Difference between revisions of "Enid Greene"

Latest revision as of 17:49, 28 August 2021

Enid Greene Mickelsen served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives, from January 1995 to January 1997. She was the third woman and first Republican woman to be elected to Congress from Utah.

Greene was born on June 5, 1958, to naval officer and financier D. Forrest Greene and his wife Gerda Marie Beyer. Although born in California, she graduated from high school in Salt Lake City and earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah. She then obtained her law degree from Brigham Young University.

She was a lawyer for software company Novell and then a litigation attorney with a law firm in Salt Lake City. She served as deputy chief of staff for Governor Norman Bangerter.

In 1992, Greene ran for a seat in the Utah’s 2nd district, and lost by only four percentage points. She married Joe Waldholtz in 1993 and he was her campaign manager for her 1994 bid for the seat. She won the election, in part due to the Republican election landslide. She was considered a rising star in the Republican party when she was named to the House Rules Committee, the first freshman on that committee for more than 80 years.

In March 1995 she announced that she was pregnant and she became the second representative to give birth while in office; she was the first Republican to do so. A year later, in March 1996, Utah Republicans had pressured her to announce that she would not seek reelection. Almost $1.8 million of the $2 million she spent on her 1994 campaign had come from her husband Joe, who had embezzled nearly $4 million from her father. He disappeared in November 1995 for six days, then turned himself into the police. Greene sued for divorce, obtained sole custody of her daughter, and changed her name back to Greene. Waldholtz pled guilty of federal charges of tax, bank, and campaign fraud, but while out on parole, was convicted of forging insurance and Veterans Affairs checks from his stepmother and late father and sentenced to three to fifteen years in prison.

Greene remarried in 2008; her husband Scott J. Mickelsen serves as a 3rd district justice court judge. Meanwhile, she has gradually moved back into politics. She was elected vice chair of the Utah Republican Party in 2003. She was a candidate for lieutenant governor in Utah in 2004 with candidate Nolan Karras. In November 2006, she became acting chair of the Utah Republican Party and was subsequently unanimously elected to serve as state party chair in February 2007 until June 2007. She was a delegate at the 2012 Republican National convention and served as chair of the 2016 Republican National Convention Site Selection Committee. She was appointed chair of the 2016 Republican Convention Rules Committee.

She also hosted The Enid Greene Show, a radio talk show on KSL News radio, for five years.

She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.