Karen Tumulty is a political columnist for The Washington Post. Before joining the Post, Tumulty wrote for Time from October 1994 to April 2010. She was a Congressional Correspondent, as well as the National Political Correspondent based in Washington D.C. for the magazine.
Tumulty began her career in 1977 at the now-defunct San Antonio Light. Tumulty spent 14 years with the Los Angeles Times, covering the US Congress, economics, business, energy, and general-assignment beats. While at the Times, she won the Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business and financial journalism in 1982 for Large Newspapers, and the National Press Foundation's Edwin Hood Award for diplomatic correspondence in 1993. Tumulty joined Time in 1994. She covered Congress for two years, during which time she reported and wrote the magazine's 1995 "Man of the Year" profile of Newt Gingrich. In 1996, she became a White House Correspondent, writing major stories on President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. She became the National Political Correspondent in 2001. In the 2008 Presidential campaign, Tumulty accused the campaign of Senator John McCain of "playing the race card" for a television ad criticizing the connections between Senator Barack Obama and Franklin Raines, the former CEO of Fannie Mae. Tumulty wrote that the ad displayed "sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman." The McCain campaign pointed out that they had also produced an ad criticizing the connections of Barack Obama to Jim Johnson, another former Fannie Mae CEO who is white. According to the McCain campaign, Tumulty did not correct her post, but responded with "I grew up in Texas. I know what this stuff looks like." The McCain campaign accused Tumulty of "hysterical liberal bias." In 2010, Tumulty joined The Washington Post, where she received the 2013 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting. She became a political columnist in 2018. Tumulty's coverage of health care reform issues has been informed by her personal experience with her brother Patrick's health problems. Besides her work in print journalism, she has appeared as a television/webcasting news analyst on the public affairs programs Washington Week on PBS, PBS NewsHour, and Special Report with Bret Baier on Fox News. Admiral William H. McRaven, her fifth grade classmate and commander of USSOCOM, was her guest at the 2012 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Adm. McRaven commanded JSOC when it planned and carried out Operation Neptune Spear, the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
