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George R. Nethercutt, Jr. (born October 7, 1944) is an American politician. He was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2005, representing Washington's 5th congressional district.

Born in Spokane, Washington, and a graduate of North Central High School, Nethercutt earned a B.A. in English from Washington State University and a law degree from Gonzaga University. He worked as a clerk for Alaskan federal Judge Raymond Plummer. Nethercutt then served as staff council and later chief of staff to Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) before returning to private practice in Washington State. Specializing in estate and adoption law, he also founded the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery, a private, not-for-profit institution to help prevent child abuse.

Nethercutt was first elected to Congress in 1994 in a dramatic election in which he unseated the Speaker of the House Tom Foley. This marked the first time a sitting Speaker of the House was unseated since 1860, and only the second to be unseated in U.S. history (the first was William Pennington by Nehemiah Perry). In Congress, he sat on the House Appropriations Committee and the House Science Committee. He had a strongly conservative voting record.

George Nethercutt's congressional photo

Nethercutt's campaign against Foley included significant attention to Foley's opposition to term limits. In 1992, Washington state voters had approved a ballot measure limiting the terms of Washington officials, including federal officials such as U.S. Representatives. Foley had brought suit contesting the constitutionality of this limit and won in court. Nethercutt repeatedly cited the caption of Foley's lawsuit — "Foley against the People of the State of Washington" — and promised each time that he would serve no more than three terms in the House.

Fifth Congressional District of Washington

After Nethercutt's narrow victory over Foley in 1994, he was re-elected in 1996 and 1998. In 2000, when his pledge to serve only three terms would have kicked in, Nethercutt changed his mind and announced his intention to run for re-election again, infuriating term-limits supporters. Nethercutt was nevertheless re-elected in 2000 and in 2002.

Nethercutt decided to run for U.S. Senate in 2004, hoping to again unseat an incumbent, this time Senator Patty Murray, rather than running for a sixth term in the House. Term limits again became an issue in the campaign, as Nethercutt's broken promise to limit himself to three terms in the House was one of the issues that Democratic advertisements focused on.

Nethercutt was also hampered by his lack of name recognition in the more densely populated western part of the state. Washington has not elected a senator from east of the Cascades since 1916. Other important issues included national security and the war in Iraq. Nethercutt supported the invasion of Iraq, while Murray opposed it.

Nethercutt was a heavy underdog from the start, and his campaign never gained much traction. In November, he lost by 12 points, receiving only 43 percent of the vote to Murray's 55 percent.

Nethercutt left the House of Representatives at the end of his term in January 2005, but has said that he probably will not retire from politics completely. For now, he and two other political veterans (former Interior Department deputy secretary J. Steven Griles and former White House national energy policy director Andrew Lundquist) have joined to form the political lobbying firm of Lundquist, Nethercutt & Griles, LLC.

• George Nethercutt at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• George Nethercutt on the Issues