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".

María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien (born September 19, 1966) is an American broadcast journalist. She is the anchor of CNN's morning news program Starting Point which premiered on January 2, 2012 and airs weekdays from 7:00 am to 9:00 am ET.

Along with Early Start, Starting Point replaced American Morning, which aired from 2001 to 2011. O'Brien co-anchored American Morning from July 2003 to April 2007, with Miles O'Brien. Their common surname is coincidental.

After leaving the morning anchoring position, O'Brien worked with the "In America" documentary unit on CNN.

O'Brien's parents, both immigrants, met at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland in 1958.

My parents were both immigrants—my mother from Cuba, my father from Australia. Both attended daily Mass at the church near campus. Every day my father would offer my mother a ride. Every day, she declined. Finally she said yes. One year later, the day after Christmas, the two of them were married.

O'Brien's parents married in 1958 in Washington, D.C. Her father Edward, an Australian (from Toowoomba, Queensland) of Irish descent, was a mechanical engineering professor. Her mother, Estella, who is Afro-Cuban, was a French and English teacher. O'Brien is the fifth of six children, who all graduated from Harvard College; O'Brien attended Harvard from 1984 to 1988, but did not obtain a degree until she returned in 2000. Her siblings are law professor Maria (born 1961); corporate lawyer Cecilia (born 1962), businessman Tony (born 1963) - who heads a documents company; eye surgeon Estela (born 1964); and anesthesiologist Orestes (born 1967).

George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an American television journalist and a former political advisor.

Stephanopoulos rose to early prominence as a quick-witted communications director for the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, subsequently becoming White House Communications Director then Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy before departing in December 1996. Today he is chief political correspondent for ABC News, co-anchor of ABC News' Good Morning America (GMA), host of ABC's Sunday morning This Week, and primary substitute for ABC network anchor Diane Sawyer on ABC World News.

In recent years he has co-hosted ABC News' special live coverage of political events with Sawyer and Charles Gibson and launched an ABCNews.com blog, George's Bottom Line.

Stephanopoulos is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Stephanopoulos was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrants, Robert George and Nickolitsa ("Nikki") Gloria (née Chafos) Stephanopoulos.

Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history. For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the last surviving son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.; the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassination, and Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., killed in action in World War II; and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

Kennedy entered the Senate in a November 1962 special election to fill the seat once held by his brother John. He was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected seven more times before his death. The controversial Chappaquiddick incident on July 18, 1969, resulted in the death of his automobile passenger Mary Jo Kopechne; Kennedy pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident, and the incident significantly damaged his chances of ever becoming President of the United States. His one attempt, in the 1980 presidential election, resulted in a Democratic primary campaign loss to incumbent President Jimmy Carter.

Christopher John "Chris" Matthews (born December 17, 1945) is an American news anchor and political commentator known for his nightly hour-long talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, which is televised on the American cable television channel MSNBC. On weekends he hosts the syndicated NBC News–produced panel discussion program The Chris Matthews Show. Matthews makes frequent appearances on many other NBC and MSNBC programs. On March 22, 2009, Matthews renewed the contract for Hardball with Chris Matthews through 2012.

Matthews was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Irish American parents and is a Roman Catholic. He attended La Salle College High School. He is a 1967 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and did graduate work in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Matthews served in the United States Peace Corps in Swaziland from 1968 to 1970 as a trade development adviser.

When Matthews first arrived in Washington, D.C., he worked as a police officer with the United States Capitol Police. Subsequently, he served on the staffs of four Democratic members of Congress, including Senators Frank Moss and Edmund Muskie. In 1974, he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Pennsylvania's 4th congressional district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he received about 24% of the vote in the primary. Matthews was a presidential speechwriter during the Carter administration and later worked for six years as a top aide to longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O'Neill, playing a direct role in many key political battles with the Reagan administration.