Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore Lieberman (/ˈliːbərmən/; February 24, 1942 – March 27, 2024) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for vice president of the United States in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. During his final term in office, he was officially listed as an independent Democrat and caucused with and chaired committees for the Democratic Party.
Joe Lieberman
Susan Collins
Fred Thompson
Fred Thompson
Edward Marcus
John Daniels
- 11th district (1971–1973)
- 10th district (1973–1981)
March 27, 2024 (aged 82)
New York City, U.S.
- Democratic (before 2006, from 2013)
- Independent (2006–2013)[1]
- Connecticut for Lieberman (2006–2013)
- Senate Democratic Caucus (2006–2013)
-
Betty Haas(m. 1965; div. 1981)
3
Yale University (BA, LLB)
Lieberman was elected as a Reform Democrat in 1970 to the Connecticut Senate, where he served three terms as majority leader. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980, he served as the Connecticut attorney general from 1983 to 1989. He narrowly defeated Republican Party incumbent Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the U.S. Senate and was re-elected in 1994, 2000, and 2006. He was the Democratic Party nominee for vice president in the 2000 presidential election, running with presidential nominee and then Vice President Al Gore, and becoming the first Jewish candidate on a U.S. major party presidential ticket.[2][3]
In the 2000 presidential election, Gore and Lieberman won the popular vote by a margin of more than 500,000 votes but lost the deciding Electoral College to the Republican George W. Bush / Dick Cheney ticket 271–266. He also unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. During his Senate re-election bid in 2006, Lieberman lost the Democratic primary election but won re-election in the general election as a third party candidate under the Connecticut for Lieberman party label.
Lieberman was officially listed in Senate records for the 110th and 111th congresses as an Independent Democrat,[4] and sat as part of the Senate Democratic Caucus. After his speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention in which he endorsed John McCain for president, he no longer attended Democratic Caucus leadership strategy meetings or policy lunches.[5] The Senate Democratic Caucus voted to allow him to keep the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Subsequently, he announced that he would continue to caucus with the Democrats.[6] Before the 2016 election, he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and in 2020 endorsed Joe Biden for president.
As senator, Lieberman introduced and championed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 and legislation that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. During debate on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as the crucial 60th vote needed to pass the legislation, his opposition to the public health insurance option was critical to its removal from the resulting bill signed by President Barack Obama.[7]
Early life
Lieberman was born on February 24, 1942, in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Henry, who ran a liquor store, and Marcia (née Manger) Lieberman.[8] His family is Jewish; his paternal grandparents emigrated from Congress Poland and his maternal grandparents were from Austria-Hungary.[9]
In 1963, Lieberman traveled to Mississippi to work in support of the civil rights movement.[10] He received a Bachelor of Arts in both political science and economics from Yale University in 1964,[11] and was the first member of his family to attend college.[12] At Yale, he was editor of the Yale Daily News and a member of the Elihu Club.[13] While at Yale Lieberman was introduced to conservative thinker William F. Buckley Jr., who was also editor of the Yale Daily News; Buckley and Lieberman maintained a social relationship.[14] His roommate was Richard Sugarman, who later went on to become a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Vermont and advisor to 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.[15] Lieberman later attended Yale Law School, receiving his Bachelor of Laws in 1967.[16] After graduation from law school, Lieberman worked as a lawyer for the New Haven-based law firm Wiggin & Dana LLP.[17]
Lieberman received an educational deferment from the Vietnam War draft when he was an undergraduate and law student from 1960 to 1967. Upon graduating from law school at age 25, Lieberman qualified for a family deferment because he was already married and had a child.[18][19]
U.S. Senate
Tenure
Lieberman was first elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat in the 1988 election, defeating liberal Republican Lowell Weicker by a margin of 10,000 votes.[28] He scored the nation's biggest political upset that year,[29] after being backed by a coalition of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with support from conservative Republicans, most notably including National Review founder and Firing Line host William F. Buckley Jr. and his brother, former New York Senator James L. Buckley,[30] who were disappointed in three-term Republican incumbent Weicker's liberal voting record and personal style. During the campaign, he received support from Connecticut's Cuban American community, which was unhappy with Weicker. Thereafter, Lieberman remained firmly anti-Castro.[31]
Shortly after his first election to the Senate, Lieberman was approached by incoming Majority Leader George Mitchell who advised him, "Pick out two or three areas that you're really interested in and learn them so that your colleagues know what you're talking about ... You're going to have more influence even as a freshman than you think because you know there's hundreds of issues and inevitably we rely on each other."[32] Recalling the conversation, Lieberman said "that was true when I first came in, although you could see partisanship beginning to eat away at that. But at the end of my 24 years, it was really so partisan that it was hard to make the combinations to get to 60 votes to break a filibuster to get things done."[32]
Lieberman's initiatives against violence in video games are considered the chief impetus behind the establishment of an industry-wide video game rating system during the early 1990s.[33]
Published works
Lieberman authored at least ten books, including The Power Broker (1966), a biography of the late Democratic Party chairman John M. Bailey;[208][209] The Scorpion and the Tarantula (1970), a study of early efforts to control nuclear proliferation;[210][211] The Legacy (1981), a history of Connecticut politics from 1930 to 1980;[212][213] Child Support in America: Practical Advice on Negotiating and Collecting a Fair Settlement (1986), a guidebook on methods to increase the collection of child support from delinquent fathers;[214][215] In Praise of Public Life (2000);[216][217] An Amazing Adventure: Joe and Hadassah's Personal Notes on the 2000 Campaign (2003), reflecting on his 2000 vice presidential run;[218][219] The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath (2011), written with David Klinghoffer,[220][221] With Liberty and Justice: The Fifty-Day Journey from Egypt to Sinai (2018), on a trip with Rabbi Ari D. Kahn,[222][223] and The Centrist Solution: How We Made Government Work and Can Make It Work Again (2021).[224][225][226] In his book Ticking Time Bomb: Counter-Terrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government's Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack (2011), he described Australian Muslim preacher Feiz Mohammad, American-Yemeni imam Anwar al-Awlaki, Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal, and Pakistani-American Samir Khan as "virtual spiritual sanctioners" who use the internet to offer religious justification for Islamist terrorism.[227]