Political life of Clint Eastwood
 Clint Eastwood speaking at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Retrieved August 31, 2012. |
American actor and director Clint Eastwood has long shown an interest in politics. He won election as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in April 1986 and in 2001, Governor Gray Davis appointed the Oscar-winner to the California State Park and Recreation Commission. Eastwood endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election and delivered a prime time address at the 2012 Republican National Convention, where he delivered the Barack Obama Empty Chair Speech.
Eastwood registered as a Republican in order to vote for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and he passively supported Richard Nixon's 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns. He later criticized Nixon's handling of the Vietnam War and his morality during Watergate. He usually describes himself as a libertarian in interviews and in the spring of 1999, he told Premiere magazine that "I guess I was a social liberal and a fiscal conservative before it became fashionable." He told USA Weekend in 2004, "I don't see myself as conservative, but I'm not ultra-leftist. ... I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone. Even as a kid, I was annoyed by people who wanted to tell everyone how to live." In 2009, Eastwood said that he was now a registered Libertarian.
At times, he has supported Democrats in California, such as the liberal and environmentally concerned Representative Sam Farr in 2002. Eastwood contributed $1,000 to Farr's successful re-election campaign that year and on May 23, 2003, he hosted a $5,000-per-ticket fundraiser for California's Democratic governor, Gray Davis. Later that year, Eastwood offered to film a commercial in support of the embattled governor, and in 2001, the star visited Davis' office to support an alternative energy bill written by another Democrat, California State assemblyman Fred Keeley.
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