Jim Wright Dies at 92; House Speaker Resigned Amid Ethics Charges

Jim Wright, a driven Texas Democrat who rose to the pinnacle of congressional power before ethics charges forced his resignation as speaker of the House in 1989, died on Wednesday in Fort Worth. He was 92.

The Thompson’s Harveson & Cole funeral home in Fort Worth confirmed his death, at a nursing home.

While his resignation was prompted by a yearlong ethics investigation, much of the enmity against Mr. Wright derived from the way he ran the House and saw his role as speaker.

Republicans attacked him for encouraging peace negotiations in Nicaragua, accusing him of seizing authority that properly belonged to President Ronald Reagan. They were also furious over the parliamentary tactics he used to marginalize them on the way to passing a heavy load of legislation in 1987 and 1988....

A peace agreement in Nicaragua was reached after both Mr. Wright and Reagan left office in 1989, with George Bush succeeding the president and Thomas S. Foley succeeding Mr. Wright as speaker. In an election the next year, a contra candidate defeated Mr. Ortega, and the new secretary of state, James A. Baker III, congratulated Mr. Wright. “But for you there would have been no bipartisan accord,” he wrote, “without which there would have been no election.”

Mr. Wright in 2007, in an interview for this obituary, called his role in defusing the Nicaraguan conflict the “major accomplishment” of his career — “the fact that I was able to help bring about peace in Central America after a decade of war.”