Sen. Joe Lieberman (D) Elected 1988, 3d term up 2006
Born:	Feb. 24, 1942, Stamford
Home:	New Haven
Education:	Yale U., B.A. 1964, LL.B. 1967
Religion:	Jewish
Marital Status:	married (Hadassah)
Elected  Office:	CT Senate, 1970-80, Maj. Ldr., 1974-80; CT Atty. Gen., 1982-88.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1967-70, 1980-82
DC Office	706 HSOB20510, 202-224-4041; Fax: 202-224-9750; Web site: lieberman.senate.gov
State Offices	Hartford, 860-549-8463.
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Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut's junior senator, was first elected to the Senate in 1988 and was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000. Lieberman grew up in Stamford, the son of a liquor store owner, and was interested in politics early on; he remembers coming home from school at age nine eager to watch the televised Kefauver hearings. He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School, became chairman of the Yale Daily News and worked summers for Senator Abraham Ribicoff and the Democratic National Committee. His political ambitions were no secret-- other students called him "the Senator." In college he wrote an admiring yet revealing biography of that quintessential political boss John Bailey, Connecticut Democratic chairman from 1946-1975. Writing a book that was intellectually honest enough to pass academic scrutiny but tactful enough not to displease a man who could make or break his political career was a challenge, and Lieberman met it. At the same time, he was not afraid to challenge the political establishment. He helped found a reform and anti-war Caucus of Connecticut Democrats; in 1970 he ran for state Senate in New Haven against state Senate Majority Leader Edward Marcus, and won with help from, among others, a Yale Law student volunteer named Bill Clinton. In 1980 he ran for an open House seat and lost 52%-46% in a Republican year. In 1982 he was elected Connecticut attorney general, where he took action against fake charities, crooked car dealers and gouging merchants.

In 1988 Lieberman challenged Senator Lowell Weicker, another maverick, but of a different sort. Weicker was well to the left of most Republicans on economic and cultural issues; Lieberman was to the right of most Democrats on cultural issues and foreign policy. Lieberman is an Orthodox Jew--he didn't attend the convention that nominated him for senator because it was held on Saturday, and sent in videotape instead--and a believer that "we in government should look to religion as a partner, as I think the Founders of our country did." He ran witty ads, one showing a bear sleeping through work--a nice take-off on the growling but erratic Weicker. Lieberman won 50%-49%.

Lieberman has made a distinctive mark in foreign policy. He was one of the leaders in the fight for the Gulf War resolution in January 1991, and without his earnest but vehement support it might not have passed. Presciently, he called for "final victory" over Saddam Hussein. He is a strong supporter of Israel but favored F-15 sales to Saudi Arabia in 1992. He has strongly opposed Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba--a difference between him and his colleague Christopher Dodd--and in May 2001 sponsored with Jesse Helms a bill to give $100 million to Cuban opposition groups. After September 11 he strongly supported the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and in December 2001 was one of 10 members who signed a letter urging George W. Bush to target Iraq next. And his vision is broader: in January 2002 he urged the administration to move its putative allies in the Arab world toward political freedom to prevent a "theological iron curtain" behind which terrorism can build. In May 2002, when Tom DeLay introduced a resolution supporting Israel in the House, Lieberman introduced one in the Senate, but with fewer condemnations of Palestinian leaders. While running for president in July 2003, he criticized Democrats for attacking Bush and continued to steadfastly support him on Iraq. With Chuck Hagel, he introduced a bill to provide $1 billion yearly to promote democratic institutions, development aid for infrastructure and help for small enterprises in the Middle East and Central Asia. After the pictures of Abu Ghraib abuses were circulated in May 2004, he and John McCain wrote in The Washington Post: "We will have exponentially magnified the mistakes made in Abu Ghraib if we allow these abuses to destroy our goal of a free and democratic Iraq. Success in Iraq remains possible, and it is more necessary now than ever." They called for more troops in Iraq, decried the April retreat from Fallujah and insisted the handover of power to Iraqis must be genuine. In July 2004 he and Jon Kyl revived the Committee on the Present Danger, which actively supported prosecuting the Cold War in the 1950s and resisting Soviet advances in the 1970s.

On economic issues, Lieberman has backed capital gains tax cuts for small business ("you can't be pro-jobs and anti-business") and urged Bill Clinton to sign the 1996 welfare bill--both stands opposed by many Democrats. He opposed the Bush tax cut in May 2002 and the post-September 11 stimulus package in January 2002. He preferred instead cuts in depreciation and a 10-day sales tax holiday. In May 2002 he called for delay of scheduled future tax cuts.

From the platform of the Governmental Affairs Committee, Lieberman also made points on environmental issues. He attacked the Bush administration for refusing to cap wholesale electricity prices during California's electricity crisis. In November 2001 he threatened to filibuster against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He subpoenaed documents from the Bush Interior and Agriculture departments and EPA on scalebacks of Clinton environmental regulations. With McCain, increasingly a legislative partner, he has sponsored bills to reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions with an economy-wide cap and to sanction emissions trading; one version was rejected 55-43 in October 2003. He called Bush's leadership on emissions "feeble" and said his energy policy was "mired in crude oil."

Lieberman has spoken out eloquently on moral issues. In 1995 he joined with Book of Virtues author William Bennett and criticized gangsta rap records, and shamed Time Warner into selling their Interscope label; in 1998 they said the purchaser, Seagram, failed to keep its promises to clean up the words, and gave it a Silver Sewer award. In highly publicized Commerce Committee hearings in September 2000 he denounced the marketing of violent movies, music and video games with children. But during that fall campaign, after he attended a Hollywood fundraiser and spoke of being a "noodge" to the industry, Bennett criticized him for abandoning their fight against obscenity and violence. One thing that made Lieberman an attractive running mate for Al Gore was the fact that he was one of the few Democrats who was not a lockstep defender of Bill Clinton. He was dismayed by Clinton's August 17, 1998, speech in which he grudgingly admitted lying about the Lewinsky affair for seven months. When the Senate resumed in September, Lieberman took the floor and said, "Such behavior is … wrong and unacceptable and should be followed by some measure of public rebuke and accountability." But he was persuaded by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle not to call for censure, and he stopped well short of backing impeachment or resignation. Lieberman has long believed, as he said in 2002, that "faith-based groups can help government solve pressing social problems." But he opposed the faith-based charities bill the House passed in July 2001, and with Rick Santorum developed a different approach, based on tax incentives for corporate giving, for matching by banks of poor people's "development accounts," plus charitable deductions of up to $400 a year for taxpayers who take the standard deduction. He has supported gun control measures, but worked to get a gun produced by Connecticut-based Colt removed from the 1994 assault weapon ban and voted against making lawsuits against gunmakers non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Lieberman played a key--and frustrating--role on the issue of homeland security. He became convinced well before George W. Bush that there should be a cabinet department combining the government agencies involved in homeland security, and in October 2001 he sponsored a bill to create one. Then, in June 2002, Bush came out with his proposal for such a department. Lieberman said, with good reason, that Bush's plan resembled his own, and drafted a bill in July 2002. But in late August Bush said that the personnel provisions of Lieberman's bill would not give him sufficient flexibility to manage the department. The main issue was whether the president could get rid of unions in divisions of the department. Lieberman argued that his version allowed removal on a case-by-case basis if there was a showing that union rights were a threat to national security. Bush administration spokesmen said that such civil service procedures were too cumbersome and that Lieberman's version actually reduced the president's ability to move employees out of unions. For most of September there was a standoff in the Senate; in October, the bill was pulled for a while for consideration of the Iraq war resolution and other issues. Lieberman evidently had a 51-vote majority for his version, but Republicans were able to keep it from coming to the floor. Democrats, in refusing to give in to Bush's demands, were being faithful to their longtime supporters, the government employee unions. But the issue played a major role in the defeats of Senators Max Cleland in Georgia and Jean Carnahan in Missouri. After the election, Democrats meekly conceded most of the issue.

After his presidential candidacy ended in February 2004, he returned to work vigorously in the Senate. He reacted positively to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission on intelligence restructuring. He and committee Chairman Susan Collins introduced a bill that adopted many of them, including a national intelligence director with control over 2/3 of the intelligence budget and the power to move personnel and assets among intelligence agencies, and the creation of a National Counterterrorism Center. It passed the Senate 96-2 in October 2004. The House took a different view. Speaker Dennis Hastert pulled the bill off the floor in November because of opposition by committee chairmen. In December the House and Senate agreed on a version that included a provision recognizing the existing military chain of command. Lieberman said, "No one has been ultimately responsible for the deadly mistakes that have been made. This legislation changes all of that. The dots will be connected. And I hope, pray and believe that we will never have to suffer through another attack like the one we did suffer on September 11, 2001." Other Lieberman legislation: a bill with Orrin Hatch to give incentives to companies developing antidotes and vaccines against bioterrorism, a bill with John McCain to impose the hard money requirements of McCain-Feingold on the 527 organizations which spent so freely in the 2004 campaign and a proposal that the United States maintain a global system of warning against tsunamis.

Lieberman's distinctive positions on issues and his differences with Democrats on many issues, his independence of mind and civility of spirit helped him to win the nomination for vice president in 2000 and to fall far short of winning the nomination for president in 2004. Al Gore's decision to make him his vice presidential nominee in 2000 was history-making: He was the first Jew on a major party ticket in American history. Gore knew Lieberman from the Senate, where they were friends. But two things probably pushed Gore toward his choice: Lieberman's reputation for probity and denunciation of Clinton, which gave the ticket some insulation from the Clinton scandals, and Lieberman's moderate record on many issues and undoubted ability. Another asset proved to be Lieberman's fervent avowals of religious faith and that it has a rightful place in politics; what might have been resented from a Christian conservative seemed attractive coming from an Orthodox Jew.

Overall, Lieberman was clearly an asset to the ticket. His poll ratings were high, and if there was general agreement that Dick Cheney excelled at the October 6 vice presidential debate, Lieberman also performed well; some observers wondered whether the order of the tickets should be reversed. Lieberman's Judaism seems not to have hurt the ticket anywhere, and it probably helped in crucial Florida; he made memorable campaign appearances in heavily Jewish Broward and Palm Beach Counties, which together voted 65%-32% for Gore-Lieberman. But there was some tension between positions Lieberman had taken before August 2000 and what he said during the campaign. He had questioned racial quotas and preferences, and refused to oppose Proposition 209 in California in 1996, which banned racial quotas and preferences by paraphrasing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lieberman told the Black Caucus at the Democratic convention, to great applause, that he had voted against abolishing racial set asides in transportation contracts. Lieberman had supported vouchers for students in the failing District of Columbia schools; he told teachers' union leaders that he was for demonstration vouchers, but overall wanted to put money into public schools. He had said that Social Security was headed on a disastrous course and needed an injection of funds from private markets; in the campaign he said that the transition costs for George W. Bush's plan were too high. In the Florida controversy, Lieberman took what to some was a surprisingly partisan role--though of course this was a quintessentially partisan issue. On Sunday interview shows he said that he and Gore would never challenge legitimately cast military absentee ballots. But on the preceding Friday night, lawyers working for the Gore-Lieberman ticket did precisely that.

He returned to the Senate as a major national figure--and one self-evidently eager to run for president in 2004. He even got into a post-mortem argument with Gore over campaign strategy. In August 2002 he said, "Al said some things in the campaign that were not the logical continuation of things--his voting record in the Senate and his career in public service. The people versus the powerful unfortunately left that track and gave a different message, which may have been caused by the pressure that the Nader campaign was giving us. But I think it was not the New Democratic approach." Gore responded in a New York Times opinion article that people versus the powerful was "the right choice." Lieberman kept to his pledge not to run if Gore did, and he began active fundraising and campaigning only after Gore announced in December 2002 he would not run. Lieberman started off ahead in the polls. But that just reflected his name identification, and there remained his chief problem, that he was out of step with most active Democrats on the war on terrorism and was unable to create a mass Democratic constituency which took his view. Lieberman supported Bush on going into Afghanistan and going into Iraq, and he supported him not just perfunctorily or after the fact, but was in fact urging these actions, fervently and cogently, before Bush acted. He was one of the most prominent voices calling for the remaking of the Middle East and the encouragement of democracy and human rights in the region.

He stuck to those positions in spring and summer 2003 even as Howard Dean attracted a mass constituency over the Internet and rose in the polls, and as other candidates echoed his stringent criticism of Bush on Iraq. In August 2003 Lieberman said, "I share the anger of my fellow Democrats with George Bush and the wrong direction he has taken our nation. But the answer to his outdated, extremist ideology is not to be found in outdated extremes of our own. That path will not solve the challenges of our time and it could well send us Democrats back to the political wilderness for a long time." He added that nominating Dean was "a ticket to nowhere." He told unions that foreign trade is good for the American economy and criticized John Kerry for "ambivalence" on Iraq. He presented a tax program in October, to raise taxes on the wealthy and lower them on the middle class. And he cautioned Democrats not to abandon the policies of Bill Clinton, who "made our party once again fiscally responsible, pro-growth, strong on values, for middle-class tax cuts, and Howard Dean is against all of these."

Like other hawkish candidates--Gore in 1988, McCain in 2000--Lieberman decided to avoid dovish Iowa. He was stung in December 2003 when Gore endorsed Dean, with no notice to Lieberman. "I don't have anything to say today about Al Gore's sense of loyalty, I really don't, and I have no regrets about the loyalty that I had to him when I waited until he decided whether he would run to make my decision because that was the right thing to do," he said. While Dean, Kerry, John Edwards and Dick Gephardt were attracting attention in Iowa, Lieberman spent the month before the January 27 primary entirely in New Hampshire, living in a basement apartment, chatting with voters over coffee, speaking to groups wherever he could. But Dean was attracting far more volunteers and far larger crowds and Kerry, after his come-from-behind victory in Iowa, was also far better organized. "We have JOE-mentum," the always cheerful Lieberman proclaimed, but it wasn't enough. He finished fifth in New Hampshire, with 9% of the vote. For another week he persisted in campaigning for the February 3 primaries in Delaware, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri, New Mexico and South Carolina. But the best he could do was a second-place finish in Delaware, with 11% of the vote. He announced the end of his campaign election night in an Arlington, Virginia, hotel. Lieberman did not formally endorse Kerry, whom he had known at Yale, until May, and at the Democratic National Convention he was perhaps the only speaker to refer to "the liberation of Iraq."

Lieberman's days of major influence in Democratic presidential politics are apparently over, but he remains an important and active senator. In Connecticut he has remained widely popular. He was reelected 67%-31% in 1994 and, while he was also running for vice president, by 63%-34% in 2000. He seems unbeatable in any general election. But he could be vulnerable to a challenger on the left in a Democratic primary. His advantage here is that he is widely popular among other Democratic officeholders and party officials in the state, and it's not clear that a challenger could get the support in the Democratic state convention necessary to get a ballot position. But thanks to an open primary law passed in 2003, candidates for statewide office and Congress now can qualify for the primary ballot by getting signatures from 2% of registered party members.

Committees

• Armed Services: Airland (RMM); Personnel; Seapower.
• Environment & Public Works: Clean Air, Climate Change & Nuclear Safety; Fisheries, Wildlife & Water; Transportation & Infrastructure.
• Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs (RMM).
• Small Business & Entrepreneurship.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	75	83	86	100	80	14	79	0	3	0	--
2003	70	--	100	42	--	15	25	0	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	66%	--	33%		62%	--	37%
Social	75%	--	24%		82%	--	0%
Foreign	*	--	*		55%	--	43%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Ban Drilling in ANWR Y 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N 3. Medicare/Rx Bill * 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. Y 5. Energy Bill N 6. Support Roe v. Wade Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  8. Assault Weapons Ban Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N 10. Ban Bunker-Buster Bomb Y 11. Fund Iraq War Y 12. Restrict Missile Defense N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2000 general	Joe Lieberman (D)	828,902	63%	$3,786,665
	Phil Giordano (R)	448,077	34%	$1,080,020
	Other	34,282	3%
2000 primary	Joe Lieberman (D)	unopposed
1994 general	Joe Lieberman (D)	723,842	67%	$4,017,520
	Jerry Labriola (R)	334,833	31%	$166,064
	Other	20,989	2%
Prior winning percentages: 1988 (50%)