parties from the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Australia and twenty other nations. 
  In 1985, Fahrenkopf was again hired by the firm Hogan & Hartson, as a "special partner", where he was paid at least $100,000 a year. While RNC head, he also worked for two Nevada law firms, and was a director of First Republic Bank Corporation of California.
  Fahrenkopf was the longest-serving chairman of the RNC in the 20th century and the second-longest in the history of the Republican Party, leaving in 1989.
caption: Fahrenkopf with President Ronald Reagan in 1988
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