Former Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley has died at the age of 84, NBC News has confirmed. The former speaker had suffered a stroke last December and was hospitalized in May with pneumonia, according to an obituary passed on from the Foley family to the journalists covering the House of Representatives. He returned home after a week and had been on hospice care there ever since, the obituary said. Foley was a Washington state lawmaker who served as speaker from 1989-1994. In that year, dubbed the “Republican Revolution,” he became the first speaker to be defeated in a re-election bid in 134 years. He was first elected to Congress in 1965 and served 15 terms. After his defeat, President Bill Clinton made him Ambassador to Japan.
