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Albany Law School
Coordinates: 42°39′08.51″N 73°46′38.40″W / 42.6523639°N 73.777333°W / 42.6523639; -73.777333
Albany Law School is an ABA accredited law school based in Albany, New York. It was founded in 1851 by Amos Dean (its dean until 1868), Amasa Parker, Ira Harris and others.
Albany Law is the only law school located within New York's Capital District. Its location gives Albany Law students extensive access to internships and job opportunities. The State Legislature, New York Court of Appeals, The Appellate Division 3rd Department, countless state agencies, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of New York, the New York State Bar Association, and a large number of private law firms call Albany home. In addition, Albany Law School operates several public interest clinics providing students with hands-on legal experience. Some of the clinics available include the Health Law, Introduction to Litigation, Low Income Taxpayer, Civil Rights and Disabilities, Domestic Violence, and Securities Arbitration.
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Iowa
Iowa (
i/ˈaɪ.əwə/) is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New France. After the Louisiana Purchase, settlers laid the foundation for an agriculture-based economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. Iowa is often known as the "Food Capital of the World".
In the latter half of the 20th century, Iowa's agricultural economy transitioned to a diversified economy of advanced manufacturing, processing, financial services, biotechnology, and green energy production. Iowa is the 26th most extensive and the 30th most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital and largest city is Des Moines. Iowa has been listed as one of the safest states to live in.
Iowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east; the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west; the northern boundary is a line along 43 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude. The southern border is the Des Moines River and a not-quite-straight line along approximately 40 degrees 35 minutes north, as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Missouri v. Iowa after a standoff between Missouri and Iowa known as the Honey War.
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Iowa Events Center
The Iowa Events Center is a public events complex located in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
The Iowa Events Center consists of the existing Veterans Memorial Auditorium, the existing Polk County Convention Complex, the new Hy-Vee Hall, and the new Wells Fargo Arena. The new buildings were designed by Populous (formerly HOK Sport Venue Event), who were also the architects of the renovated Principal Park in Des Moines, the United Center in Chicago, and many other arenas and stadiums in the United States. The project cost $217 million, making this the largest public project in Iowa history. Funding for the project came from Polk County and its cities, private donations, and the Vision Iowa Fund that Gov. Tom Vilsack signed into law in 2000. Gambling profits from the Prairie Meadows casino in nearby Altoona are expected to pay off the debt.
Construction began in early 2002 after Polk County reached a project-labor agreement with local labor unions that guaranteed favorable wages and working conditions in exchange for no work stoppages. Polk County was soon sued by right to work supporters who claimed that the use of a project-labor agreement on a public project violated Iowa's right to work laws. The lawsuit halted construction for several months, but on November 14, 2002, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in Polk County's favor.
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Iowa Senate
Coordinates: 41°35′28″N 93°36′14″W / 41.591°N 93.604°W / 41.591; -93.604
The Iowa Senate is the upper house of the Iowa General Assembly. There are 50 members of the Senate, representing 50 single-member districts across the state with populations of approximately 59,500 per constituency. Each Senate district is composed of two House districts. The Senate meets at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines.
Unlike the lower house, the Iowa House of Representatives, Senators serve four-year terms, with half of the Senate staggered for re-election every two years. There are no term limits for the Senate.
The President of the Senate presides over the body, whose powers include referring bills to committee, recognizing members during debate, and making procedural rulings. Unlike the more powerful Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, the Senate President cannot appoint committee chairmanships or shuffle committee memberships. Since the passage of an amendment to the Iowa Constitution by state voters in 1988 and made effective in 1991, the Lieutenant Governor of Iowa has no presiding role over the Senate, and instead has had its powers transferred to taking duties designated by the Governor of Iowa. The other partisan Senate leadership positions, such as the Majority and Minority leaders, are elected by their respective party caucuses to head their parties in the chamber.
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Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas (/lɑːs ˈveɪɡəs/) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous for its consolidated casino–hotels and associated entertainment. A growing retirement and family city, Las Vegas is the 28th-most populous city in the United States, with a population at the 2010 census of 583,756. The 2010 population of the Las Vegas metropolitan area was 1,951,269.
Established in 1905, Las Vegas was incorporated as a city in 1911. At the close of the 20th century, Las Vegas was the most populous American city founded in that century (a distinction held by Chicago in the 19th century). The city's tolerance for various forms of adult entertainment earned it the title of Sin City, and this image has made Las Vegas a popular setting for films and television programs. There are numerous outdoor lighting displays on Fremont Street, as well as elsewhere in the city.
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Milwaukee
Milwaukee /mɪlˈwɔːkiː/ is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States, and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the City of Milwaukee has a population of 594,833. Milwaukee is the main cultural and economic center of the Milwaukee–Racine–Waukesha Metropolitan Area with a population of 1,751,316 as of 2010. Milwaukee is also the regional center of the seven county Greater Milwaukee Area, with an estimated population of 2,014,032 as of 2008.
The first Europeans to pass through the area were French missionaries and fur traders. In 1818, the French-Canadian explorer Solomon Juneau settled in the area, and in 1846 Juneau's town combined with two neighboring towns to incorporate as the City of Milwaukee. Large numbers of German and other immigrants helped increase the city's population during the 1840s and the following decades.
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Mount Pleasant, Iowa
Mount Pleasant is a city in and the county seat of Henry County, Iowa, in the United States. The population was 8,668 in the 2010 census, a decline from 8,751 in the 2000 census. It was founded in 1835 by pioneer Presley Saunders.
In 1869, Mount Pleasant was the scene of a National Almanac-sponsored solar eclipse expedition, under the command of James Craig Watson. The total solar eclipse occurred on August 7, 1869.
In the Union Block building in 1869, Arabella A. Mansfield became the first woman in the United States awarded a license to practice law. The third floor housed the Opera House or Union Hall, a gathering place for the community, speakers included Frederick Douglass, Bronson Alcott, P.T. Barnum, Anna Dickinson, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This building is now considered one of the most endangered historic sites in Iowa.
The Mount Pleasant Mental Health Institute was built in 1861. However, in 1936, a fire devastated the building leaving the hospital to be closed, with very little building left.
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Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (
i/ˌpɛnsɨlˈveɪnjə/), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a US state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States, and the Great Lakes Region. The state borders Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Ontario, Canada to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.
Pennsylvania is the 33rd most extensive, the 6th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state's four most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, and Erie. The state capital is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 51 miles (82 km) of shoreline along Lake Erie and 57 miles (92 km) of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary.
Pennsylvania is 170 miles (274 km) north to south and 283 miles (455 km) east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles (119,282 km2), 44,817 square miles (116,075 km2) are land, 490 square miles (1,269 km2) are inland waters, and 749 square miles (1,940 km2) are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles (82 km) of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles (92 km) of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary.
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Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh (
/ˈpɪtsbərɡ/, PITS-burg) is the second largest city in the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of both Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley. Nationally, it is the 22nd largest urban area in the United States. The population of the city in 2010 was 305,704, while that of the seven-county metropolitan area stood at 2,356,285.Downtown Pittsburgh retains substantial economic influence, ranking at 25th in the nation for jobs within the urban core and 6th in job density. The characteristic shape of Pittsburgh's central business district is a triangular tract carved by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which form the Ohio River. The city features 151 high-rise buildings, 446 bridges, two inclined railways, and a pre-revolutionary fortification. Pittsburgh is known colloquially as "the City of Bridges" and "the Steel City" for its many bridges and former steel manufacturing base.
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United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
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University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (also known as UI, or simply Iowa) is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees. UI is categorized as RU/VH Research University (very high research activity) in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The university is a group member of the Association of American Universities, the Big Ten Conference, Committee on Institutional Cooperation, and the Universities Research Association. Additionally, UI is considered a Public Ivy according to Howard and Matthew Greene's "The Public Ivies: America's Flagship Public Universities".
The University is home to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. It is one of the largest university-owned teaching hospitals in the nation. Iowa was the first American institution of higher learning to accept creative work for academic credit, and developed the Master of Fine Arts degree.
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Wisconsin
Wisconsin (i/wɨsˈkɒnsɨn/) is a US state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin is the 23rd most extensive and the 20th most populous of the 50 United States. Wisconsin's capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee. The state is divided into 72 counties.
The word Wisconsin originates from the name given to the Wisconsin River by one of the Algonquian speaking American Indian groups living in the region at the time of European contact. French explorer Jacques Marquette was the first European to reach the Wisconsin River and record its name, arriving in 1673 and calling the river Meskousing in his journal. This spelling was later corrupted to Ouisconsin by other French explorers, and over time this version became the French name for both the Wisconsin River and the surrounding lands. English speakers anglicized the spelling to its modern form when they began to arrive in greater numbers during the early 19th century. The current spelling was made official by the legislature of Wisconsin Territory in 1845.
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Adolfo Carrión, Jr.
Adolfo Carrión, Jr. (born March 6, 1961) is a Democratic politician of Puerto Rican descent from City Island, located in New York City, New York. He has served for six and a half years as the 12th Borough President of the Bronx, the Chief Executive of the Borough. He is the highest ranking Latino elected official in the State of New York and also serves as the President of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO).
On February 19, 2009, President Barack Obama chose Carrión to be Director of the newly created White House Office of Urban Affairs with the White House Domestic Policy Council., and on March 1st he stepped down from the Borough Presidency.
Carrión's position at the Domestic Policy Council ended on May 3, 2010, when the Obama Administration subsequently named Carrión Regional Director for HUD's New York and New Jersey Regional Office.
Adolfo Carrion was born in Manhattan in 1961, but his family moved to the Baychester section of the Northeast Bronx when he was in fourth grade. He attended public school at John Philip Sousa Middle School and Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx. Later, he graduated from The King's College, a Christian liberal arts college in Westchester County at the time, where he majored in world religions. He followed in the footsteps of his father, a Protestant minister, and became an associate pastor at a Bronx church.
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Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) served as the 45th Vice President of the United States (1993–2001), under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President and won the popular vote in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.
Gore is currently an author and environmental activist. He has founded a number of non-profit organizations, including the Alliance for Climate Protection, and has received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in climate change activism.
Gore was previously an elected official for 24 years, representing Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives (1977–85), and later in the U.S. Senate (1985–93), and finally becoming Vice President in 1993. In the 2000 presidential election, Gore won the popular vote by a margin of more than 500,000 votes. However, he ultimately lost the Electoral College to Republican George W. Bush when the U.S. Supreme Court settled the legal controversy over the Florida vote recount by ruling 5-4 in favor of Bush. It was the only time in history that the Supreme Court has determined the outcome of a presidential election.
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Alan B. Krueger
Alan Bennett Krueger (born September 17, 1960) is an American economist, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. On March 7, 2009, he was nominated by President Barack Obama to be United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for economic policy. In October 2010, he announced his resignation from the Treasury Department, to return to Princeton University. He is among the 50 highest ranked economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc. On August 29, 2011, he was nominated by Obama to be chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and on November 3, 2011, the Senate unanimously confirmed his nomination.
Krueger grew up in Livingston, New Jersey, and graduated from Livingston High School in 1979.
Krueger developed and applied the method of natural experiments to study the effect of education on earnings, the minimum wage on employment, and other issues.
Krueger compared restaurant jobs in New Jersey, which raised its minimum wage, to restaurant jobs in Pennsylvania, which did not, and found that restaurant employment in New Jersey increased, while it decreased in Pennsylvania. The results were later disputed.
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Alan Keyes
Alan Lee Keyes (born August 7, 1950) is an American conservative political activist, author, former diplomat, and perennial candidate for public office. A doctoral graduate of Harvard University, Keyes began his diplomatic career in the U.S. Foreign Service in 1979 at the United States consulate in Bombay, India, and later in the American embassy in Zimbabwe.
He ran for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and 2008, and was a Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in 1988, 1992, and 2004. Keyes was appointed Ambassador to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations by President Ronald Reagan, and served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987; in his capacities as a UN ambassador, among Keyes's accomplishments was contributing to the Mexico City Policy.
Keyes also hosted a radio talk show, The Alan Keyes Show: America's Wake-Up Call, and a television commentary show on the MSNBC cable network, Alan Keyes Is Making Sense.
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Albert B. Cummins
Albert Baird Cummins (February 15, 1850 – July 30, 1926) was the 18th Governor of Iowa, U.S. Senator and two-time presidential candidate. Cummins was perhaps the most influential leader in Iowa politics in the first quarter of the 20th century. However, for many years he was a polarizing figure, leading the Iowa Republican Party's progressive wing to power at the expense of its "old guard" of more conservative "standpatters" who had controlled the party almost since its inception. Shortly before his death, Cummins was defeated by an even more progressive adversary within his own party.
Cummins was born in a log house in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania to Thomas L. Cummins, a carpenter/farmer, and Sarah Baird (Flenniken) Cummins. He lived in Pennsylvania until about 1869, and attended Greene Academy. As a young man, he worked as a carpenter with his father. He attended country schools and completed a four-year course in two years at Waynesburg College, but did not graduate because of a dispute with the College's president. After leaving the College, he initially was a tutor and taught at a country school.
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Alyson Kennedy
Alyson Kennedy is an American politician, a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and was the party's candidate for vice president in the 2008 United States presidential election. The ticket campaigned for young voters especially. At the head of the ticket were two different candidates, Roger Calero and James Harris; Harris was an alternate in some states because Calero was Constitutionally ineligible because he is a lawful permanent resident of the United States (holding a green card), and not a US Citizen. They were the first pair to qualify for the ballot in Louisiana Calero/Kennedy won 5,127 votes and Harris/Kennedy 2,424.
Originally from Indianapolis, Kennedy joined the socialist movement in 1973 in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked in coal mines in Alabama, Colorado, Utah, and West Virginia. In 1977 she ran as the SWP candidate for mayor of Cleveland, Ohio against incumbent Republican Ralph Perk, garnering 1,225 votes and losing by a wide margin to Dennis Kucinich. She first joined the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in 1981, and was one of the leaders of a strike in Utah 2004, also being involved in litigation. In 2000, she ran for United States Senate as a certified write-in candidate in a race prompted by the death of candidate and former Governor of Missouri Mel Carnahan. Kennedy is currently employed as a garment worker.
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Aneesh Chopra
Aneesh Paul Chopra was the first American Federal Chief Technology Officer of the United States (CTO). Chopra previously served as Virginia’s fourth Secretary of Technology.
He was born in 1972 in Trenton, New Jersey, the eldest son of Indian immigrants Ram and Neelam Chopra. He grew up in West Windsor, New Jersey, also known as Princeton Junction, New Jersey, and attended West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South from 1986-1990. In 2009, Chopra was awarded the Alumni Achiever Award by the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District. Chopra graduated with his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and his M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
He was elected as a Boys Nation Senator to represent American Legion Jersey Boys State in 1989.
After his studies, Chopra was Managing Director for the Advisory Board Company, a health care think tank for hospitals and health systems. While there, he led the firm’s Financial Leadership Council and the Working Council for Health Plan Executives.. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine appointed Chopra to be Virginia's fourth Secretary of Technology. He served in this position until 2009 when he was selected by President Barack Obama to be the first "Chief Technology Officer" for the White House.
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Ann Veneman
Ann Margaret Veneman (born June 29, 1949) is the former Executive Director of UNICEF, a position she held from 2005 to 2010. Her appointment was announced on January 18, 2005 by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Previously, Veneman was the United States Secretary of Agriculture, the first and only woman to hold that position. Veneman served as USDA Secretary from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2005, leaving to become the fifth executive director of UNICEF. [2]. She served in this position from May 1, 2005. A lawyer by training, Veneman has practiced law in Washington, DC and California, including being a deputy public defender. She has also served in other high level positions in U.S. federal and state government, including being appointed California's Secretary of Food and Agriculture, serving from 1995 to 1999.
Veneman serves as a co-leader of the Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Veneman was raised on a peach farm in Modesto, California. Her father, John Veneman, was former undersecretary of Health, Education and Welfare and member of the California State Assembly. She earned her bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Davis, a Master of Public Policy from the Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She has also been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (2001); Lincoln University (Missouri) (2003); Delaware State University (2004) and Middlebury College (2006).
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Arne Duncan
Arne Duncan (born November 6, 1964) is an American education administrator and currently United States Secretary of Education. Duncan previously served as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools.
Duncan was raised in Hyde Park, a Chicago neighborhood encompassing the University of Chicago. He is the son of Susan Goodrich (née Morton) and Starkey Davis Duncan, Jr. His father was a psychology professor at the university and his mother runs the Sue Duncan Children's Center, an after-school program primarily serving African-American youth in the nearby Kenwood neighborhood. His ancestry includes Norwegian, Scottish, German, Swedish, and English; his great-great-great-grandfather was U.S. Representative Milo Goodrich. While growing up, Duncan spent much of his free time at his mother's center tutoring or playing with students there. Some of his childhood friends were John W. Rogers, Jr., CEO of Ariel Capital Management (now Ariel Investments) and founder of the Ariel Community Academy, Illinois State Senator Kwame Raoul, actor Michael Clarke Duncan, singer R. Kelly and award winning martial artist Michelle Gordon.[citation needed]
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Arthur M. Hyde
Arthur Mastick Hyde (July 12, 1877– October 17, 1947) was an American Republican politician who served as the 35th Governor of Missouri and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.
Hyde was born in Princeton, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Michigan. While at the University of Michigan he joined The Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He became a lawyer and served as the Governor of Missouri from 1921 to 1925. During his first month as Governor, Hyde recommended extensive reorganization of state government by regrouping responsibilities into a few departments. Later he served as the Secretary of Agriculture under President Herbert Hoover. He died in New York City following cancer surgery in 1947.
Some of his family members were also involved in politics. His father, Ira B. Hyde, was a representative from Missouri, and his brother, Laurance M. Hyde, was a chief justice of the Missouri supreme court. He died on October 17, 1947.
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Austan Goolsbee
Austan Dean Goolsbee (born August 18, 1969) is an American economist and the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Goolsbee formerly served as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and was the youngest member of the cabinet of President Barack Obama.
Goolsbee served on the three-member Council from the start of the Obama Administration. He advised President Obama during his 2004 U.S. Senate race and was senior economic policy adviser during the 2008 Obama Presidential Campaign. He took over in September 2010 as the Council's Chairman, replacing Christina Romer, who had left to return to a teaching position at the University of California at Berkeley. On June 6, 2011, he announced that he was departing the administration and returning to the University of Chicago.
Goolsbee was born in Waco, Texas, the son of Linda Catherine (née Dean) and Arthur Leon Goolsbee. He was raised primarily in Whittier, California.
He graduated from Milton Academy and received both his B.A. summa cum laude and M.A. in economics from Yale University in 1991 and went on to receive his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2000–02) and Fulbright Scholar (2006–07).
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Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.
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Beryl F. Carroll
Beryl Franklin Carroll (March 15, 1860 – December 16, 1939) was the 20th Governor of Iowa from 1909 to 1913.
Carroll was born in Davis County, Iowa; he graduated from the Missouri State Normal School (now Truman State University) in 1884. He worked as a livestock dealer, teacher, and newspaper publisher. He was a member of the Iowa Senate (1895–98), postmaster of Bloomfield, Iowa (1898–1903), and Iowa state auditor (1903–09). He was elected Governor in 1908 and reelected in 1910. On November 30, 1910, Governor Carroll was hailed as a hero for entering a burning building in Des Moines and retrieving a trunk containing valuable property. After leaving office, Carroll worked in the life insurance business in Des Moines. He died in Bloomfield, Iowa, and was buried at the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Bloomfield, Iowa.
Governor Carroll is mentioned in passing by Mayor Shinn in the The Music Man.
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Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Many of his policies have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.
Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became both a student leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since 2009 and was a Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the National Governors Association.
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Bill Richardson
William Blaine "Bill" Richardson III (born November 15, 1947) is an American politician, who served as the 30th Governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011. Before being elected governor, Richardson served in the Clinton administration as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Energy Secretary. Richardson has also served as a U.S. Congressman, chairman of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. On December 3, 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama designated Richardson for appointment to the cabinet-level position of Commerce Secretary. On January 4, 2009, Richardson announced his decision to withdraw his nomination because of an investigation into possibly improper business dealings in New Mexico. In August 2009, federal prosecutors dropped the pending investigation against the governor, and there was speculation in the media regarding Richardson's career, as his second and final term as New Mexico governor concluded.
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Bob Barr
Robert Laurence "Bob" Barr, Jr. (born November 5, 1948) is a former federal prosecutor and a former member of the United States House of Representatives. He represented Georgia's 7th congressional district as a Republican from 1995 to 2003. Barr attained national prominence as one of the leaders of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Barr joined the Libertarian Party in 2006, and served on its National Committee. He was the Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election. He is noted for his austere demeanour.
Barr was born on November 5, 1948, in Iowa City, Iowa, to Bob and Beatrice Barr. His father, a West Point soldier, moved the family to various locations around the world while pursuing his career in civil engineering. The second of six children, Bob Jr. spent his boyhood in Malaysia, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Baghdad in Iraq, and finally Tehran, Iran, where he graduated from Community High School in 1966.
Barr returned to the United States, attending the University of Southern California and joining the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity in 1967 (where as of 2011[update] he holds the position of Grand Epiprytanis on the fraternity's Grand Council). Barr also joined the Young Democrats of America and rallied against the Vietnam War. His parents disapproved, and threatened to cut off financial support if he continued his "flaming liberal" activities. During this time, Barr's mother introduced him to the work of Ayn Rand. This fostered a new-found appreciation for conservatism and prompted Barr to join the Young Trojan Republican Club. Barr completed his B.A., cum laude, from University of Southern California in 1970. Barr married his first wife while still in college. They divorced in 1976.
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Bradford Lyttle
Bradford Lyttle is a prominent pacifist and peace activist, and organizer with the Committee for Non-Violent Action of several major campaigns against militarism, including "Omaha Action", against land-based nuclear missiles (1959); "Polaris Action" against submarine-based nuclear missiles (1960); the San Francisco to Moscow Peace Walk (1961); and the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Peace Walk (1963).
Among his theoretical works are a 1958 pamphlet presenting the case for nonviolent national defense against aggression; and a mathematical formula called "The Apocalypse Equation", which argues that, over time, the probability of nuclear missiles being used approaches 100%.
He is also the founder and perennial candidate for the office of President of the United States of the United States Pacifist Party. He ran as a write-in candidate in the 1984, 1996, and 2000 elections, and on the ballot in the state of Colorado in 2008. In 2008 Lyttle came in second to last of sixteen candidates in Colorado for which he received 110 votes, beating only Gene Amondson of the Prohibition Party. In Colorado, Amondson came in last place among all candidates with ballot access (though Amondson won enough votes elsewhere to surpass Lyttle's total nationally).
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Brian Rohrbough
Brian Rohrbough (c. 1961) was the 2008 vice presidential candidate of America's Independent Party in the 2008 United States presidential election, running on the ticket with presidential candidate Alan Keyes.
Rohrbough was raised in Littleton, Colorado.
Rohrbough dropped out of high school at age 16 and later founded a car stereo business in Englewood, Colorado. His son, Daniel, was the second murder victim in the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, being wounded by Eric Harris, then fatally shot in the back by Dylan Klebold. This event profoundly affected Rohrbough's life. Afterward, he led efforts to examine the sociological reasons for this event, ultimately concluding that America's so-called "culture of death", specifically legalized abortion, and the removal of all vestiges of religion from public school classrooms, were root causes. Since then he has become involved in the anti-abortion movement, and served as president of Colorado Right to Life.
Today he is the president of the splinter anti-abortion group American Right to Life. This local Colorado organization is dedicated to prohibiting abortion. He has appeared on numerous local and national television programs across the country.
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Brooke Anderson
Brooke Victoria Anderson (born May 13, 1978) is co-host of The Insider. Previously, she was a culture and entertainment anchor and producer for CNN and served as co-host for Showbiz Tonight on HLN. Based in CNN's Los Angeles, California bureau, Anderson joined the network in July 2000.
Anderson graduated in 2000 with honors from the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication with a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism. She is a member of Kappa Delta Sorority.
She has covered numerous events for CNN and Headline News, including the 2006 Cannes film festival, the Academy Awards, the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Sundance Film Festival, the MTV Video Music Awards, the NBA All-Star Weekend, Fall Fashion Week in New York City and Atlanta's Music Midtown.
In February 2003, she received the Daily Point of Light Award for volunteerism from President George W. Bush.
She is married to James Arthur "Jim" Walker, III and had her first child in May 2009, a girl named Kate Victoria Walker.
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Bruce Reed
Bruce Reed was the CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and currently serves as the Chief of Staff to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, having been appointed on January 14, 2011 to succeed Ron Klain.
Reed is a native of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and the son of Idaho State Senator Mary Lou Reed. He attended Princeton University, graduating in 1982, and earned a master's degree in English Literature from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
Reed served as chief speechwriter for Tennessee Senator Al Gore from 1985 to 1989. He was founding editor of the DLC magazine, The New Democrat and served as policy director of the DLC from 1990 to 1991 under DLC Chairman and Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton. In 1992, he was deputy campaign manager for policy of the Clinton-Gore presidential campaign. During the Clinton presidency, Reed served as chief domestic policy advisor and director of the Domestic Policy Council, and helped to write the 1996 welfare reform law known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. He is credited with coining the welfare reform catchphrase, "end welfare as we know it."
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Buren R. Sherman
Buren Robinson Sherman (May 28, 1836 – November 11, 1904) was the 12th Governor of Iowa, serving from 1882 to 1886.
Sherman was born in Phelps, Ontario County, New York on May 28, 1836.
He studied law after his family moved to Iowa in 1855 and was admitted to the bar in 1859. Sherman then practiced law in Vinton, Iowa in 1860, but only until 1861, when he signed up with the 13th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment for the Union Army. He retired as a captain in mid-1863 due to injuries suffered at Shiloh.
Sherman was elected county judge of Benton County upon his return, resigning from the post in 1866 to accept a position in the office of the clerk of the district court. From 1874 to 1881 he was the Iowa state auditor.
Sherman was elected governor of Iowa in 1882 and was the first occupant of the governor's office in the Iowa State Capitol; however, it was his successor, William Larrabee, who first occupied the office for a full term.
In 1885, he was awarded an LL.D. from the University of Iowa. He was also a freemason who was especially active in Scottish Rite Masonry and helped found the Des Moines Scottish Rite Consistory.
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Carol Browner
Carol Martha Browner (born December 16, 1955) is an American lawyer, environmentalist, and businesswoman, who served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011. Browner previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001.
Browner grew up in Florida and graduated from the University of Florida and the University of Florida College of Law. After working for the Florida House of Representatives, she was employed by Citizen Action in Washington, D.C. She became a legislative assistant for Senators Lawton Chiles and Al Gore. Browner then headed the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation from 1991 to 1993, where she turned it into one of the most active departments in the state government.
She was the longest-serving administrator in the history of the EPA, staying through both terms of the Clinton presidency. During her tenure, she reorganized the agency's enforcement structure and oversaw two new programs designed to create flexible partnerships with industry as an alternative to traditional regulation. She started a successful program to deal with contaminated lands in urban areas. She took the lead within the administration in defending existing environmental laws and budgets, and was the driving force behind a stringent tightening of air quality standards that led to a prolonged political and legal battle.
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Cecilia Rouse
Cecilia Elena Rouse (born December 18, 1963), is an American economist and the Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. On March 20, 2009 she was formally confirmed as a member of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers; she returned to Princeton March 1, 2011.
Rouse received her B.A. in economics from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in 1986 and then staying on to obtain a Ph.D. in economics in 1992. She then became a professor of economics at Princeton University the same year she graduated.
Cecilia grew up in Del Mar, Cal. She has two siblings - Forest Rouse, a physicist, and Carolyn Rouse, an anthropologist and professor at Princeton University. Her father is a research physicist who received his PhD from Caltech in 1956. Her mother worked as a school psychologist.
Rouse attributes the development of her educational career to traveling and exploring as a young child and the "importance my parents placed on learning." Her brother and sister hold Ph.Ds in physics and visual anthropology, respectively.
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Charles F. Brannan
Charles Franklin Brannan (August 23, 1903 – July 2, 1992) was the Secretary of Agriculture from 1948 to 1953.
He was born in Denver, Colorado, and received his law degree from the University of Denver law school in 1929. Beginning in 1935, he held a series of legal and administrative position with the United States government, culminating as the Secretary of Agriculture in 1948.
In 1949, he advocated the Brannan plan, as part of president Truman's Fair Deal program. Brannan wanted to guarantee farmer's income, while letting the free market forces determine the prices of commodities. That plan was not enacted by the Republican controlled congress, which was focusing on the Cold War.
After leaving the government following the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, Brannan became the general counsel of the National Farmers Union (United States) until 1990. He died on July 2, 1992, in Denver, Colorado. Prior to his death, Brannan had been the last surviving member of the Truman Cabinet.
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Charles Jay
Charles Jay (born 1960) was the Presidential nominee of the United States Boston Tea Party in the 2008 United States presidential election. He was the presidential nominee of the Personal Choice Party in the 2004 election, achieving ballot status in Utah, and received 946 votes in the general election, coming in third from last.
Jay has a B.A. in business from the University of Miami, and has worked in the sport of boxing as a manager and spokesman, among other positions.
A former member of the U.S. Libertarian Party, he stepped down from the race for the Vice Presidential nomination to the 2004 ballot to run as for President under the Personal Choice Party banner. His vice presidential candidate was Marilyn Chambers, a porn star famous from the 1970s. The Jay/Chambers ticket received 946 votes in the general election.
On Monday, June 16, 2008, Jay won the Boston Tea Party's presidential nomination at its nomination convention that was held on the national party's website online and will again be the candidate of the Personal Choice Party. His running mate was blogger and online magazine editor Thomas L. Knapp.
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Charlie Rose
Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored CBS This Morning since January 2012. Rose, along with Lara Logan, has hosted the revived CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted from 1953 to 1961 by Edward R. Murrow.
Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child of Margaret Frazier and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store. As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven. Rose admitted in a Fresh Dialogues interview that as a child his insatiable curiosity was constantly getting him in trouble. A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968. He met his wife, Mary (née King), while attending Duke.
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Chet Culver
Chester John "Chet" Culver (born January 25, 1966) was the 41st Governor of Iowa, from 2007 to 2011. He was also elected as the Federal Liaison for the Democratic Governors Association for 2008-2009. He founded the Chet Culver Group, an energy sector consulting firm, in 2011.
Culver was born in Washington, D.C. Culver attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland before attending Virginia Tech on a football scholarship. He earned a B.A. degree in political science in 1988. Later, he received a M.A.degree in Teaching from Drake University in 1994.
After college, Culver moved to Iowa and worked as a staff member for the state Democratic Party. He worked with Bonnie Campbell on her 1990 campaign for state attorney general, serving as field director. Culver previously worked as a lobbyist under the guidance of Campbell's husband. From 1991 to 1995, Culver worked as a consumer and environmental advocate in the attorney general's office. After completing his master's degree, he took a job as a teacher in Des Moines. Working first at Roosevelt High School and then Hoover High School, he taught government and history. Culver coached sophomore football and eighth grade boys basketball during his tenure.(Subscription required)
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Chris Dodd
Christopher John "Chris" Dodd (born May 27, 1944) is an American lawyer, lobbyist, and Democratic Party politician who served as a United States Senator from Connecticut for a thirty-year period ending with the 111th United States Congress.
Dodd is a Connecticut native and a graduate of Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda, Maryland, and Providence College. His father, Thomas J. Dodd, was one of Connecticut's United States Senators from 1959-1971. Chris Dodd served in the Peace Corps for two years prior to entering law school at the University of Louisville, and during law school concurrently served in the United States Army Reserve.
Dodd returned to Connecticut, winning election in 1974 to the United States House of Representatives from Connecticut's 2nd congressional district and was reelected in 1976 and 1978. He was elected United States Senator in the elections of 1980, and was the longest-serving senator in Connecticut's history.
Dodd served as general chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1995 to 1997. He served as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee until his retirement. In 2006, Dodd decided to run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, but eventually withdrew after running behind several other competitors. In January 2010, Dodd announced that he would not run for re-election in the 2010 midterm elections. Dodd was succeeded by Richard Blumenthal. On March 1, 2011, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that Dodd will head that organization.
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Chris Lu
Christopher P. Lu (simplified Chinese: 卢沛宁; traditional Chinese: 盧沛寧; pinyin: Lú Pèiníng; born June 12, 1966) is Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary for United States President Barack Obama. Lu graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and from Harvard Law School, where he was a classmate of Obama's. He served as a litigation attorney for the Washington, D.C. firm Sidley Austin before taking his first political position as Deputy Chief Counsel for Representative Henry Waxman and the Democratic staff of the United States House Government Reform Committee.
After serving briefly as an advisor on Senator John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, Lu came to work in Barack Obama's U.S. Senate office, where he served as legislative director and acting chief of staff. Following Obama's successful 2008 campaign for presidency, Lu was appointed executive director of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. When Obama appointed Lu as Cabinet Secretary, The New York Times described him as "one of the highest-ranking Asian Americans in the Obama administration".
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Christie Vilsack
Christie Vilsack (born 1950 in Mount Pleasant, Iowa) is an American literacy advocate and politician. Vilsack is married to former Iowa Governor and current United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, serving as the First Lady of Iowa from 1999 until 2007. She is a 2012 Democratic candidate for U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressional district.
Vilsack was born Ann Christine Bell and raised in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Vilsack graduated from Kirkland College in Clinton, New York, in 1972.
She met her future husband, Tom Vilsack, while attending college in upstate New York. Tom Vilsack reportedly approached her in the cafeteria and asked her, "Are you a Humphrey or a Nixon supporter?" The couple married on August 18, 1973, in Mount Pleasant. They have two children.
The Vilsacks moved to Mount Pleasant in 1975. She began her career there as a librarian and a teacher. For eighteen years she taught at the middle school level, and also at the high school level, leading classes in language arts and journalism. For another six years, she taught English and journalism at Iowa Wesleyan College.
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Chuck Baldwin
Charles Obadiah "Chuck" Baldwin (born May 3, 1952) is an American politician and founder-pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. He was the presidential nominee of the Constitution Party for the 2008 U.S. presidential election and had previously been its nominee for U.S. vice president in 2004. He hosts a daily one-hour radio program, Chuck Baldwin Live, and writes a daily editorial column carried on its website, on News with Views, and on VDare.
As a Republican Party member, Baldwin was state chairman of the Florida Moral Majority in the 1980s. However, during the 2000 campaign of Republican George W. Bush for U.S. President, Baldwin left the party and began a long period of criticism of Bush. Baldwin endorsed U.S. Representative Ron Paul for the 2008 Republican nomination for president, and Paul in turn endorsed Baldwin for the presidency in the 2008 general election.
Baldwin supports ending U.S. involvement in the United Nations, reducing U.S. income taxes, and repeal of the Patriot Act. He would withdraw troops from Iraq and seek to end illegal immigration by enforcing immigration laws. He supports the gold standard, the right to keep and bear arms, homeschooling, and the proposed Sanctity of Life Act, which would define "human life" and legal personhood as beginning at conception, and prevent federal courts from hearing cases on abortion-related legislation.
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Chuck Robb
Charles Spittal "Chuck" Robb (born June 26, 1939) is an American politician. He served as the 64th Governor of Virginia from 1982 to 1986, and as a United States senator from 1989 until 2001. In 2004, he chaired the Iraq Intelligence Commission.
Charles Robb was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and grew up in the Mount Vernon area of Alexandria, Virginia. He earned a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1961, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity.
A United States Marine Corps veteran and honor graduate of Quantico, Robb became a White House social aide. It was there that he met and eventually married Lynda Johnson, the daughter of then U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Robb went on to serve two tours of duty in Vietnam, where he commanded a rifle company in combat, and was awarded the Bronze Star. After the war he earned a J.D. at the University of Virginia Law School in 1973, and following a clerkship with a federal appeals judge entered private practice.
In 1977, Robb won election as a Democrat for the lieutenant governorship of Virginia. He served as lieutenant governor from 1978 to 1982 and as governor from 1982 to 1986. In the 1977 election, Robb was the only of three Democrats running for statewide office to win that year, leaving him as the sole head of a political party that had not won a governor's race in a dozen years. Four years later in 1981, Robb led all three Democrats into office by appealing to conservatives who were disenchanted with his opponent's maverick style. Virginia Democrats again won all three statewide offices in 1985, which was viewed as an endorsement of Robb's leadership while in office. As a campaigner, Robb was capable but reserved. During a time when political communication styles were beginning to favor sound bites, Robb was known for speaking in paragraphs about complex policy issues. He was also noteworthy among his contemporaries for raising substantial sums of campaign funds.
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Claude R. Wickard
Claude Raymond Wickard (February 28, 1893 – April 29, 1967) served as Secretary of Agriculture under President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1940 to 1945. Wickard was born on his family farm in Carroll County, Indiana, near Camden. He graduated from Purdue University in 1915, with a bachelor's degree in agriculture, and was chosen as "Master Farmer of Indiana" in 1927 for his improvements in stock feeding and farming. Elected to the Indiana Senate in 1932, he was appointed as Undersecretary of Agriculture. When Henry A. Wallace resigned as Secretary of Agriculture in 1940 to run for Vice-President of the United States, Wickard succeeded to the post. During World War II, Wickard headed the War Foods Administration, promoting increased farm production as a matter of patriotism. His slogan was "Food Will Win the War and Write the Peace".
Wickard resigned in 1945 to become chief of the Rural Electrification Administration, until 1953. He ran, unsuccessfully, as the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1956, losing to incumbent Homer E. Capehart. Wickard was killed in an automobile accident on April 29, 1967, at the age of 74. Reportedly, he ran a stop sign at the intersection of State Highway 18 and U.S. Highway 421 near Delphi, Indiana, and his vehicle was hit by a crushed-stone truck. He was buried at the Maple Lawn Cemetery in Flora, Indiana.
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Clyde L. Herring
Clyde LaVerne Herring (May 3, 1879 – September 15, 1945), an American politician and Democrat, served as the 26th Governor of Iowa, and then one of its U.S. Senators, during the last part of the Great Depression and the first part of World War II.
He was born in 1879 and raised in Jackson County, Michigan, where he attended public schools. His parents farmed until he was 14 years old, the year of the "Panic of 1893," when failing finances made it necessary for them to move to town. In 1897, at age 18, he moved to Detroit, Michigan and became a jewelry clerk.
Enlisting in the military, he served during the Spanish-American War as a private in Company D of the Third Michigan Regiment.
After the war he moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he engaged in ranching from 1902 to 1906. He then moved to Massena, Iowa, where he farmed for two years (1906–1908).
As Time Magazine would recount in a 1935 cover story featuring Herring, "in Detroit he had fixed Henry Ford's watch, thus came to know that rising automobile manufacturer. From 1910 until the distributing system was reshuffled after the War, Clyde Herring was Ford agent for Iowa. By that time he had acquired $3,000,000 worth of Des Moines real estate."
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Cynthia McKinney
Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is an American politician and activist. McKinney was a member of the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives. In 2008, the Green Party of the United States nominated McKinney for President of the United States. She was the first African-American woman to have represented Georgia in the House.
In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected in the newly re-created 11th District, and was re-elected in 1994. When her district was redrawn and renumbered due to the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Miller v. Johnson, McKinney was easily elected from the new 4th District in the 1996 election, and was re-elected twice without substantive opposition.
McKinney was defeated by Denise Majette in the 2002 Democratic primary. Some people believe she was defeated because of Republican crossover voting in Georgia's open primary election, which permits anyone from any party to vote in any party primary and "usually rewards moderate candidates and penalizes those outside the mainstream." Others believe that her defeat was due to her "her controversial profile, which included support for Arab causes and a suggestion that Bush knew in advance of the September 11 attacks."
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Cyrus C. Carpenter
Cyrus Clay Carpenter (November 24, 1829 – May 29, 1898) was a Civil War officer, the eighth Governor of Iowa and U.S. Representative from Iowa's 9th congressional district.
Born near Harford, Pennsylvania, Carpenter attended the common schools, and was graduated from Harford Academy in 1853. His parents were Asahel Carpenter and Amanda M. Thayer and he is a descendant of the immigrant William Carpenter (1605 England - 1658/1659 Rehoboth, Massachusetts) the founder of the Rehoboth Carpenter family who came to America in the mid-1630s.
He moved to Iowa in 1854 and engaged in teaching and afterwards in land surveying, working as the County surveyor of Webster County in 1856. He studied law but never practiced. In March, 1857, he joined the relief expedition sent to Spirit Lake to aid the settlers driven from their homes by the Sioux Indians in the aftermath of the Spirit Lake Massacre.
He initially served as member of the Iowa House of Representatives from 1858 to 1860.
During the Civil War Carpenter volunteered as a private then was elected captain of volunteers on March 24, 1862, appointed lieutenant colonel on September 26, 1864, and brevet colonel on July 12, 1865 "for efficient and meritorious services" when he was in charge of commissary of subsistence in Sherman's Army on the march to the sea. He was mustered out July 14, 1865. During the war he served on the staff of Generals William Rosecrans, Grenville M. Dodge and John A. Logan.
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Dan Glickman
Daniel Robert "Dan" Glickman (born November 24, 1944) is an American businessman and politician. He served as the United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 until 2001, prior to which he represented the Fourth Congressional District of Kansas as a Democrat in Congress for 18 years. He was Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from 2004–2010. He serves as a Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he focuses on public health, national security, and economic policy issues. He also co-chairs BPC's Democracy Project and co-leads the center's Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative.
He also serves on the board of directors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange,MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger and the board of Friends of the World Food Program. He also serves on the Council on American Politics, which brings leaders from the forefront of today's political and communications arena together to address issues facing the growth and enrichment of GW’s Graduate School of Political Management where he also teaches courses.
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Daniel Imperato
Daniel Imperato (b. March 9, 1958, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American businessman, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the Libertarian Party nomination for President of the United States in 2008. Imperato has also unsuccessfully sought the Green Party, Reform Party, and Constitution Party nominations. A resident of West Palm Beach, Florida, the 2008 election was Imperato's first run for political office. Imperato's campaign literature describes him as an "independent Libertarian" and an "alternative candidate" for the Presidency.
Imperato grew up in Revere, Massachusetts. Daniel is the son of Paul "Sonny" Imperato and the late Mary C. Imperato. The Imperatos were originally immigrants from Italy. When promoting The Red Worm (a film he supposedly produced), Imperato claimed his family was descended from the Roman Emperor Nero.
Imperato is currently a Papal Knight [2] and a Knight of Malta [3].
Imperato was a board member and headed up the Palm Beach, Florida branch office of the African Center Foundation. Imperato's website claims the organization is a United Nations non-governmental organization [4] but in reality only works with the United Nations Economic and Social Council [5]. Imperato also is a Chaplain for the Latin/African American Chaplain's Association [6].
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Darrell Castle
Darrell Castle (born 1948) is an American political figure, activist and attorney from Memphis, Tennessee, and was the vice presidential candidate of the Constitution Party in the 2008 United States presidential election.
Castle grew up in northeastern Tennessee in a small town near Kingsport. He attended Ketron High School and East Tennessee State University, graduating from each in 1966 and 1970, respectively. At ETSU, he earned a B.S., double-majoring in political science and history.
Castle was then commissioned as an officer in the United States Marine Corps, serving for four years and attaining the rank of First Lieutenant. He cites his military service as fostering his belief that war should not be entered into capriciously nor without congressional approval. After his discharge, he returned to ETSU and began his graduate study of history. He then attended the law school at University of Memphis, then known as Memphis State University, and earned his Juris Doctor in 1979.
Upon receiving his J.D. in Memphis, Castle became an attorney. In 1984, he opened a private firm which later grew into Darrell Castle and Associates. Since then, Castle has opened firms in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; and Kansas City, Missouri. His firms focus on consumer bankruptcy and personal injury, but also represent clients in the areas of social security/disability and workers' compensation.
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Dave McCurdy
David Keith McCurdy (born March 30, 1950) is a U.S. lawyer, politician, conservative Democrat, and a former Oklahoma Congressman from Oklahoma's 4th congressional district. He is president of the American Gas Association.
McCurdy was born in the town of Canadian, Texas, in Hemphill County. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1972 and a law degree there in 1975. He studied international economics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland as a Rotary International Graduate Fellow.
McCurdy served in the United States Air Force Reserve, attaining the rank of major and serving as a Judge Advocate General (JAG).
He was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Oklahoma from 1975 to 1977.
McCurdy served for seven terms, from 1981 to 1995. In 1980 he ran for Oklahoma's 4th congressional district seat in Congress, succeeding sixteen-term congressman Tom Steed of Shawnee. He trailed Oklahoma House Majority Leader James B. Townsend, also from Shawnee, in the Democratic primary 40% to 34%, then won 51.2% of the vote in the runoff election. McCurdy defeated Townsend with campaign commercials espousing prayer in public and support for a Christ statue in the Wichita mountains, near Lawton.
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David F. Houston
David Franklin Houston (February 17, 1866 – September 2, 1940) was an American academic, businessman and politician.
Born in Monroe, North Carolina, he graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1887 and went on to do graduate work at Harvard University, where he received a M.A. in political science in 1892.
Houston taught political science at University of Texas. He became an adjunct member of the faculty in 1894 and was named dean of the faculty in 1899. He then became president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) from 1902 until 1905. In 1905 he returned to UT to become that institution's president, serving until 1908. During his tenure at UT Austin, the school opened a doctoral program and a law school.
Houston left Texas to serve as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, a position he held from 1908 to 1913. During his tenure he established the School of Architecture and strengthened the Medical School through partnerships with Children's and Barnes hospitals. He left the University to become the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.
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David Petraeus
David Howell Petraeus (pronunciation: /pɨˈtreɪ.əs/; born November 7, 1952) is the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was sworn in on September 6, 2011. Prior to his assuming the directorship of the CIA, Petraeus was a four-star general serving over 37 years in the United States Army. His last assignments in the Army were as commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) from July 4, 2010 to July 18, 2011. His other four-star assignments include serving as the 10th Commander, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) from October 13, 2008, to June 30, 2010, and as Commanding General, Multi-National Force - Iraq (MNF-I) from February 10, 2007, to September 16, 2008. As commander of MNF-I, Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq.
Petraeus has a B.S. degree from the United States Military Academy from which he graduated in 1974 as a distinguished cadet (top 5% of his class). He was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College class of 1983. He subsequently earned an M.P.A. in 1985 and a Ph.D. degree in International Relations in 1987 from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He later served as Assistant Professor of International Relations at the United States Military Academy and also completed a fellowship at Georgetown University.
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David Plouffe
David Plouffe ( /ˈplʌf/; born May 27,[citation needed] 1967) is an American political strategist best known as the campaign manager for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign in the United States. A long-time Democratic Party campaign consultant, he was a partner at the party-aligned campaign consulting firm AKPD Message and Media, which he joined in 2000.
After the resignation of David Axelrod to set up for Obama's re-election campaign, Plouffe was appointed Senior Advisor to the President.
Plouffe was raised in Wilmington, Delaware and attended St. Mark's High School. He left the University of Delaware in 1989 to pursue a full time career in politics, and completed his full undergraduate degree in May 2010.
Plouffe began his political career when he went to work for Senator Tom Harkin's 1990 re-election campaign. He later worked as a state field director for Harkin's unsuccessful 1992 Presidential campaign. In the same year he successfully managed Congressman John Olver's first re-election bid in Massachusetts. In 1994 Plouffe managed Delaware Attorney General Charles M. Oberly's unsuccessful campaign against Senator William V. Roth. He then worked as campaign director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1995. In 1996 Plouffe managed Bob Torricelli's successful campaign to fill Bill Bradley's New Jersey seat in the United States Senate.[citation needed]
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Denis McDonough
Denis R. McDonough (born December 2, 1969) is a foreign policy advisor in the Obama Administration. He currently serves as Deputy National Security Advisor.
McDonough was born on December 2, 1969, in Stillwater, Minnesota. He was one of eleven children of William and Kathleen McDonough. McDonough attended Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he played safety on the Johnnies football team for Hall of Fame coach John Gagliardi. McDonough was a member of teams that won two conference titles in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. McDonough graduated from Saint John's University summa cum laude with a history degree in 1992.
After graduation, McDonough traveled extensively throughout Latin America and taught high school in Belize. He then attended Georgetown University and graduated with a master's degree in 1996.
From 1996 to 1999, McDonough worked as an aide to the House International Relations Committee, where he focused on Latin America. McDonough then served as a senior foreign policy advisor to Senator Tom Daschle. After Daschle's re-election defeat in 2004, McDonough became legislative director for newly elected Senator Ken Salazar. McDonough later served as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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Dennis Kucinich
Dennis John Kucinich ( /kuːˈsɪnɪtʃ/; born October 8, 1946) is the U.S. Representative for Ohio's 10th congressional district, serving since 1997. He was furthermore a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.
The district includes most of western Cleveland as well as suburbs such as Parma and Lakewood. He is a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
From 1977 to 1979, Kucinich served as the 53rd mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, a tumultuous term in which he survived a recall election and was successful in a battle against selling the municipal electric utility before being defeated for reelection by George Voinovich.
Through his various governmental positions and campaigns, Kucinich has attracted attention for consistently delivering "the strongest liberal" perspective. This perspective has been shown by his actions, such as bringing articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and being the only Democratic candidate in the 2008 election to have voted against invading Iraq, although eventual nominee Barack Obama had also opposed the Iraq War at the time it was started, even though he had not been in Congress at the time.
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Diane Beall Templin
Diane Beall Templin (born May 23, 1947, Buffalo, New York) was a third-party candidate for President of the United States in the 1996 election, the 2004 election, and the 2008 election.
In 1996 her running mate was Gary Van Horn; that year she was on the ballot in Utah representing the Independent American Party (IAP), where she received 1,290 votes; in Colorado she represented the American Party and received 557 votes. The 2000 ticket of the American Party, Don Rogers and Albert B. "Al" Moore, promised that if elected they would nominate Templin to head the Environmental Protection Agency and to the United States Supreme Court. When she ran again in 2004, her Vice Presidential nominee was Al Moore; they were not on the ballot in any state. They replaced the brief American Party ticket of Robert Boyd[disambiguation needed
] and Walter Thompson[disambiguation needed ], who chose to withdraw.
Templin was one of 135 candidates who ran for governor in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, receiving 1,067 votes. The San Diego described her as a "swing dance enthusiast." During the recall campaign, Templin appeared on a statewide PBS news program as she was dipped by a dance partner while declaring that California was "upside down." She has also run for California Attorney General in 1998 and 2002 as a candidate of the American Independent Party of California and has been a perennial candidate for Congress in California's 50th and 51st district in 2004.
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Doug Stanhope
Douglas Gene "Doug" Stanhope (born March 25, 1967) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and author known for his on-stage drinking and abrasive comedy routines.
Stanhope quit high school after his freshman year. His comedy career began in 1990 in Las Vegas.
Stanhope has made appearances at several major comedy festivals, including the Montreal Just For Laughs, US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, the Chicago Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, where he won the Strathmore Press Award in 2002.
Stanhope was the winner of the 1995 San Francisco International Comedy Competition where he edged out notable comedic actor Dane Cook in a three-week contest. He's appeared in dozens of national and international standup comedy television specials. He claims that his appearance on the BBC television show, Live Floor Show, (broadcast March 20, 2003) was fueled by "ecstasy". According to Stanhope, "TV is just for the money; live performance is where it’s at."
In 2003 and 2004, Stanhope co-hosted the fifth and sixth seasons of The Man Show with Joe Rogan.
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Douglas Lute
Douglas Edward Lute, born November 3, 1952, is a retired United States Army lieutenant general. On 15 May 2007, Lute was appointed by George W. Bush to serve as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, also known as the "War Czar", a senior advisory position responsible for overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was asked to stay on by new President Barack Obama as Obama's Special Assistant and Senior Coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Despite leaving active duty in 2010, Lute remained in his position at the National Security Staff. Rumors that Lute would depart the White House in August 2011 turned out to be untrue; he remained in his post. New rumors that he would be brought back to active duty in the U.S. Army and appointed Supreme Allied Commander Europe emerged in February, 2012. He is married to Jane Holl Lute, who is the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security.
Born in Michigan City, Indiana on November 3, 1952, Lute graduated from the United States Military Academy (also known as West Point) in 1975. His first assignment was to the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment in Bindlach, Germany, where he commanded C Troop. He received an MPA degree from the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University in 1983 and taught in the Social Sciences department at West Point.
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Duncan Hunter
Duncan Lee Hunter (born May 31, 1948) is an American politician. He was a Republican member of the House of Representatives from California's 52nd, 45th and 42nd districts from 1981 to 2009.
Hunter was the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee during the 108th and 109th Congress. Hunter sought the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States for 2008, but his campaign failed to attract significant voters or delegates in early primary and caucus states, and he dropped out after the Nevada Republican caucuses.
He was succeeded as Representative for the 52nd district by his son, Duncan D. Hunter.
Hunter was born in Riverside, California to Lola L. (née Young) and Robert Olin Hunter. He graduated from Rubidoux High School in Riverside in 1966. He attended the University of Montana from 1966 to 1967, and then briefly the University of California, Santa Barbara, before being commissioned into the United States Army in 1969.
He served in South Vietnam from 1970 to 1971 during the Vietnam War in the Army Rangers' 75th Ranger Regiment, attached to the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He participated in 24 helicopter assaults as well as in a small-number of night-time reconnaissance patrols. He held the rank of First Lieutenant, and was awarded the Bronze Star,Air Medal, and service ribbons such as the Vietnam Service Medal. He has said, "I didn't do anything special in the U.S. Army, but I served with very special soldiers I will never forget."
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Earl Butz
Earl Lauer Butz (July 3, 1909 – February 2, 2008) was a United States government official who served as Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Born in Albion, Indiana and brought up on a dairy farm in Noble County, Indiana. He was the eldest of five children and worked on his parents' 160-acre (0.65 km2) farm while growing up. He attended a one-room country school thru 8th grade and graduated from high school in a class of seven.
He was an alumnus of Purdue University where he was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho Fraternity. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture in 1932, and then a doctorate in Agricultural Economics in 1937. He was the uncle of NFL defensive tackle Dave Butz, an All-American at Purdue University and All-Pro with the St. Louis Cardinals (1973-74) and Washington Redskins (1975-88).
In 1948, Butz became vice president of the American Agricultural Economics Association, and three years later was named to the same post at the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. In 1954, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Agriculture by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. That same year he was also named chairman of the United States delegation to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
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Earl Dodge
Earl Farwell Dodge, Jr. (December 24, 1932 – November 7, 2007) was a long-time temperance movement leader and a politician of the Prohibition Party, from the U.S. state of Colorado.
Dodge was born in Revere, Massachusetts on December 24, 1932., and joined the Prohibition Party at age 19. He was appointed Chairman of the Prohibition Party in 1979 while the party was operating under the name of the National Statesmen Party; the party name was re-instated following the 1980 election.
In addition to his work with the Prohibition Party, Dodge was active in various other temperance organizations, as well as the Right to Life movement, and in several political memorabilia collecting organizations. In his later years, Dodge began to make a living producing political items.
The following is a list of his candidacies:
Dodge was waiting to board a flight en route from Denver International Airport to Pennsylvania, when he suddenly collapsed. Doctors confirmed it was cardiac arrhythmia. He died on November 7, 2007.
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Ed Fallon
Ed Fallon is an American politician from the U.S. state of Iowa. He was previously a Democrat, a candidate for Governor of Iowa, a candidate for U.S. Congress, and served as a member of the Iowa General Assembly from 1993 to 2006. On January 3, 2012 he registered as a Republican.
The son of a member of the U.S. military, Fallon was born in Santa Monica, California in 1958, but spent the majority of his formative years living in Saugus, Massachusetts. After two years at Marlboro College in Vermont, he spent several years traveling around Europe, Canada, and the Middle East. At one point, having exhausted his financial resources, he was homeless for a time before returning to the United States. During his travels, he acquired some fluency in Spanish and French. He knows how to play seven musical instruments, including the guitar, the accordion, the Irish whistle, and the piano.
Upon returning to his native country, he moved to Iowa, where he attended Drake University between 1985 and 1987, earning a bachelor's degree in religious studies. Fallon also worked as a field canavasser for Iowa Citizen Action Network during this period. After graduating from Drake, he became a community organizer in the inner city of Des Moines, the result of his opposition to the then-dominant policies of President Ronald Reagan and other conservative Republicans. Fallon founded the Des Moines Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament which ultimately became Clarion Alliance, a non-profit focusing on peace and conflict resolution issues.
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Ed Schaefer
Edward Thomas "Ed" Schafer (born August 8, 1946) served as the 29th United States Secretary of Agriculture from 2008 to 2009. He also served as the 30th Governor of North Dakota from 1992 to 2000.
Schafer was born and raised in Bismarck, North Dakota, and is the son of businessman Harold Schafer. His sister, Pam Schafer, was the first wife of Democratic-NPL U.S. Senator Kent Conrad.
His educational background includes a bachelor's degree from the University of North Dakota, where he was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity, and an M.B.A. from the University of Denver. Following graduation, he went to work at the Gold Seal Company, a North Dakota-based manufacturing company owned by his father, eventually serving as company president from 1978 to 1985.
He is married to the former Nancy Jones and has two children: Tom Schafer and Ellie Schafer; and two stepchildren: Eric Jones and Kari Jones. He is the first North Dakota Governor to be married while in office. Schafer has also played an active role in the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation an organization which preserves the landmarks and legacy of the time that US 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt spent in and around Medora, North Dakota, between 1883 to 1889.
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Ed Schafer
Edward Thomas "Ed" Schafer (born August 8, 1946) served as the 29th United States Secretary of Agriculture from 2008 to 2009. He also served as the 30th Governor of North Dakota from 1992 to 2000.
Schafer was born and raised in Bismarck, North Dakota, and is the son of businessman Harold Schafer. His sister, Pam Schafer, was the first wife of Democratic-NPL U.S. Senator Kent Conrad.
His educational background includes a bachelor's degree from the University of North Dakota, where he was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity, and an M.B.A. from the University of Denver. Following graduation, he went to work at the Gold Seal Company, a North Dakota-based manufacturing company owned by his father, eventually serving as company president from 1978 to 1985.
He is married to the former Nancy Jones and has two children: Tom Schafer and Ellie Schafer; and two stepchildren: Eric Jones and Kari Jones. He is the first North Dakota Governor to be married while in office. Schafer has also played an active role in the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation an organization which preserves the landmarks and legacy of the time that US 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt spent in and around Medora, North Dakota, between 1883 to 1889.
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Edward Rell Madigan
Edward Rell Madigan (January 13, 1936 – December 7, 1994) was a businessman and a Republican Party politician from Lincoln, Illinois. He served almost twenty years in the United States House of Representatives and was U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for George H. W. Bush.
Madigan was born in Lincoln and attended Lincoln [Junior] College before starting his own taxicab business. He entered public service as a member of the Lincoln Board of Zoning Appeals from 1965 to 1969. During that time, he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives where he served from 1967 to 1973. In November, 1972 he was elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives, and was subsequently elected to nine more terms. Madigan narrowly lost the race for Minority Whip in 1989 to future Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich of Georgia. Madigan served in Congress from 1973 to 1991 when he resigned to become Secretary of Agriculture, a position he held from 1991 to 1993. Madigan was the first Roman Catholic to serve as Secretary of Agriculture.
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Elaine Brown
Elaine Brown (born March 2, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther leader who is based in Oakland, California. She is a former chairperson of the Black Panther Party. Brown briefly ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is a founder of Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice.
On December 28, 2007, Elaine Brown renounced her affiliation with the Green Party and her bid for Presidency.
Brown grew up in the ghetto of North Philadelphia, with a single, working mother and an absent father. Despite desperate poverty, Brown’s mother worked to provide for Elaine’s private schooling, music lessons, and nice clothing. As a young woman, Elaine had few African-American friends but spent most of her time with her white friends. After graduating from Philadelphia High School for Girls, she studied at Temple University for less than a semester. After withdrawing from Temple Brown moved to Los Angeles, California to try being a professional songwriter.
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Eric Chester
Eric Thomas Chester (born 6 August 1943) is an American author, socialist political activist, and former economics professor.
Born in New York City, he is the son of Harry (a UAW economist) and Alice (a psychiatrist née Fried) Chester. Both parents were active socialists from Vienna, opposing the rise of fascism and nazism.
Chester was a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) while at the University of Michigan in the 1960s, when he opposed the war in Vietnam. In the spring of 1965 he was among those answering the call of the southern civil rights movement, going to Alabama to demonstrate against the federal government's support of Alabama's segregationist policies. Later that summer he once again answered the call, going to Jackson, Mississippi in support of people struggling against the segregationist policies of Mississippi and the federal government. He spent 10 days in the Hinds County, Mssissippi jail. In October, 1965 he was arrested in Ann Arbor, Michigan as part of one of the first acts of civil disobedience against the American government's warfare against the people of Viet Nam. He was a member of New American Movement in the 1970s, and has been a member of the Socialist Party USA since 1980. He helped organize the faculty union while teaching at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is currently a member of the National Writers Union (UAW), an active member in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Socialist Party of Massachusetts, and the Socialist Party USA, and was the Socialist Party USA’s candidate for Vice President in 1996. The 1996 Socialist Party USA presidential ticket of Mary Cal Hollis and Chester received 4,765 votes. He campaigned for the SP's Presidential nomination for the 2000, 2004 and 2008 elections, but lost to David McReynolds, Walt Brown and Brian Moore, respectively. He twice ran for Congress from Massachusetts's First Congressional District, in 2002 and 2006.
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Eric Holder
Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. (born January 21, 1951) is the 82nd and current Attorney General of the United States and the first black American to hold the position, serving under President Barack Obama.
Holder previously served as a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and a United States Attorney. In that office he prosecuted Congressman Dan Rostenkowski (Democrat, Illinois) for corruption charges related to his role in the Congressional Post Office scandal. Later, he was Deputy Attorney General of the United States and worked at the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. He was senior legal advisor to then-Senator Barack Obama during Obama's presidential campaign and one of three members of Obama's vice-presidential selection committee.
Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. was born in the Bronx, New York, to parents with roots in Barbados.[dead link] Holder's father, Eric Himpton Holder, Sr. (1905–1970) was born in Saint Joseph, Barbados and arrived in the United States at the age of 11. He later became a real estate broker. His mother, Miriam, was born in New Jersey, while his maternal grandparents were immigrants from Saint Philip, Barbados. Holder grew up in East Elmhurst, Queens, and attended public school until the age of 10. When entering the 4th grade he was selected to participate in a program for intellectually gifted students. In 1969, he graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and attended Columbia University, where he played freshman basketball and was co-captain of his team. He earned a A.B. degree in American history in 1973. Holder received his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating in 1976. He worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund during his first summer and the United States Attorney during his second summer.
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Eric Shinseki
Eric Ken "Rick" Shinseki (/ʃɨnˈsɛki/; born November 28, 1942) is a retired United States Army four-star general who is currently serving as the 7th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs. His final U.S. Army post was as the 34th Chief of Staff of the Army (1999–2003). He is a veteran of combat in Vietnam, where he sustained a foot injury.
Shinseki was born in Lihue, Kauai in the then Territory of Hawaii, to an American family of Japanese ancestry. His grandparents immigrated from Hiroshima to Hawaii in 1901. He grew up in a sugar plantation community on Kaua'i and graduated from Kaua'i High and Intermediate School in 1960. After high school, he attended the United States Military Academy and graduated in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science degree and a commission as a second lieutenant. He earned a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from Duke University. He was also educated at the Armor Officer Advanced Course, the United States Army Command and General Staff College, and the National War College.
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Evan Bayh
Birch Evans "Evan" Bayh III (pronounced /ˈbaɪ/ BY; born December 26, 1955) is a lawyer, advisor and former Democratic politician who served as the junior U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1999 to 2011. He earlier served as the 46th Governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1997.
Bayh first held public office as the Secretary of State of Indiana, elected in 1986. He held the position for only two years before being elected Governor where he successfully advocated for state welfare reform, tax cuts, and fiscal discipline. He left his office after completing two terms and briefly took a job lecturing at Indiana University Kelley School of Business, before being elected to the U.S. Senate seat once held by his father, Birch Bayh.
On February 15, 2010, Bayh announced he would not seek reelection to the Senate in 2010. After leaving the Senate, he became a partner with the law firm McGuireWoods in the firm's Washington, D.C., office. He also serves as a senior adviser with Apollo Global Management. He was hired as a Fox News contributor in March 2011.
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Evan Ryan
Evan Maureen Ryan is the assistant for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison for Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States.
Ryan is married to Tony Blinken, National Security Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden since January 2009.
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Ezra Taft Benson
Ezra Taft Benson (August 4, 1899 – May 30, 1994) was the thirteenth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1985 until his death and was United States Secretary of Agriculture for both terms of the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Born on a farm in Whitney, Idaho, Benson was the oldest of eleven children. He was the great-grandson of Ezra T. Benson, who was appointed by Brigham Young as a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles in 1846. Benson began his academic career at Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University), where he first met Flora Smith Amussen. Benson's alternated quarters at USAC with work on the family farm.
Benson served a church mission in Britain from 1921 to 1923. It was while serving as a missionary, especially an experience in Sheffield that caused Benson to realize how central the Book of Mormon was to the Restored Gospel message and converting people to the LDS Church. He later served as president of the Newcastle Conference.
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Francis M. Drake
Francis Marion Drake (December 30, 1830 – November 20, 1903) was an American politician who became the 16th Governor of Iowa.
Drake was born in Rushville, Illinois, the son of John Adams Drake and Harriet Jane O'Neal. He later moved to Centerville, Iowa. He married Mary Jane Lord on December 24, 1855. During the Civil War, he was commissioned as Lieutenant Colonel of the 36th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment, in August 1862. He was mustered out as Brigadier General.
On July 17, 1895 he was nominated by the Republican party for Governor of Iowa. He was elected Governor on November 5, 1895, serving 1896 through 1898.
He endowed Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, that is named after him. He died in Centerville, Iowa in 1903, and is buried in Centerville’s Oakland Cemetery.
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Frank D. Jackson
Frank Darr Jackson (January 26, 1854, Arcade, New York – November 16, 1938, Redlands, California) was the 15th Governor of Iowa, serving one term from 1894-96.
Jackson attended Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) and the University of Iowa Law School. He was admitted to the bar in 1875 and practiced law in Greene, Iowa. From 1885-91, he was Iowa Secretary of State. He was elected Governor as a Republican in 1893, defeating incumbent Horace Boies, but did not seek reelection after his single two-year term. Jackson resumed his position as president of the Royal Union Life Insurance Company, and then retired to California, where he died in 1938.
Media related to Frank Darr Jackson at Wikimedia Commons
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Frank McEnulty
Frank Edward McEnulty (born 1956) is an American businessperson and politician. In the 2008 presidential election, he was both the Vice Presidential nominee of the Reform Party of the United States of America and the presidential nominee of the New American Independent Party. His running mate was Bobby Klingler. In total, he received 833 votes in the presidential election for his Presidential candidacy and 481 for his Vice-Presidential candidacy. [1]
McEnulty is the President and Chief Financial Officer of Our Castle Homes, a residential building company which develops neighborhoods.
McEnulty is also President of I Made A Movie, Inc, www.imadeamovie.com and the President of more than a dozen other small, entrepreneurial enterprises.
McEnulty is Catholic and a Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus.
In 2010, McEnulty resurfaced to criticize Barack Obama, saying: “By the time the election was over, many people were viewing him as the second coming and no one can live up to those expectations. Unfortunately, he has also failed to live up to even more down to earth expectations as well, which is why I believe so many people are becoming more and more disenchanted with him.”
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Gene Amondson
Gene Amondson, (October 15, 1943– July 20, 2009) was a landscape painter, woodcarver, Christian minister and prohibition activist who was the 2004 US presidential candidate for one faction of the Prohibition Party (Concerns of People Party) and the nominee of the unified party in 2008.
Amondson was known for his anti-Alcohol activism and reenactments of sermons by preacher Billy Sunday. He was an active member in the community of Vashon Island, Washington, and was described as a "colorful" character. During press inquiries, he often repeated such prohibition slogans as: "Prohibition was America's greatest 13 years" and "drinking responsibly is like teaching a pig to eat with a spoon. Can't happen." He died in 2009 after suffering a stroke.
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Gene Sperling
Gene B. Sperling (born December 24, 1958) is an American lawyer and political figure, currently serving as Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama.
Sperling was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he attended the alternative Community High School. He received a B.A. in political science from the University of Minnesota, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and attended The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1990s Gene Sperling worked for New York Governor Mario Cuomo.
During Bill Clinton's first term as President, from 1993–1996, Sperling served as deputy director of the National Economic Council while the Council was directed by Robert Rubin, who was promoted to Treasury Secretary. Sperling became National Economic Adviser to Clinton and director of the National Economic Council from 1996 to 2000.
As director of the NEC, Sperling, who had played a key role in the 1993 Deficit Reduction Act, was a key negotiator of the 1997 bipartisan Balanced Budget Act.. Sperling was also a principal negotiator with then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers of the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Gramm-Leach-Bliley repealed large portions of the depression-era Glass-Stegall Act allowing banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge. President Barack Obama believes that the repeal of Glass–Steagall helped cause the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis.
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George A. Wilson
George Allison Wilson (April 1, 1884 – September 8, 1953) was a United States Senator and 28th Governor of Iowa.
Born on a farm near Menlo, Iowa, Wilson attended rural schools, and Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law at Iowa City in 1907, and was admitted to the bar the same year. He then commenced practice in Des Moines. He was assistant county attorney of Polk County, Iowa from 1912 to 1914 and the Polk County Attorney from 1915 to 1916. He was a district judge from 1917 to 1921 and was a member of the Iowa Senate from 1925 to 1935.
In 1936, Iowa's Governor, Democrat Clyde Herring, ran for the U.S. Senate instead of running for re-election. Wilson won the Republican nomination to succeed him as governor, but was defeated by Democrat Nelson G. Kraschel in the general election by fewer than 3,000 votes out of over one million cast.
In 1938, Wilson again ran against Kraschel, with the opposite result. Wilson received 52.7 percent of the vote. Wilson was then re-elected as Governor in 1940, winning again by 52.7 percent in the general election over Democrat John Valentine after overcoming a surprisingly strong challenge in the Republican primary from future Congressman H.R. Gross.
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George W. Clarke
George Washington Clarke (October 24, 1852, Shelby County, Indiana – November 28, 1936, Adel, Iowa) served two terms as the 21st Governor of Iowa from 1913-17.
In 1856 the Clarke family moved to Davis County, Iowa, settling one mile east of Drakesville. He taught school in Bloomfield before attending Oskaloosa College, from which he graduated in 1877. Clarke earned a law degree from the University of Iowa in 1878 and then moved to Adel, Iowa. He married Arletta Greene on June 27, 1878. He served four years as Justice of the Peace and in 1882 formed a partnership with John B. White for the practice of law. From 1901-09, he was a member of the Iowa House of Representatives, serving as Speaker from 1904-09. He was the 22nd Lieutenant Governor from 1909–13, and then was elected Governor in 1912 and reelected in 1914. After stepping down as Governor, he was Dean of Drake University Law School from 1917–18, and practiced law in Des Moines, Iowa. His papers are in the collection of the University of Iowa.
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Gloria La Riva
Gloria Estela La Riva (born August 13, 1954, in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an American politician associated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. She was the party's 2008 presidential candidate, and was also vying for the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party in California, but lost the bid to Ralph Nader. La Riva launched her presidential campaign in January 2008, with Eugene Puryear running for vice president.
La Riva was first a third-party candidate for President of the United States in the United States presidential election, 1992, representing the Workers World Party, although this was an unofficial run as basically a placeholder on a few state ballots. She had also been the Workers World vice-presidential candidate in the elections of 1984, 1988, 1996, and 2000. She joined the Party for Socialism and Liberation in its split from the Workers World Party in 2004.
La Riva was also the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Governor of California in 1994, receiving 72,774 votes (0.9%). She ran again in the 1998 gubernatorial election, capturing 59,218 votes (0.71%).
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Gloria LaRiva
Gloria Estela La Riva (born August 13, 1954, in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an American politician associated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. She was the party's 2008 presidential candidate, and was also vying for the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party in California, but lost the bid to Ralph Nader. La Riva launched her presidential campaign in January 2008, with Eugene Puryear running for vice president.
La Riva was first a third-party candidate for President of the United States in the United States presidential election, 1992, representing the Workers World Party, although this was an unofficial run as basically a placeholder on a few state ballots. She had also been the Workers World vice-presidential candidate in the elections of 1984, 1988, 1996, and 2000. She joined the Party for Socialism and Liberation in its split from the Workers World Party in 2004.
La Riva was also the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Governor of California in 1994, receiving 72,774 votes (0.9%). She ran again in the 1998 gubernatorial election, capturing 59,218 votes (0.71%).
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Harold Ford, Jr.
Harold Eugene Ford, Jr. (born May 11, 1970) is an American politician and was the last chairman of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). He was a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee's 9th congressional district, centered in Memphis, from 1997 to 2007. Ford did not seek re-election to his House seat in 2006 when he unsuccessfully sought the Senate seat vacated by retiring Bill Frist.
Ford is the son of former Congressman Harold Ford, Sr. and Dorothy Bowles Ford. He has three brothers — Jake, Isaac, and Andrew — and one sister, Ava. His family has long been prominent in Memphis' African American community; their influence dates back to the late 19th century, when E.H. Crump, a prominent white Democrat, dominated city and state politics and befriended Harold Ford Sr.'s grandfather, N.J. Ford.
Ford was baptised at his church, Mt. Moriah-East Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. He attended Double Tree Elementary School, a public Montessori school in the Westwood neighborhood of South Memphis, and he graduated from the private St. Albans School for Boys, a prestigious university-preparatory school in Washington, D.C.. He received a B.A. in American history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. After graduation, he was a staff aide to the Senate Budget Committee, and in 1993 became special assistant at the United States Department of Commerce.
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Harold Hughes
Harold Everett Hughes (February 10, 1922 – October 23, 1996) was the 36th Governor of Iowa from 1963 until 1969; he had been a Republican earlier in his life. He also served as a Democratic United States Senator from 1969 until 1975.
Hughes was born in rural Ida County, Iowa. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army, fighting in the North African campaign, and was court-martialed for assaulting an officer. The trial resulted in him being sent to fight in Sicily in 1943. He became ill and another soldier took his place on a landing craft at Anzio. The craft exploded, killing his replacement, Pvt. Walter Thomsen, and many others.
Hughes' interest in politics was stirred by involvement in the trucking industry. He became a manager of a local trucking business, and then began organizing independent truckers. He started the Iowa Better Trucking Bureau and was eventually elected to the State Commerce Commission, which he served from 1958–1962, including a term as its chairman.
In 1952, his desperation drove him to the brink of suicide. He describes in his book how he climbed into a bathtub (to make the mess easier to clean up) with a shotgun and was ready to pull the trigger, when he experienced what may be called a moment of spiritual enlightenment which was to remain a memorable turning point throughout the remainder of this life, and which led him to deep spiritual commitments. He began to study the Bible diligently, develop his prayer life, and even considered a career in the ministry. He also embraced the AA program of recovery and started an AA group in Ida Grove, Iowa, in 1955.
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Heather Zichal
Heather Zichal (born February 8, 1976) is the Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, serving in the Barack Obama administration since 2009. Following the early 2011 departure of Carol Browner from the administration, Zichal gained the general responsibility of coordinating the administration's energy and climate policy. Zichal previously served as a legislative director and campaign advisor to several Democratic Party congressional members.
Zichal grew up in Elkader, Iowa, with parents Ken (a family physician) and Fran and a younger brother. She graduated from Central Elkader High School in 1994. She attended Cook College at Rutgers University, where she studied environmental policy and graduated in 1999.
While at Rutgers she had interned at the state chapter of the Sierra Club and was part of a panel interviewing candidates for U.S. House of Representatives in New Jersey's 12th congressional district. The support of her and other environmentalists helped Democrat Rush D. Holt, Jr. stage an upset victory over Republican incumbent Michael J. Pappas. Impressed by her sharpness, Holt hired Zichal, and she went to Washington, D.C., where she served as a legislative director for him. She held the same position for Representative Frank Pallone from 2001 to 2002. She then was a legislative assistant and later director for U.S. Senator John Kerry from 2002 to 2008, She also worked as an assistant for the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. In these positions she worked on legislation to address climate change, reduce the country's dependence on oil for energy, and to protect American natural resources. She also served as a top advisor on energy and environmental issues to the 2004 Kerry presidential campaign and the 2008 Obama presidential campaign (having first met Obama when he was lost in one of the Senate buildings and asked her for directions).
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Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965) was the 33rd Vice President of the United States (1941–1945), the Secretary of Agriculture (1933–1940), and the Secretary of Commerce (1945–1946). In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.
Henry A. Wallace, son of Henry Cantwell Wallace, was born on October 7, 1888, at a farm near Orient, Adair County, Iowa. Wallace attended Iowa State College at Ames where he was a brother in the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. At Iowa State he became friends with George Washington Carver, spending time together collecting botanical specimens. He graduated in 1910 with a degree in animal husbandry. He worked on the editorial staff of the family-owned paper Wallaces' Farmer in Des Moines, Iowa, from 1910 to 1924 and edited the publication from 1924 to 1929. He experimented with breeding high-yielding hybrid corn, and authored many publications on agriculture. In 1915 he devised the first corn-hog ratio charts indicating the probable course of markets. Wallace was also a self-taught "practicing statistician", co-authoring an influential article with George W. Snedecor on computational methods for correlations and regressions and publishing sophisticated statistical studies in the pages of Wallaces’ Farmer. Snedecor eventually invited Wallace to teach a graduate course on least squares.
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Herschel C. Loveless
Herschel Cellel Loveless (May 5, 1911 – May 4, 1989) was the 34th Governor of Iowa, from 1957 to 1961. He was also mayor of Ottumwa, Iowa. He was born in 1911 in Hedrick, Iowa and died in 1989 in Winchester, Virginia.
When elected governor in 1957, Loveless was only the fourth Democrat to win Iowa's gubernatorial seat since the Civil War. His ties to Iowa's growing labor movement and the state's urbanization helped to secure his victories in 1957 and 1959. During his years as governor, Loveless focused on issues such as flood control, mental health, and social services. He also promoted reapportionment to help redress the imbalance in rural-versus-urban representation in the state legislature. Loveless helped to align Iowa's Democratic Party more closely with its national counterpart.
Harlan Hahn, Urban-Rural Conflict: The Politics of Change (1971) James C. Larew, A Party Reborn: The Democrats of Iowa, 1950-1974 (1980) Wilson J. Warren, Struggling with "Iowa's Pride": Labor Relations, Unionism, and Politics in the Rural Midwest since 1877(2000)
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Hilda Solis
Hilda Lucia Solis (pronounced /sɵˈliːs/; born October 20, 1957) is the 25th United States Secretary of Labor, serving in the Obama administration. She is a member of the Democratic Party and served in the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2009, representing the 31st and 32nd congressional districts of California that include East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley.
Solis was raised in La Puente, California by immigrant parents from Nicaragua and Mexico. She gained degrees from the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) and the University of Southern California (USC) and worked for two federal agencies in Washington, D.C. Returning to her native state, she was elected to the Rio Hondo Community College Board of Trustees in 1985, the California State Assembly in 1992, and the California State Senate in 1994. She was the first Hispanic woman to serve in the State Senate, and was reelected there in 1998. She became known for her work toward environmental justice and was the first female recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2000.
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Howard Mason Gore
Howard Mason Gore (October 12, 1877 – June 20, 1947) served briefly as the United States Secretary of Agriculture at the very end of the first presidential administration of Calvin Coolidge (until March 4, 1925 following the death of his predecessor 10 days before the Presidential election in 1924). He himself was the successful candidate for Governor of West Virginia on that same election day and moved immediately to that office when relinquishing his Secretaryship on the day that he was inaugurated and President Coolidge was re-inaugurated. He served as the 17th Governor of West Virginia from 1925 to 1929. He married Roxie Bailey in 1906; she died on March 7, 1907, and he remained a widower.
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Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978), served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States.
Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Americans for Democratic Action. He also served as Mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota from 1945 to 1949. Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 1968 presidential election but lost to the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.
Humphrey was born in a room over his father's drugstore in Wallace, South Dakota. He was the son of Hubert Humphrey, Sr. (1882–1949) and Ragnild Kristine Sannes (1883–1973), a Norwegian immigrant. Humphrey spent most of his youth in Doland, South Dakota, on the Dakota prairie; the town's population was about 700 people when he lived there. His father was a pharmacist who served as mayor and a town-council member. In the late 1920s a severe economic downturn hit Doland; both of the town's banks closed and Humphrey's father struggled to keep his drugstore open.
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Jacob Lew
Jacob Joseph "Jack" Lew (born August 29, 1955) is the 25th and current White House Chief of Staff. Previously, he was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1998 to 2001 and from 2010 to 2012.
Lew was born in New York City. He attended New York City public schools, graduating from Forest Hills High School. His father was a lawyer and rare-book dealer who came to the United States from Poland as a child. Lew attended Carleton College in Minnesota where his faculty adviser was Paul Wellstone, who eventually represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate. He graduated from Harvard College in 1978 and the Georgetown University Law Center in 1983.
He worked as an aide to Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) from 1974 to 1975. He then was a senior policy adviser to House Speaker Tip O'Neill. Under O'Neill he served at the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee as Assistant Director and then Executive Director, and was responsible for work on domestic and economic issues including Social Security, Medicare, budget, tax, trade, appropriations, and energy issues.
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James L. Jones
James Logan Jones, Jr. (born December 19, 1943) is the former United States National Security Advisor and a retired United States Marine Corps General.
During his military career, he served as Commander, United States European Command (COMUSEUCOM) and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) from 2003 to 2006 and as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1999 to January 2003. Jones retired from the Marine Corps on February 1, 2007, after 40 years of service.
After retiring from the Marine Corps, Jones remained involved in national security and foreign policy issues. In 2007, Jones served as chairman of the Congressional Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, which investigated the capabilities of the Iraqi police and armed forces. In November 2007, he was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of State as special envoy for Middle East security. He served as chairman of the Atlantic Council from June 2007 to January 2009, when he assumed the post of National Security Advisor which he held until November 2010.
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James W. Grimes
James Wilson Grimes (October 20, 1816 – February 7, 1872) was an American politician, serving as the third Governor of Iowa and a United States Senator from Iowa.
Born in Deering, New Hampshire, Grimes graduated from Hampton Academy and attended Dartmouth College. He studied law, moved west and commenced practice in a settlement in 'Black Hawk Purchase', Wisconsin Territory, that was later incorporated as Burlington, Iowa. He also farmed. Grimes served as a member of the Iowa Territorial House of Representatives for 1838 – 1839 and 1843 – 1844 terms. He served as Governor of Iowa from 1854 to 1858. While elected as a Whig in 1854, he was a guiding light in the Republican Party's establishment in Iowa in 1855 and 1856.
Grimes was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 1859 and reelected in 1865. He served in the Senate from March 4, 1859, until December 6, 1869, when he resigned due to ill health.
In the Senate, he served as chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia (in the 37th and 38th Congresses), and the Committee on Naval Affairs (in the 39th through 41st Congresses). He also served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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Janet Napolitano
Janet Napolitano (/nəpɒlɨˈtænoʊ/; born November 29, 1957) is the third and current United States Secretary of Homeland Security, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She is the fourth person (including an acting Secretary) to hold the position, which was created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the 21st Governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009. She was Arizona's third female governor, and the first woman to win re-election. Prior to her election as governor, she served as Attorney General of Arizona from 1999 to 2002. She was the first woman and the 23rd person to serve in that office. Napolitano is the 1977 Truman Scholar from New Mexico. Forbes ranked her as the world's 15th most powerful woman in 2011.
Janet Napolitano was born on November 29, 1957, in New York City, the daughter of Jane Marie (née Winer) and Leonard Michael Napolitano, who was the dean of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. She is of half Italian ancestry and is a Methodist. She was the eldest of three children; she has a younger brother and sister. She was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she graduated from Sandia High School in Albuquerque in 1975 and was voted Most Likely to Succeed. She graduated from Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, where she won a Truman Scholarship, and was valedictorian. In 1978, she studied for a term at the London School of Economics as part of the Santa Clara's exchange programme through IES Abroad. She then received her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Virginia School of Law. After law school she served as a law clerk for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then joined Schroeder's former firm, the Phoenix law firm Lewis and Roca.
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Jason Furman
Jason Furman (born 1970) is an economist. On January 28, 2009, Furman was named Deputy Director of the National Economic Council in the administration of President Barack Obama, whom he'd been advising since the latter stages of the 2008 presidential campaign. He has been widely criticized in the past.
Furman's research and policy focus includes the subjects of taxes, health care, and the U.S. Social Security program. Furman's qualified defense of Wal-Mart's business model provoked criticism from some labor organizations when he joined Obama's 2008 campaign.
In 1996, while he was a graduate student at Harvard, Furman was hired by economist Joseph Stiglitz to serve a one-year stint as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy in the Clinton Administration and on staff of the Council of Economic Advisers. He later worked with Stiglitz at the World Bank. Furman was involved to varying degrees with the Presidential campaigns of Al Gore and General Wesley Clark. In 2004, he took a position as Director of Economic Policy for the John Kerry Presidential campaign in 2004.
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Jay Carney
James "Jay" Carney (born May 22, 1965) is President Barack Obama's second White House Press Secretary. Prior to his appointment as Press Secretary, replacing Robert Gibbs, he was director of communications to Vice President Joe Biden. Carney previously served as Washington Bureau Chief for Time magazine, a post he held from September 2005 until December 2008, and as a regular contributor in the "roundtable" segment of ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Carney was raised in Northern Virginia, attended high school at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, and earned a B.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale University, graduating cum laude, in 1987. He and his wife, Claire Shipman (a senior correspondent for ABC News), live in Washington, D.C., with their son and daughter.
After being hired as a reporter for The Miami Herald in 1987, Carney joined Time magazine as its Miami Bureau Chief in 1989. Carney worked as a correspondent in Time's Moscow Bureau for three years, covering the collapse of the U.S.S.R.. He came to Washington in 1993 to report on the Bill Clinton White House.
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Jeffrey Crowley
Jeffrey S. Crowley (born c. 1966) is a member of the Domestic Policy Council in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama and has been the Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) since February 2009. His job is to coordinate the U.S. government's efforts regarding HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care and to develop a national AIDS strategy.
Previously, Crowley was a senior scholar and researcher at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University where he focused on Medicare and Medicaid policy from 2000 to 2009. Prior to that time, he worked at the National Association of People with AIDS, beginning as a public policy intern in 1994, and finally serving as Deputy Executive Director for Programs in 2000.
Crowley is the author of both research and consumer education publications, and has made numerous presentations on HIV/AIDS and disability issues.
Crowley was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He graduated from Kalamazoo College with a B.A. in chemistry, and earned a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University. After graduation from college, Crowley served in the United States Peace Corps as a high school science teacher in Swaziland.
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Jeffrey Liebman
Jeffrey B. Liebman, an American economist, is currently the executive associate director of the Office of Management and Budget within the Obama Administration. Liebman was formerly the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Academic Advisory Committee, Center for American Progress. His father, Lance Liebman, is a professor at Columbia Law School and director of the American Law Institute. His mother is Carol B. Liebman, a professor of clinical law at Columbia Law School. His brother is Benjamin L. Liebman, a professor of Chinese law at Columbia Law School.
Liebman teaches courses in social policy, public sector economics, and American economic policy. His research includes tax and budget policy, social insurance, poverty, and income inequality. Recently he has examined the impacts of government programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Social Security, and housing vouchers. From 1998 to 1999 he served as Special Assistant to the President for economic policy and coordinated the Clinton Administration's Social Security reform technical working group.
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Jeffrey Zients
Jeffrey "Jeff" D. Zients (born c. 1966) is an American CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur. On January 17, 2012, he was named acting director of the Office of Management & Budget and assumed office on January 27, 2012. This is his second turn as acting director and White House aides have said it is likely he will serve in this capacity through the end of President Obama's first term. In 2009, President Obama appointed him to the new position of United States Chief Performance Officer and was confirmed by the Senate to be Deputy Director for Management of the Office of Management and Budget in the federal government of the United States.
Zients is a native of Kensington, Maryland and lives in the Washington, D.C. area. He and his wife Mary have four children Sasha, Matt, Josh, and Jonny
He graduated in 1984 from St. Albans School and earned a bachelor's of science degree at Duke University summa cum laude. Zients worked in management consulting for Mercer Management Consulting and Bain & Company and then was chief operating officer of DGB Enterprises, a holding company for the Advisory Board Company, Corporate Executive Board, and Atlantic Media Company .
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Jennifer Psaki
Jennifer Rene Psaki was the Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States and the Deputy White House Communications Director. A native of Polish descent from Greenwich, Connecticut, Psaki graduated from the College of William & Mary in 2000. A report by Judicial Watch released July 14, 2011, revealed Psaki wrote in an official White House email "I am putting some dead fish in the fox cubby – just cause." In an October 22, 2009, email referring to a report by Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier noting the exclusion of the network from the pool, Psaki misspelled the anchor's name and wrote to Jenni LeCompte, then-Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Treasury Department and fellow White House colleagues, "…brett baier just did a stupid piece on it -- but he is a lunatic".
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Jeremiah McLain Rusk
Jeremiah McLain Rusk (June 17, 1830 – November 21, 1893) was the 15th Governor of the U.S. state of Wisconsin from 1882 to 1889 and the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1889 to 1893.
Rusk was born in Malta, Ohio. He was a member of the Republican Party. He began as a planter, then turned to innkeeping and finally to banking before the American Civil War.
Rusk started his service with the Union Army during Civil War as major of the 25th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment on August 14, 1862. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on September 16, 1863. He took command of the regiment on July 22, 1864 when Colonel Milton Montgomery was wounded and captured at Decatur, Georgia during the Battle of Atlanta. He continued in command after Montgomery was exchanged because Montgomery was given command of the brigade to which the 25th Wisconsin Infantry was assigned. Rusk was wounded at Salkehatchie River, Georgia on January 20, 1865. Rusk was mustered out of the volunteers on June 7, 1865. He received an appointment as brevet colonel to rank from March 13, 1865, preliminary to his appointment as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers. On February 24, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Rusk for appointment to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers to rank from March 13, 1865, and the United States Senate confirmed the appointment on April 10, 1866.
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Jeremy Bernard
Jeremy Bernard (born November 4, 1961) currently serves as the White House Social Secretary. Bernard was appointed to the position by President Barack Obama on February 25, 2011. He is the first male, as well as the first openly gay individual, to serve as White House Social Secretary.
Bernard was born to Herschel and Loretta (Utterback) Bernard and raised in San Antonio, Texas, where he attended TMI — The Episcopal School of Texas. His father was a fundraiser for Robert Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. Bernard attended Hunter College in New York City, but did not graduate.
Bernard is a prominent Democratic fundraiser and gay rights advocate who served for eight years on the Democratic National Committee. He worked in the Obama Administration in Washington as the White House liaison to the National Endowment for the Humanities and later, in Paris, as senior adviser to the U.S. Ambassador to France.
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Jim Gilmore
James Stuart "Jim" Gilmore III (born October 6, 1949) is an American politician from the Commonwealth of Virginia, former 68th Governor of Virginia, and a member of the Republican Party. A native Virginian, Gilmore studied at the University of Virginia, and then served in the U.S. Army as a counterintelligence agent. He later was elected to public office as a county prosecutor, as the Attorney General of Virginia from 1994 to 1998, and as the 68th Governor of Virginia from 1998 to 2002.
Gilmore campaigned for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination until July 2007, when he became the first major Republican candidate to leave the race. Gilmore was nominated as the Republican candidate for Virginia's United States Senate seat being vacated by John Warner. In the November 2008 election, Gilmore lost to his Democratic opponent Mark Warner.
Gilmore was born in Richmond, Virginia to Margaret Evelyn (née Kandle), a church secretary, and James Stuart Gilmore, Jr., a grocery store butcher. He graduated from John Randolph Tucker High School and received an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia in 1971. Gilmore associated himself with the University's College Republicans chapter, and the Jefferson Literary & Debating Society.
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Jim Ross Lightfoot
James Ross "Jim" Lightfoot (born September 27, 1938) is a former Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Iowa.
Lightfoot was born in Sioux City, Iowa on September 27, 1938 and was raised on a farm near Farragut, Iowa, where he graduated from high school in 1956
Lightfoot served eight years in the United States Army and United States Army Reserve. He began his adult career working for IBM as a customer engineer, and was eventually transferred to Tulsa, Oklahoma. He then worked as city police officer.
Returning to his native Iowa in the early 1960s, Lightfoot became a broadcaster on KMA (AM) radio, the flagship station of May Broadcasting Company. While at KMA he and his wife (the former Nancy Harrison of Corsicana, Texas) founded three retail stores in southwest Iowa. Lightfoot was also well known as a rodeo announcer and sought-after speaker for various organizations’ events.
He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1984, after five-term incumbent Tom Harkin gave up the seat to make a successful run for the United States Senate. Lightfoot served there for six terms, compiling a mostly conservative voting record. During his last term, he served as chairman of the subcommittee of the United States House Committee on Appropriations which funded the Treasury Department, Postal Service, White House and other federal agencies. Lightfoot also spent eight years on the United States House Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation dealing with transportation issues. He holds commercial pilot and flight instructor ratings, which have allowed him a wide perspective on the aviation industry.
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Joe Biden
Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. (pronunciation: /ˈdʒoʊsɨf rɒbɨˈnɛt ˈbaɪdən/; born November 20, 1942) is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama. A Democrat, he was a United States Senator from Delaware from January 3, 1973 until his resignation on January 15, 2009, following his election to the Vice Presidency.
Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and lived there for ten years before moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969, and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was re-elected to the Senate six times, was the fourth most senior senator at the time of his resignation, and is the 15th-longest serving Senator in history. Biden was a long-time member and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His strong advocacy helped bring about U.S. military assistance and intervention during the Bosnian War. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991. He voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, but later proposed resolutions to alter U.S. strategy there. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, and led creation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and Violence Against Women Act. He chaired the Judiciary Committee during the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.
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Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore "Joe" Lieberman (born February 24, 1942) is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election. Currently an independent, he remains closely affiliated with the party.
Born in Stamford, Connecticut, Lieberman is a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School. He 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 state Attorney General from 1983 to 1989. Lieberman defeated moderate Republican Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the United States Senate and was re-elected in 1994 and 2000. In the 2000 United States presidential election, Lieberman was the Democratic nominee for Vice President, running with presidential nominee Al Gore, becoming the first Jewish candidate on a major American political party presidential ticket. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2004 presidential election.
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Joe Schriner
Joe Schriner (born March 3, 1955) is an American politician and journalist. He has run as an independent candidate for President of the United States in four consecutive election cycles. He ran in 2000,2004,2008, and is running in 2012.
Schriner and his family have traveled some 82,000 campaign miles. Since 1991, he has done extensive cross-country research for an expansive set of position papers. Schriner has been featured in some 2,000 newspapers, 175 regional network TV news shows, and hundreds of radio shows. He has written three books: Back Road to the White House, America's Best Town and America's Best Town 2. Schriner bills himself as an "average Joe concerned parent from the Midwest."
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John Albert Knebel
John Albert Knebel (born October 4, 1936 in Tulsa, Oklahoma). He graduated from West Point in 1959 and received his Master's at Creighton University in 1962. In 1965 he received his law degree from American University. He was an assistant to Congressman J. Ernest Wharton and served as general counsel to the Small Business Administration during Nixon's second term. On November 4, 1976, he was named Secretary of Agriculture by President Gerald Ford after his predecessor, Earl Butz, resigned amid a scandal involving a racist comment. His period in this office was brief and ended January 20, 1977, when Jimmy Carter replaced Ford in the White House. After that, he returned to law and as of 2003[update] was still the president of the American Mining Congress.
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John Breaux
John Berlinger Breaux ( /ˈbroʊ/; born March 1, 1944) is a former United States senator from Louisiana who served from 1987 until 2005. He was also a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1972 to 1987. He was considered one of the more conservative national legislators from the Democratic Party. Breaux was a member of the New Democrat Coalition.
Breaux was born in Crowley, Louisiana, on March 1, 1944. He graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now called the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in Lafayette in 1964 and from Louisiana State University Law School in Baton Rouge in 1967. After graduation, he practiced law, and then served as an assistant to U.S. Representative Edwin Edwards. He also is a member of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity.
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John Bryson
John E. Bryson (born July 24, 1943) is the 37th Secretary of Commerce. The Senate confirmed him by a 74–26 vote on October 20, 2011. He was sworn in on October 21, 2011. He is the former Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison.
Bryson graduated from Cleveland High School in Portland, Oregon, in 1961. He received his bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1965 and his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale Law School in 1969.
In 1970, with other recent Yale Law graduates, Bryson helped found and served as legal counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
From 1976 to 1979, Bryson served as chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board, and from 1979 to 1982, he served as president of the California Public Utilities Commission.
Bryson led Edison International from 1990 until his retirement on July 31, 2008, and was succeeded by Ted Craver.
Bryson was a director of The Boeing Company, W. M. Keck Foundation, and The Walt Disney Company, and a former Director/Trustee for three Western Asset Management funds at Legg Mason. He serves or has served on a number of educational, environmental and other nonprofit boards, including chairman of the California Business Roundtable, a trustee of Stanford University, a trustee of California Institute of Technology, co-chairman of the Pacific Council on International Policy, and chairman of the Public Policy Institute of California.
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John H. Cox
John Herman Cox (born July 15, 1955) is an American lawyer, accountant, businessman, broadcaster, and aspiring politician. He was the first Republican to seek formally the party's 2008 nomination for president, but effectively withdrew from the race in late 2007 and suspended his campaign shortly after.
Born on the near south side of Chicago, Illinois, Cox is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he majored in accounting and political science, and of Illinois Institute of Technology – Chicago-Kent College of Law. He is married to Sarah, has four daughters, and is Roman Catholic. He credits his wife as inspiring him to run for president.
In 1981, he founded a law firm specializing in corporate law and tax planning, John H. Cox and Associates Ltd. In 1985, he founded Cox Financial Group Ltd., which specializes in investment counseling, income tax planning, retirement planning, and asset protection. In 1995 he founded Equity Property Management, a real estate management firm specializing in apartment rental property.
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John H. Gear
John Henry Gear (April 7, 1825 – July 14, 1900) served as the 11th Governor of Iowa, a United States Representative and a member of the United States Senate.
Born in Ithaca, New York, he attended the common schools and moved to Galena, Illinois, in 1836, to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, in 1838, and to Burlington, Iowa, in 1843, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits. He was elected mayor of Burlington in 1863 and as a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from 1871 to 1877, serving as Speaker for two terms.
Gear was Governor of Iowa from 1878 to 1881. He was elected as a Republican to represent Iowa's 1st congressional district in the U.S. House for the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Congresses, serving from March 4, 1887 to March 3, 1891. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1890, but was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, serving from 1892 to 1893. He returned to the U.S. House for one final term, winning the 1892 1st district election, then serving in the Fifty-third Congress, from March 4, 1893 to March 3, 1895.
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John Hammill
John Hammill (October 14, 1875 – April 6, 1936) served three terms as the 24th Governor of Iowa from 1925 to 1931.
Hammill was born in Linden, Wisconsin. He earned a law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1897, and practiced law in Britt, Iowa. After serving as a county attorney from 1902 to 1908, he was elected to the Iowa Senate where he served until 1913. In 1920, he was elected the 25th Lieutenant Governor of Iowa and was re-elected to that position in 1922.
In August 1923, Governor N. E. Kendall was sidelined because of a heart condition, which led to speculation that he would resign before the end of his term, thus leaving Hammill as Iowa's governor. Although Kendall left the state for an extended stay in Hawaii to recuperate, leaving Hammill as Iowa's acting governor for several months, Kendall did not resign. Kendall did not seek re-election in 1924, and Hammill announced his candidacy for the post.
Hammill won the 1924 Republican gubernatorial nomination, and defeated James C. Murtagh in the general election. He was sworn in to the governor's office on January 15, 1925. He won reelection to a second term in 1926 (defeating Democratic candidate Alex R. Miller), and to a third term in 1928 (defeating Democratic candidate L. W. Housel).
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John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior United States Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to then President George W. Bush.
The son of an Army Air Corps serviceman, Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado. He attended boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and went on to graduate from Yale University class of 1966, where he majored in political science. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966 and, during 1968-1969, served a four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge (OIC) of a Swift Boat. For that service he was awarded several combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesperson and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war. During that period, he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of "war crimes".
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John McCain
John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican presidential nominee in the 2008 United States election.
McCain followed his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, into the United States Navy, graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he was almost killed in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture, and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. His war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.
He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981 and moved to Arizona, where he entered politics. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily four times, most recently in 2010. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for his willingness to disagree with his party on certain issues. After being investigated and largely exonerated in a political influence scandal of the 1980s as a member of the Keating Five, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. He is also known for his work towards restoring diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, and for his belief that the war in Iraq should be fought to a successful conclusion. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, opposed spending that he considered to be pork barrel, and played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations.
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John O. Brennan
John O. Brennan (born September 22, 1955) is chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama; officially his title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President. His responsibilities include overseeing plans to protect the country from terrorism and respond to natural disasters, and he meets with the President daily. Previously, he advised Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues during the 2008 presidential campaign and transition. Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for Director of the CIA in the new Obama administration over concerns about his views regarding the CIA under President George W. Bush. Instead, Brennan was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor, a position which did not require Senate confirmation.
After leaving government service in 2005, Brennan became CEO of The Analysis Corporation, a security consulting business, and served as chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an association of intelligence professionals. Brennan's 25 years with the CIA included work as a Near East and South Asia analyst, as station chief in Saudi Arabia, and as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
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John Rusling Block
John Rusling Block (born February 15, 1935 in Galesburg, Illinois) was Secretary of Agriculture under former President Ronald Reagan and is currently a lobbyist.
He came from a strongly rural background where the home had no electricity. He graduated from West Point in 1957 and served in 101st Airborne. After that he ran a successful agribusiness.
He is a Republican whose agriculture successes formed the basis for his position as Illinois Director of Agriculture. This led to him becoming the Secretary of Agriculture under Ronald Reagan from 1981-1986. This led to his involvement in the 1985 Farm Bill.
Block was Secretary of Agriculture when more farmers lost their farms than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.[citation needed] During his term as Secretary, a Federal court judge ruled in a due process decision, Coleman vs. Block, 663 FSupp 1315, 1332 (D.N.D. 1987), that the Department of Agriculture ("USDA") and Farmers Home Administration ("FmHA") were not giving farmers enough notice of alternative debt restructuring options. The Court ordered the USDA and FmHA to amend the forms issued to farmers. The decision eventually led to restructuring and reorganization of many farm debts. During the U.S. government's appeal of the decision, Congress passed the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, Pub. L. No. 100-233, 101 Stat. 1568 (1988). Title VI of the Act made extensive changes in the statutory provisions which had formed the background for the Coleman litigation, the changes being designed to carry out the intent of the Coleman decisions.
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Jonathon Sharkey
Jonathon (originally John) Albert "The Impaler" Sharkey (born April 2, 1964) is an American professional wrestler and perennial candidate. He resides in Florida and initially attempted to run for President as a Republican in 2012. On August 24, 2011, he formally ended his presidential campaign, but states that he has "all intentions of running in 2020."
He formerly lived in Minnesota but moved to Florida in 2010. Sharkey has three living children, and a fourth child who is now deceased. He also has a grandson. Sharkey says that he has never dated anyone over 19 years old since 2006. Sharkey drinks his girlfriends' blood and one of his former girlfriends, Audrianna Foster, has claimed to be a vampire herself.
Sharkey began wrestling in 1988. He began his career with Larry Sharpe's WWA promotion, facing "Diamond Jim" Brady in a boxer vs. wrestler match. Following this, he worked with a number of other wrestling promoters including Rocky Johnson, father of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. He cites his greatest wrestling influences as Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat.
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Joshua G. Newbold
Joshua G. Newbold (May 12, 1830, Fayette County, Pennsylvania – June 10, 1903, Mount Pleasant, Iowa) was the tenth Governor of Iowa.
Newbold grew up in a Quaker family in Pennsylvania. Later he became a Baptist. He moved to Iowa in 1854, where he was a farmer.
He joined the Union Army in 1862 as captain of Company C, 25th Regiment of the Iowa Infantry, and fought at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, the Battle of Fort Hindman, the Third Battle of Chattanooga, the Battle of Ringgold Gap, the Atlanta Campaign, and Sherman's March to the Sea.
Newbold served in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1872-76. He was elected the 11th Lieutenant Governor as a Republican in 1876, and succeeded to the governorship when Samuel J. Kirkwood resigned to take a seat in the United States Senate.
From 1899-1903, Newbold was mayor of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where he died and was buried in the Forest Home cemetery in 1903.
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Julianna Smoot
Julianna Smoot is the Deputy Manager of Barack Obama's 2012 presidential reelection campaign, having previously served as White House Social Secretary, Deputy Assistant to the President., and Chief of Staff to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Smoot previously served as a professional fundraiser for the Democratic Party. She was the national finance director for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Under Smoot's direction, the campaign raised $32.5 million during the second quarter of 2007 and by election day, more money than any campaign in American history. She was named Social Secretary after her predecessor, Desiree Rogers resigned on February 26, 2010.
Smoot was born in North Carolina. She graduated from Smith College in 1989. Smoot served as finance director for then Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle and as finance director for Senator John Edwards's Senate race in 1998. She has also held positions with Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
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Kat Swift
Kat Swift (born June 6, 1973) is a United States political activist, former co-chair of the Green Party of Texas, and spokesperson for the Green Party's National Women’s Caucus. Swift announced her intention to seek the 2008 Presidential nomination of the US Green Party at the 2004 Green Party National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was one of the youngest candidates to seek the office in 2008, meeting the age requirement of 35-years-old only months before Election Day in 2008. In 2007, she ran for City Council, District 1 in San Antonio, Texas finishing second of three candidates with 1,630 votes for 29.48% of the total vote. On July 12, 2008 she finished third on the single ballot for the party's presidential nomination with 38 out of 532 delegate votes cast. She later endorsed the winner of the presidential nomination Cynthia McKinney. Swift was later a 2010 candidate for Bexar County Commissioner in Precinct 2.
Swift is a critic of electronic voting machines, and during a 2008 interview said: "The people must have precedence over corporations and political machines! Think about who is counting [votes] and paying for the candidates to run for office. Are they people who are acting out of duty for an egalitarian society, justice, and liberty...or are they in it for other reasons?”
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Kathleen Sebelius
Kathleen Sebelius (pronounced /sɨˈbiːliəs/; née Gilligan, born May 15, 1948) is an American politician currently serving as the 21st Secretary of Health and Human Services. She was the second female Governor of Kansas from 2003 to 2009, the Democratic respondent to the 2008 State of the Union address, and chair-emerita of the Democratic Governors Association.
Sebelius was born and raised in a Roman Catholic family in Cincinnati, Ohio. She attended the Summit Country Day School in Cincinnati and graduated from Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C. with a B.A. in political science. She later earned a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Kansas. She moved to Kansas in 1974, where she served for eight years as a representative in the Kansas Legislature and eight years as Insurance Commissioner before being elected governor.
Sebelius is the daughter of former Democratic Ohio Governor John J. Gilligan, and thus they became the first father/daughter governor pair in the United States after her election. Following passage of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, she pointed out another father-daughter connection: her father had been in the House of Representatives when Medicare was originally passed in 1965.
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Ken Salazar
Kenneth Lee "Ken" Salazar (pronounced /ˈsæləzɑr/; born March 2, 1955) is the current United States Secretary of the Interior, in the administration of President Barack Obama. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a United States Senator from Colorado from 2005 to 2009. He and Mel Martinez (R-Florida) were the first Hispanic U.S. Senators since 1977; they were joined by Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) in January 2006. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, he served as Attorney General of Colorado from 1999 to 2005.
On December 17, 2008, President-elect Obama announced he would nominate Salazar as U.S. Secretary of the Interior. The environmentalist movement's reaction to this nomination was mixed. Previously, Salazar supported the nomination of Gale Norton to Secretary of the Interior, President George W. Bush's first appointee who preceded Salazar as Colorado Attorney General. On January 20, 2009, Salazar was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate.
Ken Salazar was born in Alamosa, Colorado, the son of Emma M. and Henry (Enrique) S. Salazar. He grew up near Manassa, in the community of Los Rincones in the San Luis Valley area of south-central Colorado. Salazar attended St. Francis Seminary and Centauri High School in La Jara, graduating in 1973. He later attended Colorado College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1977, and received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. Later Salazar was awarded honorary degrees (Doctor of Laws) from Colorado College (1993) and the University of Denver (1999). After graduating, Salazar started private law practice.
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Kent Mesplay
Kent Mesplay (born July 19, 1962) is the California delegate to the Green National Committee and unsuccessfully sought the 2004 Green Party Presidential nomination which he lost again in 2008.
Mesplay was born and raised in Papua New Guinea to Lutheran Missionary parents. He graduated Valedictorian from Mira Mesa High School in 1980. In college, he studied Western and non-Western medicine, earning a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University and he obtained an undergrad degree in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California. After graduate school, Mesplay suffered through a long period of unemployment as he worked to develop a funded position for himself at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, in Long Beach, California, before moving to La Mesa and teaching mathematics in the Grossmont Union High School District. He currently works as an Air Quality Inspector at the Air Pollution Control District, in San Diego.
Mesplay became a Green Party of California delegate to the Green National Committee in 2004 [1]. Previously, he was elected Treasurer of the Green Party County Council, San Diego, which he served as from 1996-1997. During the same period, he was the co-chair of the Communications Committee, Green Party County Council, San Diego.
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L. M. Shaw
Leslie Mortier Shaw (November 2, 1848 – March 28, 1932) was an American businessman, lawyer and politician.
Born in Morristown, Vermont, he became a lawyer and banker, and in 1898 became the 17th Governor of Iowa, serving until 1902. He then became United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, serving until 1907. Like his predecessor Secretary Lyman Gage, Shaw firmly believed that the Treasury should serve the money market in times of difficulty through the introduction of Treasury funds.
To this end, Shaw bought back government bonds from the commercial banks that owned them, increased the number of government depository banks, and, in 1902, told the banks that they no longer needed to keep cash reserves against their holdings of public funds. The intended effect of these actions was to provide a more elastic currency, which would then respond to the needs of the market. Government intervention in the money market reached its height with Shaw. He resigned in 1907 to become a banker in New York.
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Lawrence Summers
Lawrence Henry Summers (born November 30, 1954) is an American economist. He served as the 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He was Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Barack Obama until November 2010. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is the 1993 recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal for his work in several fields of economics.
Summers also served as the 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty that resulted in large part from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end," and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization.
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Leo Elthon
Leo Elthon (June 9, 1898, Fertile, Iowa – April 16, 1967, Fertile) was the 32nd Governor of Iowa from November 21, 1954 to January 13, 1955. Elthon had been elected the 34th Lieutenant Governor in November 1952, and filled the unexpired term of Governor William S. Beardsley, who died in office.
Elthon attended the Augsburg Seminary, Iowa State University, and Hamilton College (Iowa). He became a schoolteacher and school principal. From 1932 until his election as Lieutenant Governor in 1953, he was a member of the Iowa Senate. After leaving office as Governor, he returned to his duties as Lieutenant Governor until 1957. He then served as mayor of Fertile, Iowa (1958–63) and again in the state Senate (1963–65). He is interred at the Brushpoint cemetery in his hometown of Fertile, Iowa.
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Leo Hoegh
Leo Arthur Hoegh (pronounced "hoyg") (March 30, 1908– July 15, 2000) was a decorated U.S. Army officer, lawyer and politician who was the 33rd Governor of Iowa from 1955 to 1957.
His record of public service included important contributions to his home state and to his country. His career in elective office came to an early end, after his willingness to raise taxes to jump-start improvements to Iowa's roads and schools alienated his conservative Republican allies, and handed Democratic gubernatorial nominee Herschel C. Loveless an issue to exploit.
Hoegh's grandfather, Nels Peder Hoegh, left a farm in Denmark in 1866 to search for gold in Colorado. He invested much of his newfound fortune in farmland in Audubon County, Iowa, became a community leader, and upon his death left separate farms for each of his thirteen children.
When Leo was born to Nels' son William in 1908, the household spoke Danish, and it was not until Leo attended school that he began to speak English. While his father ran a bank in nearby Elk Horn, Iowa, Leo decided to become a lawyer. He received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Iowa in 1929, where he distinguished himself as a captain of the water polo team and as the founding president of Gamma Nu Chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha. He lettered in swimming and was selected for membership in A.F.I., forerunner to the national honor society, Omicron Delta Kappa. As Leo graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1932, his father sold all of his assets in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the Elk Horn bank from failing. Leo started private practice in Chariton, the county seat of Lucas County in southwestern Iowa.
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Leon Panetta
Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is the 23rd and current United States Secretary of Defense, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama since 2011. Prior to taking office, he served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. An Italian-American Democratic politician, lawyer, and professor, Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997, Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993–1994, and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993. He is the founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, served as Distinguished Scholar to Chancellor Charles B. Reed of the California State University System and professor of public policy at Santa Clara University.
In January 2009, President Obama nominated Panetta for the post of CIA Director. Panetta was confirmed by the full Senate in February 2009. As director of the CIA, Panetta oversaw the U.S. military operation that led to Osama bin Laden's death.
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Lisa P. Jackson
Lisa Perez Jackson (born February 8, 1962) is an American chemical engineer currently serving as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Previously, she worked at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for 6 years, first as an assistant commissioner and later as commissioner. Prior to that, she was employed by the EPA for 16 years.
Lisa Jackson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was adopted weeks after her birth. She grew up in Pontchartrain Park, a predominantly African-American middle-class neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1979, Jackson graduated as valedictorian from Saint Mary's Dominican High School in New Orleans. She received a scholarship from the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering & Science due to her strong performance in mathematics. This allowed her to gain early exposure to a college environment.
She attended Tulane University with a scholarship from Shell Oil Company. A dean at the Tulane School of Engineering got her interested in that discipline as an academic path, and she graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering in 1983. Jackson then earned her Master of Science degree, also in chemical engineering, from Princeton University in 1986.
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Mark Warner
Mark Robert Warner (born December 15, 1954) is an American politician and businessman, currently serving as the junior United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Warner was the 69th governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006 and is the honorary chairman of the Forward Together PAC. Warner delivered the keynote address before the nation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Mark Warner's experience as a congressional staffer and Democratic Party fundraiser in the 1980s prompted his involvement in telecommunications venture capital; he founded the firm Columbia Capital.
In 2006 he was widely expected to pursue the Democratic nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections; however, he announced in October 2006 that he would not run, citing a desire not to disrupt his family life. Warner was considered to be a potential vice presidential candidate, but upon receiving the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, he announced that he "will not accept any other opportunity." He is expected to become the state's senior senator when Jim Webb retires from the Senate in January 2013.
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Mary Ruwart
Mary J. Ruwart, Ph. D. (born October 16, 1949) is a research scientist and libertarian speaker, writer, and activist. She was a leading candidate for the 2008 Libertarian Party presidential nomination and is the author of the award-winning international bestseller "Healing Our World."
Born in Detroit, Ruwart holds an undergraduate degree in biochemistry (B.S., 1970), and a graduate degree in biophysics (Ph.D., 1974) from Michigan State University. After a brief term as an Assistant Professor of Surgery at St. Louis University Medical School, Ruwart spent 19 years as a pharmaceutical research scientist for Upjohn Pharmaceuticals, and has written extensively on the subjects of government regulation of the drug industry and on libertarian communication.
In 1992, Ruwart published her best-selling book Healing Our World: The Other Piece of the Puzzle (ISBN 0-9632336-2-9); in 2003, the third edition was published, retitled Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression (ISBN 0-9632336-6-1). In the afterword of the third edition of Healing Our World, Ruwart describes the experience of her sister's death, an assisted suicide facilitated by Jack Kevorkian.
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Matt Gonzalez
Matthew Edward Gonzalez (born June 4, 1965) is an American politician, lawyer, and activist prominent in San Francisco politics. He currently serves as chief attorney in the San Francisco Public Defender's office.
Gonzalez was a member and president of San Francisco County's Board of Supervisors. He was also one of the first Green Party candidates elected to public office in the San Francisco Bay area. In 2003, Gonzalez ran for mayor of San Francisco but lost in a close race to Democrat Gavin Newsom. In the 2008 presidential election, Gonzalez ran for vice president as the running mate of candidate Ralph Nader.
Matthew Edward Gonzalez was born in McAllen, Texas, to a Mexican mother, Oralia, and Mexican-American father, Mateo. Gonzalez spent his first four years in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Gonzalez family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; and Louisville, Kentucky, before the family returned to McAllen when Gonzalez was 11 years old.
In an interview with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle, Gonzalez described his father as a salesman who initially started out selling "cigarettes from the back of his car in south Texas" in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and later started an import/export business selling medical and dental supplies. A profile in the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gonzalez's father was a division chief for the international tobacco company Brown & Williamson.
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Melody Barnes
Melody C. Barnes (b. April 29, 1964, Richmond, Virginia)[citation needed] was chosen by President Barack Obama to serve as the Director of the Domestic Policy Council for his administration. Obama announced her appointment on November 24, 2008. She was previously Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress and led the CAP's Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative. She left the CAP in June 2008 to work on the Obama campaign. She also served on the advisory board for the Obama presidential transition team,.
She is a member of the New York State Bar Association and the District of Columbia Bar Association. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of The Constitution Project. She received her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School and her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated with honors in History in 1986. As an undergraduate, she was a Brother of Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity and a Sister of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
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Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman and politician who is currently Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $22 billion in 2012, he is also the 11th-richest person in the United States. He is the founder and 88% owner of Bloomberg L.P., a financial data-services firm.
A Democrat before seeking elective office, Bloomberg switched his registration in 2001 and ran for mayor as a Republican, winning the election that year and a second term in 2005. Bloomberg left the Republican Party over policy and philosophical disagreements with national party leadership in 2007 and ran for his third term in 2009 as an independent candidate on the Republican ballot line. He was frequently mentioned as a possible independent candidate for the 2008 presidential election, which fueled further speculation when he left the Republican Party. There was also speculation that he would run as a vice-presidential candidate. Bloomberg did not, however, seek the presidency nor was he selected as a running mate by any of the presidential candidates.
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Michael Jingozian
Michael Paul Jingozian (born April 30, 1961) is an American entrepreneur and political activist who served as vice chairman of the Libertarian Party from 2008 to 2010. He was a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party. Jingozian currently serves on the board of directors of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, a non-partisan, nonprofit public policy advocacy group committed to election reform and protecting ballot-access laws in the U.S. He is also the founder and CEO of AngelVision Technologies, a marketing and sales promotion company, headquartered in Portland, Oregon. In 2011, the American Marketing Association of Oregon honored Jingozian as Marketer of the Year and presented him with the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Jingozian declared his candidacy for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in October 2006. Although he had never held public office, Jingozian sought to leverage his skills as a successful marketing-communications entrepreneur to deliver his campaign messages. An article in CNN Money magazine cited his effectiveness at getting through to the masses. Jingozian’s campaign proposals included reorganizing the U.S. military, reforming election laws and drug laws, eliminating the Department of Homeland Security, abolishing the Patriot Act, and establishing greater transparency and accountability in government. One of his recurring campaign themes was that practical and viable measures existed to solve America’s problems, but such solutions were blocked at every turn by professional politicians and bureaucrats.
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Mike Espy
Alphonso Michael "Mike" Espy (born November 30, 1953) is a former United States political figure. From 1987 to 1993, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi. He served as the Secretary of Agriculture from 1993 to 1994. He was the first African American Secretary of Agriculture.
Espy was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He is the grandson of Thomas J. Huddleston, Sr., the founder of the Afro-American Sons and Daughters, a fraternal society that operated the Afro-American Hospital. The hospital was a leading provider of health care for blacks in the state from the 1920s until the 1970s.
He attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., majoring in law. Espy earned his Juris Doctor from the Santa Clara University School of Law in California in 1978. He was an attorney with Central Mississippi Legal Services between 1978 and 1980 and was later the assistant secretary of state to Mississippi Legal Services. Espy was the assistant secretary of the state's Public Lands Division from 1980 to 1984.
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Mike Gravel
Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel ( /ɡrəˈvɛl/; born May 13, 1930) is a former Democratic United States Senator from Alaska, who served two terms from 1969 to 1981, and a former candidate in the 2008 presidential election.
Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts to French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel served in the United States Army in West Germany and graduated from Columbia University. He moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1966 and became its Speaker of the House. Gravel was elected to the United States Senate in 1968.
As Senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful but unsuccessful attempts to end the draft during the Vietnam War and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971 at risk to himself. He conducted an unusual campaign for the Democratic nomination for Vice President of the United States in 1972, and then played a crucial role in getting Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but gradually alienated most of his Alaskan constituencies and his bid for a third term was defeated in a primary election in 1980.
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Mike Huckabee
Michael Dale "Mike" Huckabee (born August 24, 1955) is an American politician who served as the 44th Governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. He was a candidate in the 2008 United States Republican presidential primaries, finishing second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won (behind both John McCain and Mitt Romney). He won the Iowa Republican caucuses. Huckabee exited the race as McCain became the presumptive Republican nominee after winning the delegate-rich winner-take-all states of Florida, California, and New York.
Huckabee is the author of several best selling books, an ordained Southern Baptistminister, musician and a public speaker. He is also an ABC Radio political commentator. He and his wife, Janet, have been married for over 37 years and have three grown children: John Mark, David, and Sarah. Janet Huckabee was an unsuccessful candidate for Arkansas Secretary of State in 2002.
Huckabee currently hosts the Fox News Channel talk show Huckabee. Starting April 2, 2012 he will host The Mike Huckabee Show from noon until 3 pm weekdays for Cumulus Media Networks.
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Mike Johanns
Michael Owen "Mike" Johanns (born June 18, 1950) is an Republican American politician who has been the junior United States Senator from Nebraska since 2009. Previously he was the 38th Governor of Nebraska from 1999 to 2005 and was United States Secretary of Agriculture from 2005 to 2007, becoming the fourth Nebraskan to hold the position. On November 4, 2008, Johanns was elected to the United States Senate for the state of Nebraska, becoming one of only two new Republican senators (with Jim Risch of Idaho) heading into the 111th United States Congress. In 2002 Johanns served as a Chair of the Midwestern Governors Association. He is expected to become Nebraska's senior senator upon the conclusion of retiring Senator Ben Nelson's term in January of 2013.
Johanns was born in Osage, Iowa, the son of Adeline Lucy (née Royek) and John Robert Johanns. His father was of German ancestry, and his maternal grandparents immigrated from Poland. He grew up living and working on his family's farm. After graduating from high school, Johanns went on to study at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota in Winona. He earned a law degree from Creighton University. After his graduation, Johanns began practicing law in O'Neill and Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States in the 2012 election. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts (2003–07).
The son of Lenore and George W. Romney (Governor of Michigan, 1963–69), he was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 1966, after one year at Stanford University, he left the United States to spend thirty months in France as a Mormon missionary. In 1969, he married Ann Davies, and the couple had five children together. In 1971, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brigham Young University and, in 1975, a joint Juris Doctor and Master of Business Administration from Harvard University as a Baker Scholar. He entered the management consulting industry, which in 1977, led to a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as Chief Executive Officer, he helped bring the company out of financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded the spin-off Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. His net worth is estimated at $190–250 million, wealth that has helped fund his political campaigns. Active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served as Ward Bishop and later Stake President in his area near Boston. He ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, losing to long-time incumbent Ted Kennedy. In 1999, he was hired as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics; and he helped turn the fiscally troubled games into a success.
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Moises Vela
Moises V. 'Moe' Vela, Jr. is a lawyer, government advisor, and Hispanic leader, named by the National Journal as one of the 100 top Hispanics and 300 top decision makers in the United States..
He is the first Hispanic to serve in two senior executive roles in the White House, first during the Clinton Administration as Chief Financial Officer and Senior Advisor on Latino Affairs in the Office of Vice President Al Gore, and later during the Obama Administration as Director of Administration for Joe Biden, the Vice President of the United States.
He is currently working as a partner in the Public Policy & Regulation Group of Holland & Knight, in Washington, DC, where his focus areas include public policy and government relations.
Vela is a native of Harlingen, Texas, graduating from Harlingen High School in 1980. His father, Moises Vela, was a Cameron County judge, and his uncle, Filemon Vela, was a U.S. District Court Judge.
Vela is a graduate of the University of Texas, Austin, Texas, and St. Mary's University School of Law.
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Nancy-Ann DeParle
Nancy-Ann Min DeParle (born December 17, 1956) is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the administration of President Obama. Previously, she served as the director of the White House Office of Health Reform., leading the administration's efforts on health care issues. She served as the director of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) from 1997 to 2000, administering the Medicare program for the Clinton administration, and before then worked at the Office of Management and Budget.
DeParle was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Rockwood, Tennessee, where she graduated from Rockwood High School. Her mother died of lung cancer when Nancy-Ann was 17.
She attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where her major was history and her senior thesis was entitled "Uncle Sam, Hirohito, and Resegregation: The Tule Lake Segregation Center, 1943-1946." She was awarded a B.A. degree with highest honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and selected as a Phi Kappa Phi scholar. She was the first female president of the University of Tennessee student body and was a member of the Gamma Alpha chapter of Delta Gamma. In 1978 Glamour magazine named her one of the year's top ten college women.
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Nathan E. Kendall
Nathan Edward Kendall (March 17, 1868 - November 5, 1936), a Republican politician, was a two-term U.S. Representative from Iowa's 6th congressional district and the 23rd Governor of Iowa.
Born on a farm near Greenville, Iowa, Kendall attended the rural schools until the eighth grade. After moving to Albia, Iowa he began reading law at age fifteen, and was admitted to the bar in 1889. He commenced practice in Albia in 1889. He was Albia city attorney from 1890–1892, then Monroe, Iowa County Attorney from 1893 to 1897. In 1899 he was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives, where he served for ten years and ultimately became Speaker of the House during his last term.
In 1908 Kendall ran as a Republican for U.S. House seat for Iowa's 6th congressional district, then held by incumbent one-term Democrat Daniel W. Hamilton. Defeating Hamilton in a close race, Kendall served in the Sixty-first Congress, then was re-elected in 1910, serving in the Sixty-second Congress. He won the Republican primary in June 1912 over two challengers, but pulled out of the race in August, citing health concerns. In all, he served in Congress from March 4, 1909 to March 3, 1913. After returning from Washington, he resumed the practice of law in Albia.
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Nelson G. Kraschel
Nelson George Kraschel (October 27, 1889 - March 15, 1957) was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He was born on a farm near Macon, Illinois in 1889 and died in Harlan, Iowa in 1957.
In 1910 he moved to Harlan, Iowa to farm and raise livestock. Kraschel later became a livestock auctioneer and sold more than 50 million dollars of property. In 1932, he was placed on the Democratic Party ticket for Lieutenant Governor of Iowa. He won the election and was re-elected in 1934. He was the 27th Governor of Iowa from 1937 to 1939. Kraschel was an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry A. Wallace, and the New Deal. He was also involved in other political campaigns, such as the Guy Gillette vs. Otha Wearin senatorial contest.
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Norman A. Erbe
Norman Arthur Erbe (October 25, 1919 – June 8, 2000) was the 35th Governor of Iowa from 1961 to 1963.
He was born in Boone, Iowa. He served as an infantry officer in the United States Army from 1941 to 1943. He then transferred to the United States Army Air Corps as a pilot, spending the rest of World War II as a pilot. After the war, he studied at the University of Iowa, obtaining a law degree in 1947. He entered state politics, serving as Iowa Attorney General from 1957 to 1961 before succeeding Herschel C. Loveless as Governor. In the 1962 election he was defeated for re-election by Harold E. Hughes. After leaving politics, he served as Executive Vice-President of the Associated Builders and Contractors in 1979. He published his memoirs, Ringside at the Fireworks, in 1997. He died on June 8, 2000 and is buried in the Linwood Park cemetery in Boone, Iowa.
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Orville Freeman
Orville Lothrop Freeman (May 9, 1918 – February 20, 2003) was an American Democratic politician who served as the 29th Governor of Minnesota from January 5, 1955 to January 2, 1961, and as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1961 to 1969 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He was one of the founding members of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and strongly influential in the merger of the pre-DFL Minnesota Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties. Freeman nominated Kennedy for President at the national Democratic Party convention.
Born in 1918 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, of Swedish and Norwegian ancestry, Freeman is best remembered for initiating the Food Stamp Program for under-resourced people which is still in use today. Freeman was a 1940 graduate of the University of Minnesota, where he met his life-long friend and political ally, Hubert Humphrey, and his future wife and lifelong partner Jane Shields. During World War II, he served as a combat officer in United States Marine Corps, achieving the rank of Major.
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Patrick Gaspard
Patrick Gaspard (born 1967) is the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, and served as Director of the Office of Political Affairs for the Obama administration from January 2009 to 2011. He had previously served as the National Political Director of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and a member of the advisory board for President-elect Obama's transition team.
Prior to working on Obama's campaign team, Gaspard worked nine years as the executive vice president for politics and legislation for the 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union, the largest local union in America. He helped coordinate political activity and government relations on behalf of 300,000 members. In 2006, Gaspard served as the acting political director for SEIU International during the national union’s successful effort to help Democrats capture majorities in the House and Senate. In 2004, Gaspard was the National Field Director for America Coming Together. Gaspard worked for Governor Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, the 1988 Jesse Jackson presidential bid and numerous congressional candidates and campaigns. In 1989, he worked on the successful and historic David Dinkins mayoral campaign. Gaspard is a former community organizer around school reform issues.
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Paul Volcker
Paul Adolph Volcker, Jr. (born September 5, 1927) is an American economist. He was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under United States Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan from August 1979 to August 1987. He is widely credited with ending the high levels of inflation seen in the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s. He was the Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama from February 2009 until January 2011.
Volcker was born in Cape May, New Jersey, the son of Alma Louise (née Klippel) and Paul Adolph Volcker. His grandparents were all German immigrants. Volcker grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, where his father was the township's first municipal manager. As a child, he attended his mother's Lutheran church, while his father went to an Episcopal church. Volcker graduated from Teaneck High School in 1945.
Volcker's undergraduate education was at Princeton University; he graduated in 1949. He earned his M.A. in political economy from Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Public Administration in 1951 and then attended the London School of Economics from 1951 to 1952 as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellow, under the Rotary's Ambassadorial Scholarships program.
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Pete Rouse
Peter Mikami "Pete" Rouse (born April 15, 1946) is an American political consultant who served as interim White House Chief of Staff to U.S. President Barack Obama. Rouse has spent years on Capitol Hill, becoming known as the '101st senator' during his tenure as Chief of Staff to Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. When Daschle lost his seat in 2004, Rouse was persuaded to stay in Congress as Chief of Staff to then-freshman Senator Barack Obama. Rouse followed Obama to the White House as a senior advisor in 2008 and became interim Chief of Staff there for several months upon the departure of Rahm Emanuel in October 2010.
Rouse was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Mary Uta (née Mikami) and Irving B. Rouse. His father was of English and some Bohemian (Czech) descent, and his mother was of Japanese ancestry (Rouse is a sansei (third generation)). Rouse's mother grew up as a child only speaking Japanese. Rouse's maternal grandfather emigrated from Tokyo to San Francisco in 1885. He returned to Japan in 1910 to marry his wife, before they then moved back to the U.S., eventually settling in Alaska in 1915. The Mikamis retired to Los Angeles shortly before World War II began. They were later sent to an internment camp in Arizona during the War.
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Peter Orszag
Peter Richard Orszag (pronounced /ˈɔrzæɡ/; born December 16, 1968) is an American economist who is a Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup. He is also a columnist at Bloomberg View and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining Citigroup, he was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for the New York Times Op-Ed page. Prior to that, he was the 37th Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Barack Obama.
Orszag is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, the Partnership for Public Service, and ideas42.
Orszag grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts in a Jewish family from Hungarian descent. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy with high honors (1987), he earned an A.B. summa cum laude in economics from Princeton University in 1991, and a M.Sc. (1992) and a Ph.D. (1997) in economics from the London School of Economics. He was a Marshall Scholar 1991–1992, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
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Peter R. Orszag
Peter Richard Orszag (pronounced /ˈɔrzæɡ/; born December 16, 1968) is an American economist who is a Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup. He is also a columnist at Bloomberg View and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining Citigroup, he was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for the New York Times Op-Ed page. Prior to that, he was the 37th Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Barack Obama.
Orszag is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, the Partnership for Public Service, and ideas42.
Orszag grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts in a Jewish family from Hungarian descent. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy with high honors (1987), he earned an A.B. summa cum laude in economics from Princeton University in 1991, and a M.Sc. (1992) and a Ph.D. (1997) in economics from the London School of Economics. He was a Marshall Scholar 1991–1992, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
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Phil Schiliro
Phil Schiliro currently serves as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor in the Obama Administration. From 2009 to February 2011, he served as Assistant to the President and Director of Legislative Affairs for President Obama. . Previously, he served as Democratic Chief of Staff for the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and as chief of staff to Representative Henry Waxman.
Schiliro was also on the advisory board for Obama's presidential transition team.
Schiliro is a graduate of Hofstra University and Lewis & Clark Law School, where he was Editor of the Law Review. In the early 1990s he ran unsuccessfully for a Long Island congressional seat.
7. "A Quiet Departure for Obama's Top Lobbyist" Roll Call, February 15, 2011
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Rahm Emanuel
Rahm Israel Emanuel (pronounced /ˈrɑːm/; born November 29, 1959) is an American politician and the 55th and current Mayor of Chicago. He was formerly White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama. He served as senior advisor to President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1998 and as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Illinois's 5th congressional district, from 2003 until his resignation in 2009 to take his position in the Obama Administration.
Emanuel was chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 mid-term elections and remained a top strategist for House Democrats during the 2008 cycle. After Democrats regained control of the House in 2006, Emanuel was elected chairman of the Democratic Caucus. This made him the fourth-ranking House Democrat, behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.
Two days after Obama's election victory, Emanuel was announced as Obama's designee for White House Chief of Staff. He resigned from the House on January 2, 2009, and began his duties as Chief of Staff on January 20, 2009, the day of Obama's inauguration.
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Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader (
/ˈneɪdər/; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.
Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, an NYU panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.
Nader is a six-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. Some people claim that Nader acted as a spoiler in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, while others, including Nader, dispute this claim.
Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose (née Bouziane) Nader, were immigrants from Lebanon and members of the Maronite Church. His family's native language is Arabic, and he has spoken it along with English since childhood. His sister, Laura Nader, is an anthropologist. His father worked in a textile mill and later owned a bakery and restaurant where he talked politics with his customers.
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Ralph P. Lowe
Ralph Phillips Lowe (27 November 1805 – 22 December 1883) was the fourth Governor of Iowa.
Lowe was born in Warren County, Ohio. He settled in the town of Muscatine, and was selected as a representative to the Iowa state constitutional convention in 1844. He moved to Lee County at the end of the 1840s, and became the district judge succeeding George Henry Williams. He became an Iowa state court judge in 1852. In 1857 he was nominated as the Republican candidate for Governor of Iowa, with Oran Faville as his Lieutenant. He won the election by a narrow margin (38,498 votes to 36,088) and served as Governor for two years between 1858 and 1860.
At the end of his term he was appointed as a justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, which he served as between 1860 and 1867. He resumed practicing law, and in 1874 moved to Washington, D.C., where he died on 22 December 1883.
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Ray LaHood
Raymond H. "Ray" LaHood (born December 6, 1945) is a Republican politician from Illinois who is currently the United States Secretary of Transportation, having served since 2009. Previously, he represented the Illinois's 18th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives for seven terms (1995–2009).
LaHood was born in Peoria, Illinois, to Edward M. LaHood, a Lebanese American who managed a restaurant, and Mary A. LaHood (née Vogel), who was of German ancestry. He graduated from Spalding Institute, worked his way through Canton Junior College and Bradley University in Peoria, earning a Bachelors of Science in education and sociology in 1971.
Following graduation, he taught junior high school social studies at public and Catholic schools, and has said that "teaching kids ... about the constitution and government" stirred his interest in politics.
LaHood was director of the Rock Island County Youth Services Bureau and then district administrative assistant for U.S. congressman Tom Railsback, a Moline, Illinois Republican, from 1977 to 1982. He was appointed in 1982 to fill a vacant seat in the Illinois House of Representatives, serving for nine months, and running for the seat in November 1982, but losing to Democrat Bob DeJaegher. LaHood then became administrative assistant and ultimately the chief of staff to U.S. House minority leader Robert Michel, serving from 1982 until 1994.
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Ray McKinney
Raymond Louis "Ray" McKinney (born June 20, 1962) is a mechanical services manager from Savannah, Georgia, and was the Republican nominee for U.S. Congress from Georgia's 12th District in 2010. He was a candidate for U.S. President in the 2008 Republican primary, but withdrew on November 14, 2007.
McKinney was born June 20, 1962 in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Effingham County Public High School, where he was voted "most likely to become a nuclear scientist", McKinney had two years of Gulfstream Aerospace machinist training, two years Tool and Die, CFS machinist training, and (through 1990) two years at Savannah for Electro-Mechanical Engineering. He has been in the industry for the last 23 years. McKinney is currently a nuclear services manager for Continental Field Systems in Savannah. He and his wife Lisa live in Lyons on the McKinney family farm.
When asked about his educational and work experience, McKinney had this to say about his choice of career:
I think I prefer the term "machinist" above all but my wife thinks I put myself down by saying that. It is the proudest part of my skill set though. Her point is that people respect higher education and by telling people that I am a machinist that they have a lower opinion of who I am. Actually, I am quite proud of it.
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Reggie Love
Reginald L. Love (born April 29, 1982) served as the special assistant and personal aide, commonly referred to as body man for "taking care of the president's needs", to United States President Barack Obama. Love left this position at the end of 2011, to complete his Master of Business Administration degree at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
He attended high school at Providence Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina, and graduated with a degree in political science and public policy from Duke University. He was a forward for the Duke Blue Devils basketball team, played on the 2001 team that won the NCAA national championship, and was a captain of the 2005 team. He also played wide receiver for the Duke football team on a football scholarship,. While his high school team won two state titles, his college team lost the first 22 games of his career. He tried out unsuccessfully with several National Football League teams during the two years after he graduated from college.
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Richard Edmund Lyng
Richard Edmund Lyng (June 29, 1918 – February 1, 2003) was a U.S. administrator. A Republican, he served as the Secretary of Agriculture between 1986 and 1989.
Lyng was born in San Francisco, California, and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Fellow soldiers, impressed with Lyng's rich baritone voice, urged him to explore a music career after the war, which he did, scoring a series of regional hits with a do-wop quartet called the Ding-a-Lyngs. In the mid-1950s he went into business and eventually became president of the Ed. J. Lyng Co., a seed and bean processing company, and was appointed U.S. Secretary of Agriculture by President Reagan, serving from 1986 to 1989. Lyng died, from complications arising from Parkinson's Disease, in Modesto, California, on February 1, 2003.
Lyng was chosen as one of the charter members of the Meat Industry Hall of Fame in 2009.
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Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After completing his undergraduate work at Whittier College, he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937, and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife, Pat Nixon, moved to Washington to work for the federal government in 1942. He subsequently served in the United States Navy during World War II. Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. His pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist, and elevated him to national prominence. He was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as vice president. He waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and lost a race for Governor of California in 1962. In 1968, he ran again for the presidency and was elected.
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Robert Bauer
Robert F. Bauer is an American attorney who previously served as White House Counsel under President of the United States Barack Obama.
Bauer graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1970, from Harvard College in 1973, and received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1976.
He was formerly a partner at Perkins Coie. In November, 2009, he was named to be the next White House Counsel, upon the resignation of Gregory Craig. Bauer was President Obama's personal attorney and the general counsel of the Obama for America presidential campaign prior to his appointment as White House Counsel. He has also previously served as the general counsel to the Democratic National Committee, and had advised President Obama since Mr. Obama came to Washington, D.C. in 2005 as U. S. Senator.
On Thursday, June 2, 2011, the White House Press Office stated that Bauer would be returning to private practice at Perkins Coie, and that Principal Deputy Counsel to the President Kathryn Ruemmler (his deputy, in that office since January 2010 and before that since January 2009 as Principal Associate Deputy U.S. Attorney General) would succeed him. The position, because it is part of the Executive Office staff that personally advises the President and is not an agency or Cabinet department or military head, does not require Senate confirmation despite the prominence of the office. She will take over at the end of June 2011. Bauer will return to private practice, where he once again will represent the president’s election team and the Democratic National Committee. “Bob was a critical member of the White House team,” Mr. Obama said. “He has exceptional judgment, wisdom and intellect, and he will continue to be one of my close advisers.”
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Robert Bergland
Robert Selmer Bergland (born July 22, 1928, in Roseau, Minnesota) is a United States politician. He grew up on a farm (where he still lives) near Roseau, and studied agriculture at the University of Minnesota in a two year program. He became an official with the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service United States Department of Agriculture from 1963 to 1968.
He was elected to the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977 as a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, entering the House by defeating Republican incumbent Odin Langen in 1970. He was elected to the 92nd, 93rd, 94th, and 95th congresses, and served from January 3, 1971 to January 22, 1977 as a representative from Minnesota. In Congress he served on the House Committee on Agriculture's subcommittees for Conservation and Credit, and Livestock, Grains, Dairy, and Poultry.
In 1977 he resigned from the House shortly after the beginning of a new term, and was appointed Secretary of Agriculture by Jimmy Carter. He served as United States Secretary of Agriculture from January 23, 1977 to January 20, 1981. A minor but much-celebrated struggle between USDA and the GSA occurred during his tenure, resulting in the ironic dedication of the USDA executive cafeteria in honor of Alferd Packer -- in order to shame GSA into terminating a Nixon-era cafeteria services contract.
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Robert D. Blue
Robert Donald Blue (September 24, 1898, Eagle Grove, Iowa – December 13, 1989, Fort Dodge, Iowa) was the 30th Governor of Iowa from 1945-49.
Blue attended Capital City Commercial College and Iowa State University. He served in the United States Army during World War I. After the war, he earned a law degree from Drake University in 1922. He practiced law in Eagle Grove and was County Attorney of Wright County, Iowa from 1924–31 and City Attorney of Eagle Grove from 1932-34.
In 1934, Blue was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives. He was reelected in 1936, 1938, 1940, and 1942, and was Speaker of the Iowa House from 1939-43. He was elected the 31st Lieutenant Governor in 1942 and then Governor in 1944, winning reelection in 1946.
Blue's policies were unpopular among labor groups (opposed to his bill outlawing the closed shop), farmers (opposed to his tax policies), and teachers (opposed to his cuts in education funding). One of his principal opponents in the legislature, William S. Beardsley, took advantage of Blue's unpopularity and successfully challenged him in the Republican primary in 1948. Blue left public life and returned to his hometown of Eagle Grove. He died of a stroke in 1989.
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Robert D. Fulton
Robert David Fulton (born May 13, 1929) briefly served as the 37th Governor of Iowa during the first 16 days of 1969.
Fulton was born in Waterloo, Iowa. A Democrat, he served as a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from 1958 to 1960, followed by a term as a member of the Iowa Senate from 1962 to 1964. He then became the running mate of Iowa governor Harold Hughes, and with Hughes 1964 re-election, became the state's 38th Lieutenant Governor. He served as lieutenant governor from January 17, 1964 to January 1, 1969. He then served briefly as governor from January 1 to January 16, 1969, following Governor Hughes' election to the United States Senate. Fulton was the last Democrat to serve as Governor of Iowa until the 1999 inauguration of Tom Vilsack.
The office of Iowa governor was taken over by Robert D. Ray on January 16, 1969. Ray had won the gubernatorial election in November 1968, but, as per the state constitution, was not eligible to assume the role of governor until that day. Fulton later ran for a full term as governor in 1970, but was defeated by Ray. After leaving the governor's office, Fulton served as a member of the Democratic National Committee, and was a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
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Robert D. Ray
Robert Dolph Ray (born September 26, 1928 in Des Moines, Iowa) served as the 38th Governor of Iowa from January 16, 1969 to January 14, 1983. He served in the United States Army. He received his B.A. in Business from Drake University in 1952 and his Law Degree in 1954. Following several years practicing law, Ray became Chair of the Iowa Republican Party and is credited with rebuilding it following the heavy Republican losses incurred in 1964 when Barry Goldwater headed the national Republican ticket.
During Ray's time in office, the Iowa Constitution was modified, increasing the Governor's term of office from two years to four years. Ray served as Chair of the National Governors Association from 1975–1976. He also served as Chairman of the Republican Governors Association,the Midwestern Governors Association, the Education Commission of the States and was the president of the Council of State Governments. As Governor, Ray issued executive orders promoting civil rights, energy conservation, and paperwork reduction as well as establishing the Governor's Economy Committee, the Iowa Council for Children, the Task Force on Government Ethics, the Science Advisory Council, and the Iowa High Technology Commission. Ray signed legislation establishing the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women in 1974. In 1982, that commission named him the first recipient of the Cristine Wilson Medal for Equality and Justice. In 1976, Ray, along with his wife Billie Ray and three daughters, became the first Governor of Iowa to occupy Terrace Hill, the official Governor's mansion.
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Robert Gates
Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943) is the 24th Chancellor of the College of William and Mary and a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W. Bush as Director of Central Intelligence. Gates was also an officer in the United States Air Force and during the early part of his military career, he was recruited by the CIA. After leaving the CIA, Gates became president of Texas A&M University and was a member of several corporate boards. Gates also served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, that has studied the Iraq War. He was also the first pick to serve as the first Director of National Intelligence (DNI), but he declined the appointment in order to remain President of Texas A&M University.
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Robert Gibbs
Robert Lane Gibbs (born March 29, 1971) was the 28th White House Press Secretary. Gibbs was the communications director for then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama and Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Gibbs, who has worked with Obama since 2004, was press secretary of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign and has previously specialized in Senate campaigns, having served as communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and for four individual Senate campaigns, including those of Obama in 2004 and Fritz Hollings in 1998. Gibbs was also the press secretary of Representative Bob Etheridge. On November 22, 2008, Gibbs was announced as the press secretary of the Obama administration. He assumed the role of press secretary on January 20, 2009, and gave his first official briefing on January 22.
On January 5, 2011, Gibbs announced that he would leave the White House to become an outside advisor to the administration. He left on February 11, 2011.
Gibbs was born in Auburn, Alabama. His parents, Nancy Jean (née Lane) and Robert Coleman Gibbs, worked in the Auburn University library system and involved their son in politics at an early age. Nancy Gibbs would take Robert, then known as "Bobby," to local League of Women Voters meetings rather than hire a babysitter, and involved him in "voter re-identification" work at the county courthouse. Gibbs attended Auburn City Schools and Auburn High School. At Auburn High, Gibbs played saxophone in the Auburn High School Band, was a goalkeeper on the Tigers' soccer team, and participated in the school's debate squad. Gibbs graduated from Auburn High in 1989, in the same class as novelist Ace Atkins, LEGO artist Eric Harshbarger, and the Chief Hospitalist at Valley Medical Center, Dr. Michael Mena.
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Ron Kirk
Ronald "Ron" Kirk (born June 27, 1954) is the 16th United States Trade Representative, serving in the Obama administration. He served as mayor of Dallas, Texas from 1995 to 2002; he also ran for the United States Senate in 2002.
Born in Austin, Texas, Kirk is the youngest of four children; his father was a U.S. postal worker and the family was politically active. He grew up in a predominantly black community, and attended Austin's public schools. He was a leader in high school, and was elected student council president in his senior year at John H. Reagan High School (Austin, Texas).
Kirk attended Austin College, graduating with a degree in both political science and sociology in 1976. He then went to the University of Texas School of Law. Upon receiving his Juris Doctor in 1979, he practiced law until 1981 when he left to work in the office of then-Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen. In 1983, Kirk returned to Texas to lobby the state legislature in Austin, first as an attorney with the city of Dallas, and later with a law firm.
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Rosa Clemente
Rosa Alicia Clemente (born April 18, 1972) is a United States community organizer, independent journalist and hip-hop activist. She was the vice presidential running mate of 2008 Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.
Clemente was born and raised in South Bronx, New York. She is a graduate of the University of Albany and Cornell University. Clemente has been delivering workshops, presentations and commentary for over ten years.
Clemente's academic work has focused on research of national liberation struggles within the United States, with a specific focus on the Young Lords Party and the Black Liberation Army. While a student at SUNY Albany, she was President of the Albany State University Black Alliance (ASUBA) and Director of Multicultural Affairs for the Student Association. At Cornell she was a founding member of La Voz Boriken, a social/political organization dedicated to supporting Puerto Rican political prisoners and the independence of Puerto Rico.
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Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani ( /ˈruːdi ˌdʒuːliˈɑːni/; born May 28, 1944) is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001.
A Democrat and Independent in the 1970s, and a Republican since the 1980s, Giuliani served in the United States Attorney's Office, for the Southern District of New York, eventually becoming U.S. Attorney. He prosecuted a number of high-profile cases, including ones against organized crime and Wall Street financiers.
Giuliani served two terms as Mayor of New York City, having run on the Republican and Liberal lines. He was credited with initiating improvements and with a reduction in crime pressing the city's quality of life initiatives. He ran for the United States Senate in 2000 but withdrew due to being diagnosed with prostate cancer and revelations about his personal life. Giuliani gained international attention for his leadership during and after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. For those actions, he received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 2002.
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Róger Calero
Róger Calero (born 1969 in Nicaragua) is a Nicaraguan American journalist and one of the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. He was SWP candidate for President of the United States in 2004 and 2008, and for the United States Senate in New York in 2006.
Calero was born in Nicaragua in 1969. He and his family fled via Los Angeles, California in 1985. Calero has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States (holding a green card) since 1990. While in Los Angeles, Calero joined a socialist movement and helped mobilize support against Proposition 187 in the early 90s.
Calero, a former meat packer, has been associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial (official Spanish language newspaper of the SWP) and a staff writer for The Militant (official English language newspaper of the SWP).
He now lives in Newark, New Jersey.
Calero was convicted of felony sale of marijuana in 1988. In December 2002, immigration police arrested Calero upon his return to the United States at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport from reporting assignments at a conference held in Havana, Cuba, protesting the Free Trade Area of the Americas. He was threatened with deportation in 2002 as a result of his previous conviction in 1988.
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Sally Pederson
Sally Pederson (born January 13, 1951 in Ottumwa, Iowa) was the 45th Lieutenant Governor of Iowa. A Democrat, she is a native of Vinton, Iowa. She graduated from Iowa State University in Ames.
Prior to being elected lieutenant governor on the Vilsack-Pederson ticket in 1998, Pederson served as an executive with the Meredith Corporation in Des Moines, Iowa. She also worked as an editor for Better Homes and Gardens magazine. She ran for lieutenant governor again in 2002 and was re-elected.
During the 2004 presidential election, prior to the selection of John Edwards as the vice presidential candidate, it was widely rumored[citation needed] that Vilsack would be asked to become presidential candidate John Kerry's running mate. It was later rumored[citation needed] that Vilsack would have been offered a cabinet level position in the event of a Kerry victory. Had that occurred, Pederson would have become the first female Governor of Iowa.
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Sam Brownback
Samuel Dale "Sam" Brownback (born September 12, 1956) is an American politician who has been the 46th Governor of Kansas since January 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a U.S. Representative for Kansas's 2nd congressional district from 1995 to 1996 and then as a U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1996 to 2011. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2008 presidential election, withdrawing before the primaries.
Sam Brownback was born in Garnett, Kansas, the son of Nancy and Glenn Robert Brownback. He was raised in a farming family in Parker, Kansas; his distant ancestors, of German descent, settled in Kansas after leaving Pennsylvania following the Civil War. Brownback was state president of the Kansas FFA Association, and was one of the national vice presidents of the National FFA Organization from 1976 to 1977. While at Kansas State University, he was elected student body president and was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho. He received his J.D. from the University of Kansas in 1982.
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Sam Nunn
Samuel Augustus Nunn, Jr. (born September 8, 1938) is an American lawyer and politician. Currently the co-chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Nunn served for 24 years as a United States Senator from Georgia (1972 until 1997) as a member of the Democratic Party. His political experience and credentials on national defense reportedly put him into consideration as a potential running mate for Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry (2004) and Barack Obama (2008). “Senator Sam Nunn will play an informal senior advisor role throughout the defense transition process. His expertise and the respect he has earned will be invaluable to ensure a smooth transition,” said spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter.
Nunn was born in Macon, Georgia and raised in nearby Perry, and he grew up with family connection to politics; he was a grandnephew of the Congressman Carl Vinson.
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Samuel J. Kirkwood
Samuel Jordan Kirkwood (December 20, 1813 – September 1, 1894), was an American politician best known as Iowa's American Civil War Governor. He also served in the U.S. Senate and as U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
Samuel J. Kirkwood was born in 1813 in Harford County, Maryland. At age 17, he began teaching school and had as one of his pupils his cousin Daniel Kirkwood, who later achieved prominence as a mathematician and astronomer. Samuel spent part of his youth in Washington, D.C., then joined his father in moving to Ohio in 1835. There he became a well-known anti-slavery Republican. He was elected to several state offices and worked closely with Thomas Bartley, the future governor of Ohio, in the 1840s.
In 1855 Kirkwood moved to Iowa, living northwest of Iowa City, and became involved with the Clark family, also from Ohio, in a milling venture, and then with the Clark and Lucas families in land speculation. Kirkwood married Jane Clark, the sister of Ezekiel Clark, and thus became the brother-in-law of Edward Lucas, son of Robert Lucas. Although Kirkwood intended to leave politics behind him in Ohio, he took an interest in the newly founded Republican Party. Summoned from his mill at Coralville and still coated in flour dust, Kirkwood gave a rousing speech at the founding meeting of the Iowa Republican Party in February 1856. Many people credited Kirkwood’s speech and subsequent work with the success of the Republican Party in Iowa; that year he was elected to the Iowa Senate serving from 1856 to 1859.
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Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palini/ˈpeɪlɨn/ (née Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice presidency. Her book Going Rogue has sold more than two million copies. Since January 2010, she has provided political commentary for Fox News, and hosted a television show, Sarah Palin's Alaska. Five million viewers tuned in for the first episode, a record for The Learning Channel.
She was elected to Wasilla City Council in 1992 and became mayor of Wasilla in 1996. In 2003, after an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, she was appointed Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, responsible for overseeing the state's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency. The youngest person and first woman to be elected Governor of Alaska, Palin held the office from December 2006 until her resignation in July 2009. She has since endorsed and campaigned for the Tea Party movement, as well as several candidates in the 2010 midterm elections. From the time of her Vice Presidential nomination in 2008, Palin was considered a potential candidate for the 2012 presidential election until she announced in October 2011 that she would not run.
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Stephanie Cutter
Stephanie Cutter (born October 22, 1968) is a Democratic Party operative. She serves as deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign.
Cutter was born in Taunton, Massachusetts and raised in nearby Raynham, Massachusetts. She graduated from Smith College and Georgetown Law School.
She worked for Bill Clinton as Deputy Communications Director at the White House during his administration and as Associate Administrator for Communications at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She also served as Communications Director for Senator Edward M. Kennedy and in July 2003 was named Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee. In November 2003, she was named communications director for the John Kerry campaign.
In June 2008 she was appointed as chief of staff to Michelle Obama for the 2008 Presidential general election campaign. She served as the Chief Spokesperson for the Obama-Biden Transition Project. She served as Timothy Geithner's counselor. In May 2009, she was appointed to serve as adviser to President Obama in the Supreme Court nominations. Later that year, GQ Magazine named Cutter one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington.
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Stephen P. Hempstead
Stephen P. Hempstead (b. October 1, 1812, New London, Connecticut – d. February 16, 1883, Dubuque, Iowa) was the second Governor of Iowa. A Democrat, he served from 1850 to 1854.
Hempstead moved to the Iowa territory, and was active in politics in the years leading up to Iowa's gaining statehood. Hempstead represented the northern parts of Iowa in the Territorial Legislature at Burlington, Iowa.
Hempstead represented Dubuque County in the Iowa constitutional convention in 1846. Hempstead was subsequently elected as governor in 1850. In 1851, he helped write the laws which would form the basis of the Iowa code.
After his term as governor was finished, Hempstead then was elected as a judge in Dubuque County. He held this position for 12 years, from 1855 to 1867. Hempstead died on February 16, 1883 in Dubuque, Iowa, where he was interred in Linwood Cemetery. In the late 1960s, the city of Dubuque, Iowa honored Hempstead by naming its second public high school after him.
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Steve Kubby
Steven Wynn "Steve" Kubby (born December 28, 1946) is a Libertarian Party activist who played a key role in the drafting and passage of California Proposition 215. The proposition was a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana which was approved by voters in 1996. Kubby himself is well-known as a cancer patient who relies on medical cannabis. He has authored two books on drug policy reform: The Politics of Consciousness, and Why Marijuana Should Be Legal. He was the Libertarian Party of California candidate for Governor of California in 1998 receiving 0.9% of the vote. In 2008, he declared his candidacy for the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential nomination and received significant support for the nomination, but was eliminated after the second ballot. Although various media reports have described him as a "felon" and "fugitive", Kubby's legal status was resolved on July 3, 2008, when California Superior Court Judge, David Nelson, dismissed all charges against Kubby, clearing his name and record of any criminal activity.
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Steven Chu
Steven Chu (Chinese: 朱棣文; pinyin: Zhū Dìwén) is an American physicist and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. At the time of his appointment as Energy Secretary, he was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research was concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level. Previously, he had been a professor of physics at Stanford University. He is a vocal advocate for more research into renewable energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combating climate change. For example, he has conceived of a global "glucose economy", a form of a low-carbon economy, in which glucose from tropical plants is shipped around like oil is today.
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Sudafi Henry
Sudafi S. Henry is the Director of Legislative Affairs for Joe Biden, the Vice President of the United States.
Henry was previously Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), working closely with Congress, leadership staff and committee staff on crafting and winning passage of critical legislation, with a particular focus on trade, telecommunications, economic matters and responses to the current financial crisis. Henry has also served as a liaison for Rep. Hoyer to policy experts, business leaders, and constituency group leaders on pending legislation. Henry has more than 10 years of experience on Capitol Hill, including his work for Reps. Major Owens (D-NY) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) as the Legislative Director for both Members. A native of Los Angeles, California, Henry received a B.A. from the University of Maryland at College Park and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School, and is a member of the Maryland bar.
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Susan Rice
Susan Elizabeth Rice (born November 17, 1964) is an American diplomat, former think tank fellow, and civil servant. She is an American foreign policy advisor and United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Rice served on the staff of the National Security Council and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during President Bill Clinton's second term. Rice was confirmed as UN Ambassador by the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent on January 22, 2009.
Rice was born in Washington, D.C. Her father, Emmett J. Rice (1919–2011), was a Cornell University economics professor and governor of the Federal Reserve System. Her mother is education policy scholar Lois Dickson Fitt, currently at the Brookings Institution. Her brother, John Rice, received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and is the founder of Management Leadership for Tomorrow (an organization committed to developing top minority talent for leadership roles in the business and non-profit sector). She is not related to Condoleezza Rice.
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Ted Weill
Theodore "Ted" Weill (July 25, 1925 – November 20, 2009) was the nominee for President of the United States of the Reform Party of the United States of America in the 2008 election. He was nominated at the party's national convention on July 20, 2008 in Dallas, Texas. During a 2009 interview with Monmouth University's school newspaper, Weill expressed interest in running again in 2012, but he died at his home on November 20, 2009.
Weill, a graduate of Michigan State University, was also a decorated World War II veteran, who earned four Battle Stars and served aboard the USS Pennsylvania. He was also a Boy Scout instructor. He was invited to the White House Conference on Small Business three times; in 1980, 1985, and 1990.
In the 1990s, Weill founded the Independent Party of Mississippi. In 1997, the Independent Party of Mississippi became the official state affiliate of the national Reform Party and renamed itself the Mississippi Reform Party.
Weill was the chairman of the Mississippi Reform Party and a Reform Party National Committeeman.
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Terry Branstad
Terry Edward Branstad (born November 17, 1946) is an American politician who is the 42nd and current governor of Iowa since January 2011. Branstad was the 39th governor of Iowa from 1983 to 1999 and President of Des Moines University from 2003 to 2009. He is a member of the Republican Party. He is the youngest and longest-serving governor in Iowa’s history. In 2010, he prevailed in a three-way primary and won the Republican nomination to run again for governor. He faced incumbent Governor Chet Culver, a Democrat and four third party candidates on November 2, 2010. He won the general election in November, defeating Democratic incumbent Chet Culver by a 52.9% to 43.1% margin.
Branstad entered the 2010 race as the front runner for both the primary and general elections. Independent polling in 2009 indicated that his approval ratings hovered in the 70% range. He was widely seen as the front runner for the Republican nomination and had wide leads in aggregate polling against Culver. He won the Republican primary with 50.4% of the popular vote, 9.5 percentage points ahead of his nearest competitor.
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Tom Harkin
Thomas Richard "Tom" Harkin (born November 19, 1939) is the current junior United States Senator from Iowa serving since 1985, and a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served in the United States House of Representatives (1975–1985).
Born in Cumming, Iowa, Harkin graduated from Iowa State University and the The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law. He served in the United States Navy as an active-duty jet pilot from 1962 to 1967. After serving as a congressional aide for several years he made two runs for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing in 1972 but winning in 1974. He went on to serve five terms in the House.
Harkin won a race for U.S. Senate in 1984 by a wide margin. He was an early frontrunner for his party's presidential nomination in 1992, but dropped out in support of eventual winner Bill Clinton. Now serving his fifth term, Harkin is chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. He is ranked as the most senior junior senator.
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Tom Tancredo
Thomas Gerard "Tom" Tancredo (pronounced /tæŋˈkreɪdoʊ/; born December 20, 1945) is an American politician from Colorado, who represented the state's sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, as a Republican. He ran for President of the United States during the 2008 election, and was the Constitution Party's unsuccessful nominee for Governor of Colorado in 2010.
Tancredo was initially elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1976 and served two terms. After working in the United States Department of Education during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations, he was elected to the United States Congress, and served five terms. He decided to not seek re-election in 2008. Tancredo ran for the Republican Party nomination for President in 2007, centering his campaign on the issues of illegal immigration and terrorism. He dropped out of the race in December 2007 to assist former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in his campaign for the nomination.
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Tom Vilsack
Thomas James "Tom" Vilsack (/ˈvɪlsæk/; born December 13, 1950) is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and presently the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. He served as the 40th Governor of the state of Iowa. He was first elected in 1998 and re-elected to a second four-year term in 2002. On November 30, 2006, he formally launched his candidacy for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, but ended his bid on February 23, 2007.
Barack Obama announced Vilsack's selection to be the United States Secretary of Agriculture under his administration on December 17, 2008. Vilsack's nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate by unanimous consent on January 20, 2009.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tom Vilsack was abandoned at birth and placed in a Roman Catholic orphanage. He was adopted in 1951 by Bud and Dolly Vilsack, who raised him in the Roman Catholic faith. His adoptive father was a real-estate agent and insurance salesman, and his adoptive mother was a homemaker.
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Tommy Thompson
Tommy George Thompson (born November 19, 1941), a United States Republican politician, was the 42nd Governor of Wisconsin, after which he served as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Thompson was a candidate for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, but dropped out early after a poor performance in polls. He is currently running for the United States Senate election in 2012.
Thompson was born in Elroy, Wisconsin, where his father, Allan, owned and ran a gas station and country grocery store, and his mother, Julia, was a teacher. He is a former captain in the United States Army and United States Army Reserve, and holds a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Thompson was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1966; he became the Assembly's assistant minority leader in 1973 and minority leader in 1981. He was famous for aggressively utilizing parliamentary procedure to give his minority party some limited say in the legislative process. Since this use of procedure was invariably one of delay and obstruction, he soon received the nickname "Dr. No" by the frustrated majority.[neutrality is disputed]
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Tony Blinken
Antony John 'Tony' Blinken is the advisor for national security policy for Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States.
He served previously as a Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security, Democratic Staff Director of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (from 2002 to 2008), and a member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition team (from November 2008 to January 2009), among other positions.
Blinken is married to Evan Ryan, Assistant for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Liaison for Vice President Joseph R. Biden since November 2008.
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Valerie Jarrett
Valerie Bowman Jarrett (born November 14, 1956) is a senior advisor and assistant to the president for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs for the Obama administration. She is a Chicago lawyer, businesswoman, and civic leader. Prior to that she served as a co-chairperson of the Obama-Biden Transition Project.
Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran to American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. Her father, a pathologist and geneticist, ran a hospital for children in Shiraz, as part of a program where American doctors and agricultural experts sought to help jump-start developing countries' health and farming efforts. When she was five, the family moved to London for one year, returning to Chicago in 1963.
In 1966 her mother, Barbara T. Bowman, was one of four child advocates that created the Erikson Institute. The Institute was established to provide advanced knowledge in child development for teachers and other professionals working with young children.
As a child she spoke Persian and French.
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Warren Garst
Warren Garst (December 4, 1850 – October 5, 1924) was an American politician, Iowa State Senator, a member of the Republican Party, the 21st Lieutenant Governor, and the 19th Governor of Iowa.
Warren Garst was born to Dr. Michael Garst and Marie Louise Morrison in Dayton, Ohio. At age 8 he and his family moved to Illinois. At age 19 he moved to Iowa to start his business career. He and his brother went to Coon Rapids, Iowa to open a general store called "The Garst Store". He later co-founded Iowa Savings Bank in Coon Rapids.
Garst and Elizabeth Johnson had one child, Ada Belle Garst. He was later married to Clara H. Clark and had two children: Louise Garst and Warren Carroll Garst Jr.
Garst started his political career when he became a member of the Iowa Senate. He served in the 25th through 31st General Assemblies. He was nominated for lieutenant governor at the Republican Convention in 1906 and was inaugurated on January 17, 1907. When Governor Albert B. Cummins was elected into the United States Senate he was elevated to the position of Governor of Iowa. During his short time as governor he carried out the Cummins administration's policies. When his term ended he was urged to run for a full term as governor. He lost to State Auditor Beryl F. Carroll by 25,000 votes.
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Wayne Allyn Root
Wayne Allyn Root (born July 20, 1961) is an American politician, entrepreneur, television and radio personality, author and political commentator. He was the 2008 Libertarian Party vice-presidential nominee. Root began his career as a professional sports handicapper, based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
His political talk radio show,W.A.R: The Wayne Allyn Root Showis broadcast in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. Root is a frequent guest on several nationally syndicated radio shows such as Savage Nation, The Jerry Doyle Show, and Mancow's Morning Madhouse. He has also made numerous appearances on various programs on the Fox News Channel. He is a frequent speaker at Tea Party events across the United States.
Root's political columns appear in the Las Vegas Review Journal and at Newsmax.com.
At the 2008 Libertarian National Convention, Root was eliminated on the fifth ballot in a bid for the presidential nomination, and subsequently became the vice presidential candidate alongside Libertarian nominee Bob Barr. Root lost a bid to become National Chair of the Libertarian Party at the party's 2010 Convention.
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William L. Harding
William Lloyd Harding (October 3, 1877 – December 17, 1934) was an American politician. He was the 22nd Governor of Iowa, from 1917 to 1921.
Born in 1877 in Sibley, Iowa, Harding's hometown was Sioux City, Iowa.
Harding opposed extending voting rights for women and road improvements. He garnered support from German-American voters who did not like Woodrow Wilson's pro-British positions in order to win election.
One of his more infamous acts was to issue the Babel Proclamation in 1918. This act, which is widely believed to have been unconstitutional, forbade the use of foreign languages in public, over the telephone, in school, and in religious services. It came about due to the large anti-German sentiment during the First World War. In addition to the Babel Proclamation, his time in office was marred by other scandals. His hostility towards immigrants and foreign ethnic groups extended beyond Germans and, for example, included Iowans of Norwegian descent.
Harding died at age 57. He is buried in a mausoleum at the Graceland Park Cemetery in Sioux City, Iowa.
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William M. Stone
William Milo Stone (October 14, 1827, Jefferson County, New York – July 18, 1893,Oklahoma Territory) was the sixth Governor of Iowa (1864–68).
Stone's family moved from New York to Coshocton, Ohio in 1834. He read law there and was admitted to the bar in 1851. In 1854, he moved to Knoxville, Iowa, where he opened a law practice and bought the local newspaper. In 1856, he was a delegate to the convention that formed the Republican Party, and he was an elector for 1856 Republican presidential nominee John C. Frémont. From 1857-61, he served as a state district court judge.
After the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861, Stone enlisted as a private in the Union Army. He was quickly promoted to captain, and then major, of Company B, Third Iowa Infantry. He fought and was wounded at the Battle of Liberty, but returned to fight at the Battle of Shiloh, where he was taken prisoner. Stone was paroled by Jefferson Davis and sent to Washington, D.C. to negotiate an exchange of prisoners; after initially failing to reach an agreement, he returned to Confederate captivity, was again paroled, and was released after an exchange agreement was reached. In 1862, Stone was promoted to colonel of the 22nd Iowa Infantry. He led that unit in the Vicksburg Campaign, and was again wounded at the Battle of Vicksburg.
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William S. Beardsley
William Shane "Bill" Beardsley (May 13, 1901 – November 21, 1954) was the 31st Governor of Iowa from 1949 to 1954.
Beardsley was born in Beacon, Iowa and grew up in Birmingham, Iowa. The son of a pharmacist, he attended pharmacy school himself, and established a drugstore in New Virginia, Iowa in 1922. He was elected to the Iowa Senate in 1932, and served there until 1938. From 1938 to 1946, he raised cattle and hogs on his farm in New Virginia. He was appointed to the Iowa House of Representatives in 1946 to fill the term of a Representative who had died, and became a prominent opponent of the labor and education policies of fellow Republican Robert D. Blue. In June 1948, he successfully challenged Blue in the Republican primary, and went on to an easy victory in the general election.
Beardsley was known for his advocacy of a balanced state budget, and his opposition to the Truman administration's Brannan Plan. He was reelected in 1950 and 1952, but chose not to run for a fourth term in 1954. During his tenure the following notable accomplishements were achieved: workmen's compensation benefits were increased; the highway patrol was expanded; anti-gambling laws were sanctioned; roads, schools, and institutions were all advanced; and a World War II veteran's bonus was authorized.
wn.com/William_S._Beardsley
Tom
Cast
- Tom Arnold
- Alison La Placa
- Jason Marsden
- Josh Stoppelwerth
- Tiffany Lubran
- Kathryn Lubran
- Andrew Lawrence
- Danton Stone
- Colleen Camp
- Patrick Bristow
- Eben Ham
- Lane Davies
- Rob Elk
- David Byrd
- Bob Odenkirk
- Obba Babatundé
- Pat Crawford Brown
- Jayne Meadows
- George Pappas
- Chris Farley
- Season 1
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Episode 1: Pilot
USA:2 March 1994...
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Episode 2: The Bad Seed
USA:9 March 1994...
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Episode 3: Car Fair
USA:16 March 1994...
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Episode 4: The Acorn Fell Far, Far from the Tree
USA:23 March 1994...
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Episode 5: Slow Runnings
USA:30 March 1994...
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Episode 6: Daddyshack
USA:6 April 1994...
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Episode 7: Tom's Thumb
USA:13 April 1994...
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Episode 8: Mike's Excellent Adventure
USA:20 April 1994...
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Episode 9: He's Heavy, He's My Brother
USA:27 April 1994...
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Episode 10: Dump Dog Day Afternoon
USA:6 June 1994...
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Episode 11: Reunion
USA:13 June 1994...
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Episode 12: Invasion of the Mole People
USA:1994...
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Episode : Tom in Maroc
Germany:2009...
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Episode : Tom in Mexico
Germany:2009...
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Episode : Tom in Barcelona
Germany:2004...
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Episode : Tom in the Amazon
Germany:2004...
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Episode : Tom in Bilbao
Germany:2009...
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Episode : Tom in Venice
Germany:2004...
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Episode : Tom in Arabia
Germany:2004...
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Episode : Tom in Hollywood
Germany:2004...
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Episode : Tom in the Himalayas
Germany:2004...
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Episode : Tom in the Caribbean
Germany:2004...
Famous quotes by Tom Vilsack:
"[The shareholders will profit from Whirlpool's purchase, but] the people who built this company ... don't get anything out of this, ... That's not right."
"I'm concerned about the anxiety and stress of the families here in Newton and in the Amana area,"
"The generosity of Iowans once again on exhibit,"
"[Vilsack says FEMA has asked Iowa for a list of the kind of permanent and temporary housing that's available for hurricane victims.] Nobody wants to sleep on a cot for six months. Nobody wants to sleep in a place where there are 15,000 other people, ... To the extent that states can provide better detailed information about the housing opportunities, that may be persuasive to a lot of families."
"We're going to do everything we possibly can to make their time here, their visit here, their home here, for as long as they want to be a part of our state, as pleasant and as good as it can be,"
"I think the football coaches for Iowa and Iowa State would tell you they are some of the luckiest people in the world to have the job they have, ... Win, lose or draw, I'm sure they believe it's a great life. And that's how I feel about my job."
"I wasn't in the White House, so I can't answer that question."
"[Hurricane Katrina may be a defining moment, other speakers said, and not necessarily a positive one for the Republicans.] The controlling philosophy in Washington now is to dismiss community and place all the responsibility on the individual, ... It’s better if we have both."
"The priest told the children that Jesus knew it would be sufficient food if everyone shared, ... The priest suggested that Jesus removed the people’s ‘fear of sharing.’ And when we do that, we all benefit."
"He steals second, and I hereby restore his voting rights."
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DNC 2012 - Vilsack: America's Heartland is Voting for Obama
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:55
- Updated: 14 Sep 2012
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack tells attendees at the Democratic National Convention how much work President Barack Obama has done for rural families, farmers, and small business owners. Photo: Getty Images. Follow our Election Coverage: www.youtube.com Subscribe to the WSJ Live YouTube Channel - www.youtube.com More WSJLive YouTube: www.youtube.com Facebook: www.facebook.com Twitter: twitter.com WSJ: www.wsj.com
http://wn.com/DNC_2012_Vilsack_America's_Heartland_is_Voting_for_Obama
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 33:03
- Updated: 11 Jul 2012
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack addressed the 2011 American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting
http://wn.com/Agriculture_Secretary_Tom_Vilsack
Obama Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack "Food Stamps Are A Stimulus and Creating Jobs"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:29
- Updated: 30 Jul 2012
Obama Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack "Food Stamps Are A Stimulus and Creating Jobs"
http://wn.com/Obama_Ag_Secretary_Tom_Vilsack_Food_Stamps_Are_A_Stimulus_and_Creating_Jobs
Secretary Tom Vilsack on USDA's Blueprint for Stronger Service
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:19
- Updated: 01 Jun 2012
Secretary Tom Vilsack talks about USDA's blueprint for stronger service, designed -- in this era of tight budgets - to create optimal use of USDA's employees, better results for USDA customers, and greater efficiencies for American taxpayers.
http://wn.com/Secretary_Tom_Vilsack_on_USDA's_Blueprint_for_Stronger_Service
Obama Surrogate Tom Vilsack: The Economy Has "Turned the Corner"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:47
- Updated: 16 Aug 2012
While campaigning at the OFA office in Virginia: Sec. Tom Vilsack says the economy has turned the corner (June 19, 2012).
http://wn.com/Obama_Surrogate_Tom_Vilsack_The_Economy_Has_Turned_the_Corner
Tom Vilsack visits Montgomery County Tennessee
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:48
- Updated: 20 Oct 2012
Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack visits Montgomery County Extension Commercial Kitchen
http://wn.com/Tom_Vilsack_visits_Montgomery_County_Tennessee
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack Visits Cedar Hill TN
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 13:29
- Updated: 22 Oct 2012
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack Visits Cedar Hill Tennessee Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is visiting Robertson County today at the Anderson Cattle Ranch in Cedar Hill, TN. to meet with Tennessee producers to discuss the resiliency and productivity of American agriculture and the importance of passing comprehensive Food, Farm and Jobs legislation. This is a round Table meeting with local farmers. Jim Ball reporting Oct 19, 2012
http://wn.com/US_Secretary_of_Agriculture_Tom_Vilsack_Visits_Cedar_Hill_TN
US Forest Service To Protect Native American Site
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:08
- Updated: 08 Oct 2012
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack joined state, local, and tribal leaders in Colorado to celebrate the designation of a new national monument in that state.
http://wn.com/US_Forest_Service_To_Protect_Native_American_Site
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack: Farm Summit.
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:19
- Updated: 27 Jul 2012
As the drought keeps getting worse statewide, the federal government has started to take notice. This week -- US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack met with about 60 farmers and agricultural leaders at a farm outside of Prairie City, Iowa, to talk about the drought's impact. CRI Ag reporter Jon Hoffmann has more about his visit.
http://wn.com/US_Secretary_of_Agriculture_Tom_Vilsack_Farm_Summit
Tom Vilsack at the 2012 Democratic National Convention
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:53
- Updated: 12 Sep 2012
Tom Vilsack addresses the 2012 Democratic National Convention
http://wn.com/Tom_Vilsack_at_the_2012_Democratic_National_Convention
Tom Vilsack on Functional Foods Research
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:12
- Updated: 28 Jun 2012
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack will meet with Ohio State University researchers from the Center for Advanced Functional Foods Research and Entrepreneurship (CAFFRE) and Department of Food Science and Technology on Thursday, June 28. Secretary Vilsack will be discussing USDA-sponsored research in the center, which has led to the development of functional foods and components that enhance health. Included in the discussions will be a soy bread, a soy-tomato beverage, and a black raspberry confectionary product, all of which are in clinical trials with cancer patients.
http://wn.com/Tom_Vilsack_on_Functional_Foods_Research
United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack at Farm Science Review 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:20
- Updated: 19 Oct 2012
As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act and the creation of the United States Department of Agriculture, Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack discusses what we have accomplished and where we are headed in the future.
http://wn.com/United_States_Secretary_of_Agriculture_Tom_Vilsack_at_Farm_Science_Review_2012
Ag Secretary Vilsack Calls For Farm Bill Passage
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:03
- Updated: 09 Oct 2012
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says American farmers need a new Farm Bill.
http://wn.com/Ag_Secretary_Vilsack_Calls_For_Farm_Bill_Passage
Tom Vilsack - Wiki Article
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 18:23
- Updated: 13 Oct 2012
mes "Tom" Vilsack (; born December 13, 1950) is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and currently the US Secretary of Agriculture. He served as the 40th Governor of the state ... Tom Vilsack - Wiki Article - wikiplays.org Original @ http All Information Derived from Wikipedia using Creative Commons License: en.wikipedia.org Author: WikiPedia Image URL: en.wikipedia.org Licensed under: This work is in the public domain in the United States. Author: Unknown Image URL: en.wikipedia.org Licensed under:GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons License Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported This work is in the public domain in the United States. Author: Unknown Image URL: en.wikipedia.org Licensed under: This work is in the public domain in the United States. Author: Unknown Image URL: en.wikipedia.org Licensed under: This work is in the public domain in the United States. Author: Unknown Image URL: en.wikipedia.org Licensed under: This work is in the public domain in the United States.
http://wn.com/Tom_Vilsack_Wiki_Article
Google presents A Fair Conversation with Tom Vilsack
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:38
- Updated: 22 Aug 2012
http://wn.com/Google_presents_A_Fair_Conversation_with_Tom_Vilsack
Obama Ag Secretary: More People On Food Stamps Means More Jobs
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:26
- Updated: 16 Aug 2012
Obama Ag Secretary: More People On Food Stamps Means More Jobs
http://wn.com/Obama_Ag_Secretary_More_People_On_Food_Stamps_Means_More_Jobs
Tom Vilsack Perriello Tour Rural Virginia For Obama
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:24
- Updated: 01 Sep 2012
Former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack D and former representative Tom Perriello D Va. are touring rural Virginia this week on behalf of the Obama campaign highlighting investments the president has made in those areas. Vilsack is Obama's agriculture secretary but the Obama campaign stressed that he was not campaigning in that capacity and would not take questions related to that position while campaigning. Kicking off Tuesday the tour will include stops at Virginia Tech University Martinsville Rustburg Chatham Raphine Lovingston and Blacksburg. Along the way they will play up investments Obama has made in the university and veterans services as well as in rural businesses agriculture health care technology and innovation. The last stop will be in Blacksburg Saturday when former Virginia first lady Anne Holton will join local Obama supporters for the opening of the campaign's 17th office. Holton is the wife of former governor Tim Kaine D who is running for US Senate against former governor George Allen R. In the last three and a half years President Obama has held a lot of fundraisers and he's visited with a lot of celebrities but he's lost touch with what Virginia's families are going through said Curt Cashour Virginia communications director for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. From the job killing regulations President Obama has hit Virginia's coal producers and job creators with to the huge spike in energy costs that has occurred on his watch it's clear that ...
http://wn.com/Tom_Vilsack_Perriello_Tour_Rural_Virginia_For_Obama
Gov. Branstad and US Ag Sec. Tom Vilsack hold joint press conference on beef safety
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 17:30
- Updated: 10 Oct 2012
Gov. Branstad and US Ag Sec. Tom Vilsack hold joint press conference on lean finely textured beef safety. March 28, 2012
http://wn.com/Gov_Branstad_and_US_Ag_Sec_Tom_Vilsack_hold_joint_press_conference_on_beef_safety
Drought of 2012 - US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:31
- Updated: 15 Sep 2012
US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack discusses the impact of drought on livestock, crops and food prices, and the need for an agriculture-policy bill that includes drought-disaster assistance for cattle ranchers.
http://wn.com/Drought_of_2012_US_Agriculture_Secretary_Tom_Vilsack
Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack at the 2012 ACE Conference on the RFS
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:12
- Updated: 05 Oct 2012
USDA Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack talks about the importance of the Renewable Fuels Standard during the 2012 ACE Conference.
http://wn.com/Ag_Secretary_Tom_Vilsack_at_the_2012_ACE_Conference_on_the_RFS
USDA Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack 2012 ACE Conference Market Responds
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:22
- Updated: 14 Sep 2012
USDA Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack talks about how the RFS can help during the drought during his speech at the 2012 ACE Conference
http://wn.com/USDA_Ag_Secretary_Tom_Vilsack_2012_ACE_Conference_Market_Responds
Backstage with Sec. Tom Vilsack at the 2012 Democratic National Convention
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:29
- Updated: 06 Sep 2012
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack backstage at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. www.DemConvention.com
http://wn.com/Backstage_with_Sec_Tom_Vilsack_at_the_2012_Democratic_National_Convention
photo: AP / Emilio Morenatti
22 Nov 2012
A new battle is underway in Pakistan with its powerful military front-and-centre, but the fight is not against armed insurgents or ideological extremists - this opponent is a muscle-flexing Supreme Court. For the first time in decades, the military's iron grip over the South Asian country has been challenged, and it remains to be seen if it will...(size: 23.7Kb)
photo: WN / Ahmed Deeb
23 Nov 2012
Israel and Hamas are seeking to solidify an Egyptian and US-brokered cease-fire halting eight days of aerial assaults that ravaged the Gaza Strip and made Tel Aviv a missile target. Announcing the truce in Cairo last night alongside Egypt's foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised U.S. assistance in seeking to "improve...(size: 5.4Kb)
photo: AP / Egyptian Presidency
23 Nov 2012
Opposition groups in Egypt have called for mass protests on Friday against President Mohammed Mursi's decree that gives him sweeping powers. They have described his move as a "coup against legitimacy" and accused the president of appointing himself Egypt's "new pharaoh". The decree states that the president's decisions cannot be revoked by any...(size: 4.6Kb)
photo: AP
23 Nov 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. I was fortunate to have been raised near an American Indian archaeological spot located on the Great Plains. In elementary school, a fellow classmate would periodically bring and show grinding stones, arrow- and spearheads, stone farming implements, and pictures of what the excavated site may have...(size: 7.1Kb)
photo: AP / Mohammed Asad
24 Nov 2012
Cairo. President Mohamed Morsi insisted on Friday that Egypt is on the path to “freedom and democracy” after granting himself sweeping powers, which sparked clashes between his supporters and foes and raised concerns abroad. “Political stability, social stability and economic stability are what I want and that is what I am working for,” he told a...(size: 4.8Kb)
The Columbus Dispatch
22 Nov 2012
Even farmers who might fare better becauseof drought have nothing good to say about it Connect With Us...(size: 8.5Kb)
Daily Press
20 Nov 2012
(Reuters) - Organic growers and food safety advocates on Tuesday condemned an advisory report to the Agriculture Department claiming its recommendations would be costly for farmers who want to protect their conventional crops from being contaminated by genetically modified (GMO), also known as genetically engineered (GE), varieties. The groups were...(size: 9.0Kb)
The New York Times
19 Nov 2012
Random musings from a lovely weekend: 1. Dasani – Coca-Cola’s version of “water” – is purified, with magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride and salt added. In other words, manufactured “mineral” water. Do we need that? Evidently this water is “enhanced” with these minerals for a “pure, fresh taste.” I didn’t know. 2. Here is a blog entry from the ag...(size: 8.5Kb)
Fresno Bee
17 Nov 2012
The Washington Post
17 Nov 2012
ALBANY, N.Y. — When Schuyler and Colby Gail were trying to get started in farming, they ran into an obstacle common to many fledgling farmers: Land was expensive and hard to find. They turned to a local land conservancy, which matched them up with a landowner willing to sell at an affordable price. Now, they raise pigs, lambs and poultry on...(size: 4.9Kb)
Seattle Post
17 Nov 2012
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — When Schuyler and Colby Gail were trying to get started in farming, they ran into an obstacle common to many fledgling farmers: Land was expensive and hard to find. They turned to a local land conservancy, which matched them up with a landowner willing to sell at an affordable price. Now, they raise pigs, lambs and poultry on...(size: 5.5Kb)
The Examiner
16 Nov 2012
Related topics GMO cornGenetically Modified FoodDowDioxin24-D Advertisement I get emails all the time about the evils of genetically modified crops. But I know that we humans have been selecting for better quality and growth since the first few seeds were planted. So, honestly, I thought the hype was exactly that - hyperbole and ignorance. Here's...(size: 12.1Kb)
Reuters
15 Nov 2012
* Reform is 'important component' for bill - USDA's Vilsack * Deficit reduction top issue in lame-duck session * Lobbyists say farm bill delay into 2013 is likely * Food stamps are a target for conservatives By Charles Abbott WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday urged Congress to break a logjam and pass...(size: 4.0Kb)
Sun Sentinel
15 Nov 2012
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday urged Congress to break a logjam and pass a reform-minded farm bill, but two lobbyists said the deadlocked $500 billion bill may not be enacted for months, or even a year. Vilsack, who is expected to stay at USDA for at least the start of President Barack Obama's second...(size: 4.8Kb)
The Petition Site
13 Nov 2012
The Salt Lake Tribune
13 Nov 2012
Utah Woolgrowers Association officials said they are unaware of any ranchers who have actually gone bankrupt. Join the Discussion But Doug Livingston, a retired sheep rancher who now works as a sheep broker, has been trying to help one eastern Utah rancher sell his herd and get out of the business, but he says there are no buyers....(size: 4.2Kb)
Huffington Post
13 Nov 2012
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar speaks during the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Sept. 4, 2012 in Charlotte, N.C. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/GettyImages)...(size: 6.0Kb)
| Tom Vilsack | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 30th United States Secretary of Agriculture | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 21, 2009 |
|
| President | Barack Obama |
| Deputy | Kathleen Merrigan |
| Preceded by | Ed Schafer |
| 40th Governor of Iowa | |
| In office January 15, 1999 – January 12, 2007 |
|
| Lieutenant | Sally Pederson |
| Preceded by | Terry Branstad |
| Succeeded by | Chet Culver |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1950-12-13) December 13, 1950 (age 61) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic Party |
| Spouse(s) | Christie Bell |
| Residence | Mount Pleasant, Iowa |
| Alma mater | Hamilton College Albany Law School |
| Profession | Attorney at law |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Signature |  |
Thomas James "Tom" Vilsack (/ˈvɪlsæk/; born December 13, 1950) is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and presently the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. He served as the 40th Governor of the state of Iowa. He was first elected in 1998 and re-elected to a second four-year term in 2002. On November 30, 2006, he formally launched his candidacy for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, but ended his bid on February 23, 2007.[1]
Barack Obama announced Vilsack's selection to be the United States Secretary of Agriculture under his administration on December 17, 2008. Vilsack's nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate by unanimous consent on January 20, 2009.
Contents |
Early life, education and career[link]
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tom Vilsack was abandoned at birth and placed in a Roman Catholic orphanage. He was adopted in 1951 by Bud and Dolly Vilsack, who raised him in the Roman Catholic faith. His adoptive father was a real-estate agent and insurance salesman, and his adoptive mother was a homemaker.
He attended high school at Shady Side Academy, a preparatory school in Pittsburgh. He received a Bachelor's degree in 1972 from Hamilton College in New York. While at Hamilton he joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) in 1975 from Albany Law School. He and his wife settled in Mount Pleasant, Iowa in 1975, a small town in the southeastern portion of the state where she had grown up.
Early political career[link]
Vilsack was elected mayor of Mount Pleasant in 1987 following the murder of mayor Ed King by a disgruntled citizen.[citation needed] He was elected to the Iowa Senate in 1992 by a relatively slim margin.[citation needed] Following election, he worked on legislation requiring companies who received state tax incentives to provide better pay and benefits. He helped pass a law for workers to receive health coverage when changing jobs, and helped re-design Iowa's Workforce Development Department. He also wrote a bill to have the State of Iowa assume a 50% share of local county mental health costs.
Governor of Iowa[link]
In 1998, Terry Branstad chose not to seek re-election following sixteen consecutive years as governor. The Iowa Republican Party nominated Jim Ross Lightfoot, a recent former U.S. House Representative. Lightfoot became the odds-on favorite to succeed Branstad. Vilsack defeated former Iowa Supreme Court Justice Mark McCormick in the Democratic primary.[citation needed] Vilsack chose as his running mate Sally Pederson. Vilsack narrowly won the general election, largely due to aggressive campaigning on behalf by Senator Tom Harkin. He was the first Democrat to serve as governor of Iowa in 30 years, and only the fifth Democrat to hold the office in the 20th century.
In 2001 Vilsack served as a Chair of the Midwestern Governors Association. In 2002 he won his second term in office by defeating Republican challenger attorney Doug Gross by eight points. Also in 2002, Vilsack appointed Dr. Stephen Gleason as his Chief of Staff. Gleason resigned in 2005 to pursue a career in Medical Consulting at Health Policy Strategies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was replaced by Cynthia Eisenhauer, former director of the Iowa Department of Management and Iowa Workforce Development.
The first year of his second term saw creation of the Grow Iowa Values Fund, a $503 million appropriation designed to boost the Iowa economy by offering grants to corporations and initiatives pledged to create higher-income jobs. Vilsack used a line-item veto, later ruled unconstitutional by the Iowa Supreme Court, to pass the fund, vetoing portions of the bill that would have cut income taxes and eased business regulations. After a special session of the Iowa General Assembly on September 7, 2004, $100 million in state money was set aside to honor previously made commitments. The Grow Iowa Values Fund was reinstated at the end of the 2005 session: under the current law, $50 million per year will be set aside over the next ten years.
Candidates seeking to replace Vilsack, most notably Ed Fallon, criticized this program.[2] Their complaints include the fact that companies lured into Iowa by the fund, unlike Iowa-based corporations, can be lured away by greater cash incentives elsewhere. Another criticism is that it does nothing to promote new business.[3] In July 2005, Vilsack signed an executive order allowing all felons who had served their sentences to vote again. Iowa law previously held that convicted felons are permanently disenfranchized unless voting rights were restored personally by the governor; Vilsack did away with this process.[4]
For most of Tom Vilsack's tenure as Governor, Republicans held effective majorities in the Iowa General Assembly. Following the November 2, 2004, elections, the 50-member Senate was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans held a 51–49 majority in the House of Representatives.
During the 2005 legislative session, Vilsack signed into law greater restrictions that require products containing the active ingredient pseudoephedrine to be sold behind pharmacy counters, as opposed to open-access at open-shelf level. Those wishing to buy such products must show identification and sign a log book. The new law, designed to reduce methamphetamine use in Iowa, took effect on May 21, 2005.
Following Kelo v. City of New London, Vilsack vetoed but was overridden on Iowa House file 2351, a bill to restrict Iowa's use of eminent domain.
- "I am particularly troubled with the provisions that restrict the use of eminent domain for redevelopment purposes to areas defined as slum or blighted."--Tom Vilsack, veto letter for Iowa House file 2351.
Vilsack is a former member of the National Governors Association Executive Committee. He was chair of the Democratic Governors Association in 2004. He was also chair of the Governors Biotechnology Partnership, the Governors Ethanol Coalition, and the Midwest Governors Conference, and has also been chair and vice chair of the National Governors Association's committee on Natural Resources, where he worked to develop the NGA's farm and energy policies.
Prior to Democratic Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry's selection of Senator John Edwards, Vilsack was thought to be high on the list of potential running mates for Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
In 2005, Vilsack established Heartland PAC, a political action committee aimed at electing Democratic Governors. In the first report, he raised over half a million dollars.
Vilsack left office in 2007; he did not seek a third term. Succeeded by Chet Culver, he became the first Democratic governor since Clyde L. Herring seventy years earlier to be succeeded by another Democrat.
2008 U.S. presidential campaign[link]
Main article: Tom Vilsack presidential campaign, 2008
On November 30, 2006, Tom Vilsack became the second Democrat (after Mike Gravel) to officially announce intentions to run for the presidency in the 2008 election. In his announcement speech, he said "America's a great country, and now I have the opportunity to begin the process, the legal process of filing papers to run for President of the United States." Vilsack dropped out of the race on February 23, 2007 citing monetary constraints.[5]
File:Vilsack logo.jpg
Vilsack's campaign logo
Vilsack's campaign made significant use of social media by maintaining an active MySpace profile, a collection of viral video clips on YouTube, a Facebook profile, videoblog on blip.tv,[6] and a conference call with the podcast site TalkShoe.[7] On January 27, 2007, Vilsack called into the Regular Guys Show hosted by Kurt Hurner to conduct a fifteen minute interview on his running for the Democratic nomination for 2008. Since then, Vilsack appeared again, now The Kurt Hurner Show at Talk Shoe on August 12, 2008, this time as a supporter of Barack Obama for president taking questions from callers to the program for thirty minutes.
During the campaign, Vilsack joined fellow candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in supporting the establishment of a U.S. Public Service Academy as a civilian counterpart to the military academies.[8]
Shortly after ending his 2008 bid for the White House, Vilsack endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and was named the national co-chair for Clinton's presidential campaign.[9]
Views on Iraq[link]
Vilsack's stance on the war is critical of President Bush but hesitant to call for an immediate and complete pullout from Iraq: "I don't think we're losing in Iraq, It appears to be a draw. People are upset by the fact that their kids are over there and there doesn’t seem to be any end to this whole process. It’s not pacifism that makes people think this way. They’re questioning the credibility and competence of the Commander-in-Chief."[10]
On December 5, Vilsack announced that he favored withdrawing most of the U.S. forces from Iraq and leaving a small force in the Northern region for a limited period. While acknowledging that a withdrawal would lead to more violence, he felt that it would be the only way for the Iraqi government to take control of their country.[11]
Views on energy security[link]
The Vilsack Energy Security Agenda set out a strategy to dramatically reduce U.S. reliance on foreign energy and to cut the United States' carbon emissions. It also called for replacing the Department of Energy with a new Department of Energy Security, to oversee and redefine the federal government’s role in energy policy. The reorganized department would have acted as an institutional advocate for innovation in energy policy, and was intended to ensure accountability as the nation works towards achieving its energy security goals. Through this new department, America’s overriding objective in energy policy would have been to make America the unquestioned leader in clean energy, enhancing national security and economic strength.[12]
In a 2007 lecture to the Commonwealth Club of California, Vilsack stated,
| “ | Iowa is one of the nation's leading producers of corn-based ethanol, and many people in my state have an economic stake in the expanded use of corn-based ethanol. But the reality is that corn-based ethanol will never be enough to reach our goals. Some have suggested that we import more sugar-based ethanol from Brazil and we should indeed consider all sources of available ethanol … but if we are going to create energy security we can't simply replace one imported source of energy with another. That alone is not security … the only way we can produce enough domestically is if we greatly improve the technology used to produce cellulosic ethanol.[13] | ” |
Secretary of Agriculture[link]
On December 17, 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama announced his choice of Vilsack as the nominee to be the 30th Secretary of Agriculture.[14] Vilsack has governed a largely agricultural state as did the previous two Secretaries of Agriculture, Mike Johanns (who is currently the junior United States Senator from Nebraska) (2005–2007) and Ed Schafer (2007–2009).
The Senate confirmed Vilsack's nomination for the position by unanimous consent on January 20, 2009.[15]
Reaction to Vilsack's nomination from agricultural groups was largely positive and included endorsements from the Corn Refiners Association, the National Grain and Feed Association, the National Farmers Union, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund.[16] Opposition to the nomination came from the Organic Consumers Association, which outlined in a November 2008 report several reasons why it believed Vilsack would be a poor choice for the position, particularly as energy and environmental reforms were a key point of the Obama campaign.[17] Among those reasons the report cites: Vilsack has repeatedly demonstrated a preference for large industrial farms and genetically modified crops;[18] as Iowa state governor, he originated the seed pre-emption bill in 2005, effectively blocking local communities from regulating where genetically engineered crops would be grown; additionally, Vilsack was the founder and former chair of the Governor's Biotechnology Partnership, and was named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, an industry lobbying group.[19]
Vilsack appointed Shirley Sherrod as the Georgia Director of Rural Development, saying that she would be an "important advocate on behalf of rural communities."[20] Months after the appointment, Vilsack forced her to resign based on accusations of considering race in the handling of her job responsibilities at a private advocacy firm in 1986. Subsequent reports claim that he overreacted to a video segment taken out of context, and the secretary expressed his "deep regret" to Ms. Sherrod in acting hastily.[21]
Vilsack approved a 15-cent per tree tax on Christmas tree sellers, as a result of over 3-years of lobbying from the Christmas tree industry. The Christmas tree tax is expected to raise approximately $4 million from holiday revelers. The purpose of the tax is fund an advertising program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture promoting the sale of real Christmas trees.
On January 24, 2012 Secretary Vilsack was named the designated survivor by President Obama during the President's State of the Union address.[22]
On the 28th of March 2012, Vilsack came out publicaly defending the use of "lean finely textured beef" added in ground beef.
Electoral history[link]
- 1998 election for Governor of Iowa:
- Democratic Primary[citation needed]
-
- Tom Vilsack (D), 52%
- Mark McCormick (D), 48%
-
- 1998 General Election:[23]
-
- Tom Vilsack (D), 52.3% – 500,231 votes
- Jim Lightfoot (R), 46.5% – 444,787 votes
-
Personal life[link]
Vilsack met his future wife, Ann Christine "Christie" Bell, in a cafeteria while at college in New York in October 1968. Vilsack approached Bell and asked, "Are you a Humphrey or a Nixon supporter?" She replied "Humphrey" and they soon began dating. The couple were married on August 18, 1973, in Bell's hometown of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Vilsack and his wife moved to Mount Pleasant in 1975, where he joined his father-in-law in law practice.[24]
Tom and Christie Vilsack have two sons, Jess and Doug. Jess graduated from Hamilton College in 2000 where he, like his father, was a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. Jess received a J.D. from the University of Iowa in May 2003. Doug later graduated from Colorado College and is currently attending the University of Colorado School of Law. He is also a research associate at the School of Law's Energy and Environmental Security Initiative (EESI).
On May 1, 2006 it was announced that Vilsack joined the Board of Directors of Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Learning, a leading publisher of research-based math curricula for middle school, high school, and postsecondary students.[25]
References[link]
- ^ Vilsack Dropping Out Boston Globe, February 23, 2007
- ^ Desmoines Register
- ^ Desmoines Register
- ^ Iowa Joins Ranks of States to Restore Voting Rights to Felons
- ^ Thank You Video
- ^ Kuhn, Eric. Vilsack Wants To Appeal To ME and YOU. Huffington Post.
- ^ TalkShoe RSS feed
- ^ http://uspublicserviceacademy.org/endorsements/
- ^ HillaryClinton.com - Media Release
- ^ New Yorker
- ^ Vilsack wants smaller U.S. force in Iraq
- ^ Tom Vilsack for President
- ^ Emma Marris & Alexandra Witze. Nature, 457:242–243 (2009), doi:10.1038/457242.
- ^ Sources: Obama to tap Vilsack as agriculture secretary
- ^ Anonymous. Senate confirms 6 Obama Cabinet officials, OMB director, CNN website, January 20, 2009. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/20/senate-confirms-6-obama-cabinet-officials-omb-director/
- ^ Schuff, Sally. Obama picks Vilsack for ad secretary. Feedstuffs, December 22, 2008, p1.
- ^ Sources: Six Reasons Why Obama Appointing Monsanto's Buddy, Former Iowa Governor Vilsack, For USDA Head Would Be a Bad Idea
- ^ [1]
- ^ Sources: Iowa's Vilsack Named BIO Governor of the Year
- ^ http://www.ruraldevelopment.org/shirleydirector.html
- ^ Montopoli, Brian (July 21, 2010). "Vilsack: I Will Have to Live With Shirley Sherrod Mistake". CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011263-503544.html.
- ^ Associated Press (24 January 2012). "State of the Union: Tom Vilsack to serve as Cabinet's ‘designated survivor". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/state-of-the-union-tom-vilsack-to-serve-as-cabinets-designated-survivor/2012/01/24/gIQA8WnhOQ_blog.html. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
- ^ Gubernatorial General Election Results - Iowa USA Election Atlas
- ^ Okamoto, Lynn (2009-10-15). "Vilsack biography". Des Moines Register. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/NEWS09/40702012. Retrieved 2009-10-14.
- ^ "Governor Tom Vilsack Joins Board of Carnegie Learning, Inc." (Press release). Carnegie Learning, Inc.. May 1, 2006. http://www.carnegielearning.com/company_press_detail.cfm?pressreleaseID=121.
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tom Vilsack |
- Biography at the United States Department of Agriculture
- Biography at the National Governors Association
- Biography at WhoRunsGov.com at The Washington Post
- Issue positions and quotes at On the Issues
- Campaign contributions at FollowTheMoney.org
- Appearances on C-SPAN programs
- Appearances at the Internet Movie Database
- Collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Appearances on Charlie Rose
- Works by or about Tom Vilsack in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Interview The Mac Weekly, November 7, 2008[dead link]
- Harkin: Vilsack tapped for agriculture secretary The Des Moines Register, December 16, 2008
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Terry Branstad |
Governor of Iowa 1999–2007 |
Succeeded by Chet Culver |
| Preceded by Ed Schaefer |
United States Secretary of Agriculture Served under: Barack Obama 2009–present |
Incumbent |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by Evan Bayh |
Chairperson of the Democratic Leadership Council 2005–2007 |
Succeeded by Harold Ford |
| United States order of precedence | ||
| Preceded by Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior |
Order of Precedence of the United States Secretary of Agriculture |
Succeeded by John Bryson as Secretary of Commerce |
| United States presidential line of succession | ||
| Preceded by Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior |
9th in line Secretary of Agriculture |
Succeeded by John Bryson as Secretary of Commerce |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Vilsack, Tom |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | American politician |
| Date of birth | December 12, 1950 |
| Place of birth | Pittsburgh, United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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