Robert Jones "Rob" Portman (born December 19, 1955) is a lawyer and the junior United States Senator from Ohio. He is a member of the Republican Party. He succeeded retiring Senator George Voinovich.

From 1993 to 2005, Portman served in the United States House of Representatives, representing Ohio's 2nd congressional district, which stretches along the Ohio River from the Hamilton County suburbs of Cincinnati east to Scioto County and Pike County. Portman won seven consecutive congressional elections with over 70 percent of the vote.

Portman served in two federal cabinet positions under the administration of President George W. Bush. From May 2005 to May 2006, he was the U.S. Trade Representative. From May 2006 to June 2007, he was Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He is considered a possible pick for Vice President on the Republican presidential ticket in 2012.

Portman was born in 1955 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Joan (née Jones) and entrepreneur William C. "Bill" Portman II. His patrilineal great-grandfather, surnamed "Portmann", immigrated from Switzerland; Portman also has Scottish, Northern Irish, English, and German ancestry. When he was young, his father borrowed money to start the Portman Equipment Company, a forklift dealership where he and his siblings all worked growing up. The company grew from a small business with five employees and Joan Portman as bookkeeper to one that employed over 300 people. According to a 2010 Weekly Standard profile, Portman "developed a political philosophy grounded in entrepreneurship," having grown up "[hearing] talk about regulations, and taxes, and government getting in the way of small business" because of his early experiences with his family business.

Richard Joseph "Dick" Durbin (born November 21, 1944) is the senior United States Senator from Illinois and the Senate Majority Whip, the second highest position in the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate.

Born in East St. Louis, Illinois, he graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Georgetown University Law Center. Working in state legal counsel throughout the 1970s, he made an unsuccessful run for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois in 1978. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, representing the Springfield-based 20th congressional district. In 1996 he won election to the U.S. Senate by an unexpected 15-point margin. He has served as Senate Democratic Whip since 2005, and assumed his current title when the Democratic Party obtained a majority in 2007.

Durbin was born in East St. Louis, Illinois to an Irish-American father, William Durbin, and a Lithuanian-born mother, Anna (née Kutkin; Lithuanian: Ona Kutkaitė). He graduated from Assumption High School in East St. Louis in 1962. During his high school years he worked at a meatpacking plant. He earned a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1966. He was an intern in the office of Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois during his senior year in college. Durbin earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1969 and was admitted to the Illinois bar later that year.

Charles Ellis "Chuck" Schumer (/ˈʃuːmər/; born November 23, 1950) is the senior United States Senator from New York and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected in 1998, he defeated three-term Republican incumbent Al D'Amato by a margin of 55%–44%. He was easily re-elected in 2004 by a margin of 71%–24% and in 2010 by a margin of 66%–33%.

Before his election to the U.S. Senate, Schumer served in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1999. He represented New York's 16th congressional district, which was later redistricted to the 10th congressional district in 1983 and to the 9th congressional district in 1993. A native of Brooklyn and graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he was a three-term member of the New York State Assembly, serving from 1975 to 1980.

Schumer was chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2005 to 2009, in which post he oversaw a total of 14 Democratic gains in the Senate in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Elected Vice Chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the Senate, in 2006, he is the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, behind Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin. In November 2010, he was also chosen to hold the additional role of chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee starting at the opening of the 112th Congress.

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.