- published: 05 Jul 2015
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Richard Mauze Burr (born November 30, 1955) is an American politician who has served as a United States Senator from North Carolina since 2005. A member of the Republican Party, Burr previously represented North Carolina's 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2005.
As Senator, Burr has had a non-controversial tenure so far, espousing most of the Republican Party's expected positions, from general support for President George W. Bush's actions in Iraq to abortion opposition. Strikingly, however, he voted to repeal the military's employment discrimination policy against gays. In October he announced his intention to seek the post of minority whip, the number two Republican position in the Senate.
Burr is the son of a minister. He has children with Brooke, his wife of 27 years. He is distant kin of former U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr.
Burr was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, the son of Martha (née Gillum) and Rev. David Horace White Burr, a minister. He graduated from Richard J. Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem, N.C. in 1974 and earned a B.A. from Wake Forest University in 1978. Burr was on the football team at both Reynolds High School and Wake Forest. Burr lettered for the Demon Deacons during the 1974 and 1975 seasons; however, the team went winless in ACC play during his tenure. He is a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity.
Elizabeth Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American bankruptcy law expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She contributed to the oversight of the 2008 U.S. bailout program, and also led the conception and establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Warren attended The George Washington University and the University of Houston. She received a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1976. Warren taught law at several universities and was listed by the Association of American Law Schools as a minority law professor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under U.S. President Barack Obama.