Jim VandeHei

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Jim VandeHei (1971- ) is an American political reporter and co-founder of The Politico. Previously, he was a national political reporter at the Washington Post, where he worked as White House correspondent.

He graduated from Lourdes High School in Oshkosh, Wis., in 1989. In 1995 he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh with a double major in journalism and political science. While an undergraduate, he served an internship with Sen. Herb Kohl in 1994, which led to his decision to be a political journalist. After working as a sports reporter for the Oshkosh Northwestern, VandeHei moved to Washington, D.C. In 1995 he worked for Inside Washington Publishers. In 1996, he was hired by "Inside the New Congress", a weekly newsletter that focuses on the House and Senate. In 1997, he began working as a reporter for Roll Call, which covers Capitol Hill. While at Roll Call, VandeHei broke the story of House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston's affairs in 1998.^[1]. He was the first to report in 1998 that Republicans were formally planning to impeach President Clinton. He is married to Autumn Hanna VandeHei, a former staffer for House Republican Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

After a stint as a national political reporter for The Wall Street Journal in 2000, VandeHei joined the Washington Post.

VandeHei's work has appeared in Capital Style and The New Republic. He has appeared as a pundit on television shows on all the major networks.

In 2006, VandeHei left the Washington Post to join the staff at a new political publication, The Politico. VandeHei's comment that since his hiring, well-known journalists are "begging" him for jobs and that he believes the new venture would "show that we’re better than The New York Times or The Washington Post" [1] drew criticism from blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos and Michael Sokolov at the Poynter Institute.[2] [3]