Philip Sharp (politician)

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Philip Riley Sharp (born July 15, 1942) is an American politician and nonprofit leader who served ten terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat from Indiana, from 1975 to 1995. He represented Indiana’s 10th district (1975–1983) and then the 2nd district (1983–1995) after redistricting. Sharp defeated Mike Pence in both the 1988 and 1990 elections.

Early life and education
Sharp was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Elwood, Indiana. He was valedictorian of Wendell Willkie High School in 1960. He started at DePauw University in 1961, then transferred to Georgetown University, where he earned a BA cum laude in 1964. He studied at Exeter College, Oxford in 1966 before returning to Georgetown to complete a PhD in 1974.

Career before Congress
From 1967 to 1974, Sharp taught political science at Ball State University. He worked as a legislative aide to Senator Vance Hartke from 1964 to 1969. He ran for Indiana’s 10th congressional district in 1970 and 1972 before winning a seat in 1974 as part of the “Watergate Babies” wave of new Democratic members.

U.S. House of Representatives
During his time in Congress, Sharp was a key voice on energy policy. He chaired the Energy and Power Subcommittee and helped push major energy legislation, including the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and the 1992 Energy Policy Act. He also served on the National Research Council Committee on the Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, which produced a major report in 2001. Sharp chaired the Secretary of Energy’s Electric Systems Reliability Task Force, whose 1998 report influenced U.S. energy planning.

After Congress
Sharp chose not to seek reelection in 1994 and was succeeded by Republican David McIntosh. He later served as director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In 2005, he became president of Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan energy and environment think tank. He has held board roles with Duke Energy, the Energy Foundation, and ecoAmerica, and has been involved with the National Commission on Energy Policy and The National Academies’ committees, including the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. Earlier, he worked as a senior policy advisor at the law and public policy firm Van Ness Feldman.

Honors and awards
Sharp has received honorary degrees from DePauw University (1986) and Ball State University (1997). In 2016, he received the James R. Schlesinger Medal for Energy Security from the U.S. Department of Energy for his work on energy issues.