Roger Mitchell Simon (born March 29, 1948) is a writer and commentator, the chief political columnist of Politico and a New York Times best-selling author. He has won more than three dozen first-place awards for journalism, and is the only person to win twice the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award for commentary. His book on the 1996 presidential race, Show Time, became a New York Times best-seller. Life and career Simon was born in Chicago, and received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1970. Prior to joining Politico, Simon was a reporter or columnist for several newspapers, including the Waukegan, Illinois, News-Sun, the Baltimore Sun, and the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1998, he became the White House correspondent of the Chicago Tribune and covered the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In 1999, he joined U.S. News & World Report as chief political correspondent and then political editor. He joined Bloomberg News in January 2006 as its first chief political correspondent, and later joined Politico as its first chief political columnist. Simon's columns have included dateline reporting on apartheid in South Africa; the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; the U.S. invasion of Grenada; the trial of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, with whom he obtained an exclusive interview; and the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson. Simon's columns on spousal abuse earned him awards from women's groups and a change of policy from the Chicago Police Department making such abuse a crime rather than a “domestic disturbance.” Based in Washington, D.C., Simon contributes articles to national magazines and newspapers, and has appeared as a panelist or political analyst on numerous television and radio programs. Simon's syndicated columns are distributed by Creators Syndicate to newspapers throughout the world. On 26 January 2017, media critic Robert Feder wrote: "The great Roger Simon, a Chicago original who became one of America’s best political columnists, is calling it a career. Simon, 68, is telling friends that he and his wife, Marcia Kramer, a free-lance editor and former copy desk chief of the Washington Post, are retiring at the end of the month." On 1 February 2017, he published his last column on Politico. A few weeks later he became a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Awards, honors, and accolades Michael Kinsley once wrote that Simon's writing “balances just about halfway between Hunter Thompson and Theodore White.” In April 1999, Simon