Joe Lieberman
Joe Lieberman was a United States senator for Connecticut from 1989 to 2013, the first Jewish candidate on a major-party presidential ticket, and a politician whose independence eventually severed him from his party. Born in Stamford in 1942 to a family that ran a liquor store, he was the first in it to attend university, studying at Yale and then Yale Law School, and travelled to Mississippi in 1963 to register black voters during the civil rights movement. He served ten years in the Connecticut state senate and was state attorney general from 1983, building a reputation on consumer protection. He won his Senate seat in 1988 by about ten thousand votes, unseating the liberal Republican Lowell Weicker. He was an observant Orthodox Jew who did not campaign on the Sabbath, and a social conservative by Democratic standards, criticising Hollywood content and, in September 1998, becoming the first Democratic senator to condemn Bill Clinton's conduct with Monica Lewinsky on the Senate floor. That speech is generally credited with getting him onto Al Gore's ticket in 2000, which won the popular vote and lost the presidency by 537 votes in Florida after a Supreme Court ruling. He ran for president in 2004 and finished poorly. His support for the Iraq war cost him the Democratic primary in 2006 to the antiwar candidate Ned Lamont, whereupon he ran as an independent and won the general election. He then endorsed the Republican John McCain in 2008 and spoke at their convention. He cast a decisive vote for the Affordable Care Act in 2009 after forcing the removal of the public option. He died in 2024.
- Lived: 1942 CE – 2024 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: senator
