Elected 1974, seat up 2004 Born: Mar. 31, 1940, Montpelier Home: Burlington Education: St. Michael's Col., B.A. 1961, Georgetown U., J.D. 1964 Religion: Catholic Marital Status: married (Marcelle)

Career:

• Political: VT St. Atty., Chittenden Cnty., 1966-74.
• Professional: Practicing atty., 1964-74.

DC Office: 433 RSOB 20510, 202-224-4242; Web site: www.senate.gov/~leahy

State Offices: Burlington, 802-863-2525; Montpelier,802-229-0569.

Committees:

• Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry: Forestry, Conservation & Rural Revitalization; Marketing, Inspection & Product Promotion; Research, Nutrition & General Legislation (Chmn.).
• Appropriations: Commerce, Justice, State & Judiciary; Defense; Foreign Operations (Chmn.); Interior; Transportation; VA, HUD & Independent Agencies.
• Judiciary (Chmn.): Administrative Oversight & the Courts; Antitrust, Business Rights & Competition; Constitution, Federalism & Property Rights; Crime & Drugs.

Patrick Leahy has held public office for most of his adult life. He grew up in Burlington, went to Georgetown Law School, then returned home to Burlington to practice law. He was elected Chittenden County state's attorney in 1966, at 26, and, after eight years in that post--and few public officials are scrutinized as closely as a local prosecutor--he was elected to the U.S. Senate at 34, the only Democratic senator elected in Vermont history. In October 1999 he became the 21st senator to cast 10,000 votes; he is closing in on the record of his predecessor, George Aiken, who served 33 years.

Leahy is ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and was formerly chairman of Agriculture. A gadgeteer and fine amateur photographer, he was one of the first senators to go online; he begins his day by turning on his home computer, then heats up his coffee; his bookmarks include the Irish Times and the Grateful Dead. He has co-sponsored bills to remove export controls on encryption and opposed the Clinton Administration proposal to provide law enforcement agencies with encryption codes. He was the Senate's lead opponent of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which was declared unconstitutional in 1997. He co-sponsored with Orrin Hatch the Digital Millennium Copyright law, passed to comply with the WIPO treaty, and with Jon Kyl the law making the theft of personal identification information a crime. He and Hatch also sponsored a satellite TV bill which would allow satellite services to transmit local stations' broadcasts. After considerable negotiation, he worked out an e-signature bill which passed the Senate unanimously, setting a national framework for giving on-line signatures legal status; it allowed consumers to agree to electronically signed contracts and consent to receiving records, while businesses had to verify electronic addresses. With Orrin Hatch and Charles Schumer he proposed a $125 million national cybercrimes support center. On the Napster controversy, on which he received 17,000 emails, he said, "You can't stop it. What we need to do, I think, is make sure copyrights and patent laws actually reflect the new reality."

Leahy has taken the initiative on other Judiciary issues. He has been concerned about medical privacy for some time, and led the fight to repeal portions of the 1996 health care law assigning medical identification numbers, and has sponsored a bill to allow individual access to and control of medical records. With Bob Torricelli he has sought to protect the privacy of personal information held by firms filing for bankruptcy. He has worked to expand funding to buy bulletproof vests for police officers. Appearing with former Death Row inmates who were exonerated, he sought to provide DNA testing for death row inmates who challenge their convictions. He blocked one bill inspired by the Firestone tire failures as too weak and promised to work with John McCain for a stronger measure. Inspired by the presence in Vermont of an accused Bosnian war criminal, he and Orrin Hatch moved to authorize the Justice Department Nazi-hunter unit to pursue contemporary war criminals. He has sought to legalize the presence in the U.S. of Haitian and Central American refugees living here for many years.

Another Leahy cause has been the elimination of land mines. Since 1989, he has been crusading against the export and use of landmines, which are easy and cheap to implant yet difficult and expensive to remove, and which injure thousands of civilians long after hostilities have ended. In 1994 he got the United Nations to approve unanimously their eventual elimination. In 1997 he and Chuck Hagel moved to support the treaty ban worked out in Ottawa; but the Clinton Administration, worried especially about U.S. forces in Korea, refused to support a total ban. Leahy continues to work to aid land mine victims and to deactivate the thousands of land mines still active in many parts of the world and to find alternatives for them. On foreign issues he tends to stand to the left of the Senate: He was one of three senators to vote against authorization of missile defense in March 1999 and has called for an end to the ban on travel ban to Cuba.

Leahy also serves on Appropriations and has procured funding for Vermont projects--$119,000 for the maple sugar industry, $400,000 to get rid of invasive species in Lake Champlain, $400,000 to repair brick walkways and add bicycle racks at the Church Street Marketplace, $2.4 million to compensate Vermont sheep owners for animals destroyed because of mad cow disease, $9.3 million for the Vermont Guard Aircraft Maintenance Complex (Leahy is head of the National Guard Caucus). He has sought to close old coal-fired plants grandfathered under the Clean Air Act and to impose an emissions control plan for mercury. He stopped his colleague James Jeffords's attempt to void Vermont utilities' contracts with Hydro-Quebec.

On the Agriculture Committee he worked with Chairman Richard Lugar on the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996. He worked hard to shape bill's conservation provisions to establish the Northeast Dairy Compact, to set milk prices in the six New England states. Separately, the Senate passed Leahy's Northern Forests bill, to protect privately owned New England and Upstate New York forests. In February 1998 he slipped into the Sea Grant College program a provision declaring Champlain one of the Great Lakes; the Michigan delegation squawked, and a bill passed in March revoked the designation but continued the Champlain research funds. With Lugar he has sought to expand the tax deduction for donations of food to the needy.

Leahy's overall voting record is quite liberal, except on some cultural issues. He has worked to confirm Clinton judicial appointments and stoutly defended Bill Clinton on impeachment. He criticized the Supreme Court decision stopping the hand counts of ballots in Florida: "Their credibility is so diminished, and their moral posture is so diminished, it will take years to repair."

To all this Leahy brings a quiet, thoughtful temperament and a puckish sense of humor, part of the Yankee heritage of Vermont, though his Irish and Italian ethnic origin is not standard Yankee. He is a Batman buff who had a bit part in the movie Batman and Robin. His standing in Vermont has been strong over the years: He narrowly survived the Republican sweep in 1980 and beat popular Governor Richard Snelling 63%-35% in 1986. In anti-incumbent 1992, against Republican state Treasurer Jim Douglas, who attacked him for voting for the congressional pay raise and for the loss of dairy jobs, he won 54%-43%--a decisive margin, but no landslide. In 1998 he had an easier time. The favorite for the Republican nomination, a Massachusetts businessman who had moved to Bennington to run, was upset 55%-45% by 77-year-old dairy farmer Fred Tuttle, the star of a 1996 documentary A Man with a Plan in which he is shown running for Congress. ''I spend all my time in the barn. I'd just like to spend a little time in the House,'' Tuttle was shown as saying in his barely comprehensible accent. Of Leahy, Tuttle said in 1998, ''I like Pat. He's a smart man, and he's done a good job.'' In October 1998, when A Man With a Plan was aired on PBS, Leahy had dinner at the Tuttles' home and contrasted this contest with the negative campaigns being waged elsewhere. ''I had expected an opponent with deep pockets, not someone with holes in their pockets,'' Leahy said. Leahy won 72%-22%.

In 2000, though not up for re-election himself, Leahy actively campaigned for Governor Howard Dean and for Democratic legislative candidates. He was prompted by the outspoken opposition to the civil unions law, and arranged a joint appearance with his former Republican colleague Robert Stafford to denounce the tone of the campaign. Leahy's seat does not come up until 2004, and he looks in strong political shape; if re-elected he will pass Aiken's tenure in 2008.

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2000	85	57	85	86	73	83	9	58	8	6	15
1999	95	--	100	100	51	--	5	41	4	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1999 LIB	--	1999 CONS		2000 LIB	--	2000 CONS
Economic	75%	--	20%		82%	--	17%
Social	64%	--	31%		65%	--	34%
Foreign	78%	--	13%		95%	--	0%

Key Votes of the 106th Congress
1. Educ. Savings Accts. N 2. Prescrip. Drug Benefit Y 3. Delay Ergonomic Standards N 4. Phase Out Estate Tax N 5. Review Movie Violence N 6. Gun Show Bckgrnd. Checks Y		7. Ban Part.-Birth Abortion Y  8. Broaden Hate Crimes List Y  9. NATO War in Serbia Y 10. Table Cuba Travel Ban N 11. Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Y 12. Perm. Trade with China Y

Election Results
1998 general	Patrick Leahy (D)	154,567	(72%)
	Fred H. Tuttle (R)	48,051	(22%)
	Other	11,418	(5%)
1998 primary	Patrick Leahy (D)	18,643	(97%)
	Other	647	(3%)
1992 general	Patrick Leahy (D)	154,762	(54%)
	James H. Douglas (R)	123,854	(43%)
	Other	7,123	(2%)

Campaign Finance
1998	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Patrick Leahy (D)	$1,153,672		$1,014,751