John Stuckey, a towering political strategist who helped shape Georgia’s Republican Party and played a key role in launching Newt Gingrich’s career, died May 30 at Georgia War Veterans Home in Milledgeville.

Stuckey was born on Aug. 9, 1939, in Shreveport, La., and was raised in rural Louisiana. He earned a degree in American history at Louisiana State University.

During his college years, specifically working with his favorite professor, T. Harry Williams, he became interested in politics, Stuckey said in an interview for the University of Georgia’s Oral History Collections in 2017.

Williams was working on his Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Huey Long, and Stuckey assisted him during the interviews, which meant he carried the reel-to-reel recorder, he said.

“I sort of became fascina

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