Sonny Callahan

Herbert Leon "Sonny" Callahan (born September 11, 1932) is a politician from Alabama.

Callahan was born in Mobile, Alabama he had eight brothers and sisters and he attended classes at a branch of the University of Alabama that was located in Mobile. He did not graduate. Callahan served in the United States Navy from 1952 to 1954. Callahan was involved in trucking and warehousing businesses. He was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1970 and he was elected to the Alabama Senate in 1978. Callahan lost his bid to become Lieutenant Governor in 1982.

When retiring representative Jack Edwards requested that Callahan run for his seat as a Republican, Callahan switched and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1984 from the Mobile-based district. When the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, Callahan became the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs. Callahan had voted against numerous foreign aid bills before taking his chairman post and he remained skeptical of foreign aid. In 1998, Callahan became somewhat famous after it became known that he was speaking with President Bill Clinton on the phone during one of the President's first sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky.[1] In 2001, Callahan became the chairman of the Energy and Water Development subcommittee.

Callahan retired from the House in 2003. His closest congressional aide, Jo Bonner, won the election to replace Callahan, receiving huge support from both Callahan and Edwards.

After leaving Congress, Callahan founded Sonny Callahan and Associates, a lobbying firm that he currently heads. He is also served as campaign chairman for businessman Tim James' unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for Governor of Alabama.

Steve Russo scandal

In the Summer of 2004, Callahan wrote a letter to State Lands Director James Hillman Griggs complaining that Federal Coastal Zone Management pass through grant money that had been entrusted to the City of Orange Beach for beach development was not going to the intended recipients. Griggs cancelled the grant and additional funding that had been requested by Orange Beach Mayor Steve Russo and City Attorney Larry Sutley. The United States Department of Justice initiated an investigation and in 2006, Mayor Russo and Attorney Sutley were convicted in what is viewed as a political payback prosecution.

External links

• Sonny Callahan at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Sonny Callahan on the Issues