Lieberman, Joseph I. (Joseph Isadore), 1942-2024

<p>Joseph Isadore Lieberman (born February 24, 1942) is an American politician, lobbyist and attorney who served as a United States Senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2000 election. During his final term in office he was officially listed as an independent Democrat and caucused with and chaired committees for the Democratic Party.<p>
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Lieberman was elected as a "Reform Democrat" in 1970 to the Connecticut Senate, where he served three terms as Majority Leader. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980, he served as state Attorney General from 1983 to 1989. He narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the U.S. Senate, and was re-elected in 1994, 2000, and 2006. He was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in the 2000 United States presidential election, running with presidential nominee and then Vice President Al Gore, and becoming the first Jewish candidate on a major American political party presidential ticket.</p>

<p>In the 2000 presidential election, Gore and Lieberman won the popular vote by a margin of more than 500,000 votes, but lost the deciding Electoral College to the Republican George W. Bush/Dick Cheney ticket 271–266. He also unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election.</p>

<p>During his Senate re-election bid in 2006, Lieberman lost the Democratic Party primary election, but won re-election in the general election as a third party candidate under the "Connecticut for Lieberman" party label. Never a member of that party, he remained a registered Democrat while he ran.</p>

<p>Lieberman was officially listed in Senate records for the 110th and 111th Congresses as an Independent Democrat, and sat as part of the Senate Democratic Caucus. However, after his speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention in which he endorsed John McCain for president, he no longer attended Democratic Caucus leadership strategy meetings or policy lunches. On November 5, 2008, he met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to discuss his future role with the Democratic Party. Ultimately, the Senate Democratic Caucus voted to allow him to keep the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Subsequently, he announced that he would continue to caucus with the Democrats. Before the 2016 election, he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.</p>

<p>As Senator, Lieberman introduced and championed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 and legislation that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. During debate on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as the crucial 60th vote needed to pass the legislation, his opposition to the public health insurance option was critical to its removal from the resulting bill signed by President Barack Obama.</p>
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Lieberman was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Henry, who ran a liquor store, and Marcia (née Manger) Lieberman. His family is Jewish; his paternal grandparents emigrated from Congress Poland and his maternal grandparents were from Austria-Hungary. He received a B.A. in both political science and economics from Yale University in 1964 and was the first member of his family to graduate from college. At Yale he was editor of the Yale Daily News and a member of the Elihu Club. His roommate was Richard Sugarman, a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Vermont and advisor to 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Lieberman later attended Yale Law School, receiving his LLB degree in 1967. After graduation from law school, Lieberman worked as a lawyer for the New Haven-based law firm Wiggin & Dana LLP.</p>
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A spokesperson told The Hartford Courant in 1994 that Lieberman received an educational deferment from the Vietnam War draft when he was an undergraduate and law student from 1960 to 1967. Upon graduating from law school at age 25, Lieberman qualified for a family deferment because he was already married and had a child.</p>
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Lieberman describes himself as an "observant" Jew. In 1965 he married Betty Haas, a Reform Jew. Since the death in 1967 of his grandmother, a deeply religious immigrant, he found renewed interest in religious observance. His second wife, Hadassah, is also an observant Modern Orthodox Jew. "Hadassah calls herself my right wing", says Lieberman.] In Lieberman's 1988 upset of Republican Party incumbent Senator Lowell Weicker, Lieberman's religious observance was mostly viewed in terms of refusal to campaign on the Jewish Sabbath. This changed when Al Gore chose Lieberman as the running mate; a Lieberman press officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said:
He refers to himself as observant, as opposed to Orthodox, because he doesn't follow the strict Orthodox code and doesn't want to offend the Orthodox, and his wife feels the same way.</p>
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The Liebermans keep a kosher home and observe the Jewish Sabbath. In one notable instance, then-Senator Lieberman walked to the Capitol after Sabbath services to block a Republican filibuster.</p>
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Lieberman has said that there is currently "a constitutional place for faith in our public life", and that the Constitution does not provide for "freedom from religion". He attends Kesher Israel Congregation in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. and Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol – B'nai Israel, The Westville Synagogue, New Haven, Connecticut. He also attends Congregation Agudath Sholom in his hometown Stamford.</p>
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Lieberman was elected as a "reform Democrat" to the Connecticut Senate in 1970, where he served for 10 years, including the last six as Majority Leader. He suffered his first defeat in Connecticut elections in the Reagan landslide year of 1980, losing the race for the Third District Congressional seat to Republican Lawrence Joseph DeNardis, a state senator from suburban Hamden with whom he had worked closely on bipartisan legislative efforts. In 1981 he wrote an admiring biography of long-time Connecticut and national Democratic leader John Moran Bailey, reviewing also in the book the previous 50 years of Connecticut political history. From 1983 to 1989, he served as Connecticut Attorney General. In the 1986 general election, Lieberman won more votes than any other Democrat on the statewide ticket, including Governor William O'Neill. As Attorney General, Lieberman emphasized consumer protection and environmental enforcement.</p>
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Lieberman was first elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat in the 1988 election, defeating liberal Republican Lowell Weicker by a margin of 10,000 votes. He scored the nation's biggest political upset that year, after being backed by a coalition of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with support from conservative Republicans (most notably including National Review founder and Firing Line host William F. Buckley, Jr. and his brother, former New York Senator James L. Buckley), who were disappointed in three-term Republican incumbent Weicker's liberal voting record and personal style. During the campaign, he received support from Connecticut's Cuban American community which was unhappy with Weicker. Lieberman has since remained firmly anti-Castro.</p>

<p>Shortly after his first election to the Senate, Lieberman was approached by incoming Majority Leader George Mitchell who advised him, "Pick out two or three areas that you're really interested in and learn them so that your colleagues know what you're talking about [...] You're going to have more influence even as a freshman than you think because you know there's hundreds of issues and inevitably we rely on each other." Recalling the conversation, Lieberman has said, "that was true when I first came in, although you could see partisanship beginning to eat away at that. But at the end of my 24 years, it was really so partisan that it was hard to make the combinations to get to 60 votes to break a filibuster to get things done."</p>

<p>Lieberman's initiatives against violence in video games are considered the chief impetus behind the establishment of an industry-wide video game rating system during the early 1990s.</p>

<p>In 1994, Lieberman made history by winning by the largest landslide ever in a Connecticut Senate race, drawing 67 percent of the vote and beating his opponent by more than 350,000 votes. Like Bill Clinton and Dick Gephardt, Lieberman served as chair of the Democratic Leadership Council from 1995 to 2001. In 1998, Lieberman was the first prominent Democrat to publicly challenge Clinton for the judgment exercised in his affair with Monica Lewinsky. However, he voted against removing Clinton from office by impeachment.</p>

<p>Lieberman sought the Democratic Party's renomination for U.S. Senate from Connecticut in 2006 but lost to the comparatively more liberal Ned Lamont, a Greenwich businessman and antiwar candidate.</p>

<p>Lieberman was officially endorsed by the Connecticut Democratic Convention, which met in May. However, Lamont received 33 percent of the delegates' votes, forcing an August primary.</p>

<p>In July, Lieberman announced that he would file papers to appear on the November ballot should he lose the primary, saying, "I'm a loyal Democrat, but I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party, and that's my loyalty to my state and my country." He said he would continue to sit as a Democrat in the Senate even if he was defeated in the primary and elected on an unaffiliated line, and expressed concern for a potentially low turnout. On July 10, the Lieberman campaign officially filed paperwork allowing him to collect signatures for the newly formed Connecticut for Lieberman party ballot line.</p>

<p>On August 8, 2006, Lieberman conceded the Democratic primary election to Ned Lamont, saying, "For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand," and announced he would run in the 2006 November election as an independent candidate on the Connecticut for Lieberman ticket, against both Lamont and the Republican candidate, Alan Schlesinger.</p>

<p>On November 7, Lieberman won re-election with 50% of the vote. Ned Lamont garnered 40% of ballots cast and Alan Schlesinger won 10%. Lieberman received support from 33% of Democrats, 54% of independents and 70% of Republicans.</p>

<p>When control of the Senate switched from Republicans to Democrats in June 2001, Lieberman became Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, with oversight responsibilities for a broad range of government activities. He was also a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and chair of its Subcommittee Clean Air, Wetlands and Private Property; the Armed Services Committee, where he chaired the Airland Subcommittee and sat on the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities; and the Small Business Committee. When Republicans gained control of the Senate in January 2003, Lieberman resumed his role as ranking minority member of the committees he had once chaired.</p>

<p>In 2002, as Chairman of what was then known as the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Lieberman led the fight to create a new Department of Homeland Security. One month after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, he introduced legislation to reorganize the federal government to better protect the American people from terrorism and natural disasters and steered a bipartisan plan through his committee. After months of opposing the plan, the White House eventually endorsed the concept. Legislation that passed Congress in 2002 created a department incorporating key organizational elements Senator Lieberman advocated.</p>

<p>In 2006, Senators Lieberman and Collins drafted legislation to reshape the Federal Emergency Management Agency into an agency that would more effectively prepare for and respond to catastrophes, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The legislation elevated FEMA to special status within the Department of Homeland Security, much like the Coast Guard and designated FEMA's head to be the President's point person during an emergency. The bill also called for the reunification of FEMA's preparedness and response functions, giving it responsibility for all phases of emergency management. And the measure strengthened FEMA's regional offices, creating dedicated interagency "strike teams" to provide the initial federal response to a disaster in the region. The legislation passed Congress in September 2006. As the 2007 hurricane season approached, Lieberman held an oversight hearing on implementation of the FEMA reforms on May 22, 2007. He urged FEMA to implement the reforms at a quicker pace.</p>

<p>Lieberman actively oversaw the government response to the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) pandemic and held four hearings on the subject in 2009, including one in Connecticut. He has continually pressed the United States Department of Health and Human Services to distribute vaccines and antiviral medications at a quicker pace and to streamline the process.</p>

<p>In the 110th Congress, Lieberman was Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is responsible for assuring the Federal Government's efficiency and effectiveness. He was also a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee; Senate Armed Services Committee, where he was Chairman of the Subcommittee on Air Land Forces and sat on the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities; and the Small Business Committee.</p>

<p>survey in October 2010 showed that Lieberman had an approval rating of 31% and that just 24% of Connecticut voters felt he deserved re-election. Lieberman announced on January 19, 2011 that he would retire from the Senate at the end of his fourth term. Lieberman gave his farewell address on December 12, 2012. He was succeeded by Democratic representative Chris Murphy.</p>

<p>Following his retirement from the Senate, Lieberman became senior counsel of the white collar criminal defense and investigations practice at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, a law firm in New York City whose notable clients include Donald Trump. In March 2013, it was announced that Lieberman would be joining the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank as co-chairman of their American Internationalism Project, alongside former Republican Senator Jon Kyl. In February 2014, Lieberman was named as Counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research. Additionally, he serves as the Lieberman Chair of Public Policy and Public Service at Yeshiva University, where he teaches an undergraduate course in political science.</p>
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In August 2000, Lieberman was selected as the nominee for Vice President of the United States by Al Gore, the Democratic Party nominee for President. Among the last round candidates were U.S. senators Bob Graham, John Kerry and John Edwards. The nomination committee was headed by Warren Christopher. Lieberman was the first Jewish candidate on a major political party ticket. Of the vetting process, Lieberman related a conversation in which Christopher told him the background checks would be "like a medical procedure without an anesthesia."</p>

<p>The Gore/Lieberman ticket won a plurality of the popular vote, with over half a million more votes than the Republican ticket of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but they were defeated in the Electoral College by a vote of 271 to 266 after an intense legal battle concerning the outcome in disputed counties (see Bush v. Gore). The US Supreme Court ruled that the Florida Supreme Court's ordered recount was unconstitutional and said that it defers to what it believes is the Florida Supreme Court's judgment that December 12 is the deadline for all recounts—thus preventing a new recount from being ordered.</p>

<p>Like Democratic VP candidates Lyndon B. Johnson in 1960, Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, John Edwards in 2004, and Joe Biden in 2008, Lieberman's Senate term was due to expire during the election cycle. He decided to run for re-election to maintain his seat, as Johnson, Bentsen and Biden did. Three won re-election to the Senate, but Johnson and Biden then gave up their Senate seats because they were also elected vice president. Edwards did not simultaneously run for re-election to the Senate.</p>

<p>On January 13, 2003, Lieberman announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination as a candidate in the 2004 presidential election.</p>

<p>Describing his presidential hopes, Lieberman opined that his historically hawkish stance would appeal to voters. Indeed, he initially led in polls of primaries, but due to his political positions he failed to win a support of liberal Democratic voters, who dominated the primaries.</p>

<p>Prior to his defeat in New Hampshire, Lieberman declared that his campaign was picking up "Joementum"; however, he failed to provide such momentum during the New Hampshire primary debates, held at Saint Anselm College days before the primary. On February 3, 2004, Lieberman withdrew his candidacy after failing to win any of the five primaries or two caucuses held that day. He acknowledged to the Hartford Courant that his support for the war in Iraq was a large part of his undoing with voters.</p>

<p>Lieberman's former running candidate Al Gore did not support Lieberman's presidential run, and in December 2003 endorsed Howard Dean's candidacy, saying "This is about all of us and all of us need to get behind the strongest candidate [Dean]."</p>

<p>Finally Lieberman withdrew from the race without winning a single contest. In total popular vote he placed 7th behind the eventual nominee, Massachusetts senator John Kerry; the eventual vice presidential nominee, North Carolina Senator John Edwards; former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean; Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich; retired General Wesley Clark; and Reverend Al Sharpton.
On December 17, 2007, Lieberman endorsed Republican Senator John McCain for president in 2008, going against his party and going back on his stance in July 2006 when he stated "I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008." Lieberman cited his agreement with McCain's stance on the War on Terrorism as the primary reason for the endorsement.</p>

<p>On June 5, Lieberman launched "Citizens for McCain," hosted on the McCain campaign website, to recruit Democratic support for John McCain's candidacy. He emphasized the group's outreach to supporters of Hillary Clinton, who was at that time broadly expected to lose the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama. Citizens for McCain was prominently featured in McCain team efforts to attract disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters such as Debra Bartoshevich.</p>

<p>Lieberman spoke at the 2008 Republican National Convention on behalf of McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Lieberman was alongside McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham during a visit to French president Nicolas Sarkozy on March 21, 2008. Lieberman was mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee on a McCain ticket, although Lieberman had denied interest. ABC News reported that Lieberman was McCain's first choice for vice president until several days before the selection, when McCain had decided that picking Lieberman would alienate the conservative base of the Republican Party. Lieberman had been mentioned as a possible Secretary of State under a McCain administration.</p>

<p>Many Democrats wanted Lieberman to be stripped of his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs due to his support for John McCain which went against the party's wishes. Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reached out to Lieberman, asking him to caucus with the Republicans. Ultimately, the Senate Democratic Caucus voted 42 to 13 to allow Lieberman to keep chairmanship (although he did lose his membership for the Environment and Public Works Committee). Subsequently, Lieberman announced that he will continue to caucus with the Democrats. Lieberman credited President-elect Barack Obama for helping him keep his chairmanship. Obama had privately urged Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid not to remove Lieberman from his position. Reid stated that Lieberman's criticism of Obama during the election angered him, but that "if you look at the problems we face as a nation, is this a time we walk out of here saying, 'Boy did we get even'?" Senator Tom Carper of Delaware also credited the Democrats' decision on Lieberman to Obama's support, stating that "If Barack can move on, so can we."</p>

<p>Some members of the Democratic caucus were reportedly angry at the decision not to punish Lieberman more severely. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (who is an Independent) stated that he voted to punish Lieberman "because while millions of people worked hard for Obama, Lieberman actively worked for four more years of President Bush's policies."</p>

<p>Lieberman's embrace of certain conservative policies and in particular his endorsement of John McCain have been cited as factors for his high approval rating among Republicans in Connecticut with 66% of Republicans approving of him along with 52% of independents also approving of his job performance, this however is also cited for his mediocre approval rating among Democrats: 44% approving and 46% disapproving.</p>

<p>In September 2018, Lieberman gave an eulogy at the funeral of John McCain, in which he stated that he had turned down a request to serve as McCain's 2008 running mate.</p>
<p>Lieberman is the author of seven books: The Power Broker (1966), a biography of the late Democratic Party chairman John M. Bailey; The Scorpion and the Tarantula (1970), a study of early efforts to control nuclear proliferation; The Legacy (1981), a history of Connecticut politics from 1930 to 1980; Child Support in America (1986), a guidebook on methods to increase the collection of child support from delinquent fathers; In Praise of Public Life (2000); An Amazing Adventure (2003), reflecting on his 2000 vice presidential run; and The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath (2011), written with David Klinghoffer.</p>

<p>In his book Ticking Time Bomb: Counter-Terrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government's Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack (2011), he described Australian Muslim preacher Feiz Mohammad, American-Yemeni imam Anwar al-Awlaki, Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal, and Pakistani-American Samir Khan as "virtual spiritual sanctioners" who use the internet to offer religious justification for Islamist terrorism.</p>

Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut’s four-term United States senator and Vice President Al Gore’s Democratic running mate in the 2000 presidential election, which was won by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney when the Supreme Court halted a Florida ballot recount, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 82. His family said in a statement that the cause was complications of a fall. His brother-in-law Ary Freilich said that Mr. Lieberman’s fall occurred at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and that he died at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Upper Manhattan.

LIEBERMAN, Joseph I., a Senator from Connecticut; born in Stamford, Fairfield County, Ct., February 24, 1942; attended Stamford public schools; graduated from Yale University 1964; received law degree from Yale Law School 1967; member of Connecticut state senate 1970-1980, majority leader 1974-1980; attorney general of Connecticut 1983, 1986-1988; author; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1988; reelected as a Democrat in 1994 and 2000; reelected as an Independent Democrat in 2006, and served from January 3, 1989, to January 3, 2013; chair, Committee on Governmental Affairs (One Hundred Seventh Congress [January 3-20, 2001; June 6, 2001-January 3, 2003]), Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (One Hundred Tenth to One Hundred Twelfth Congresses); unsuccessful candidate for vice president on Democratic ticket with Al Gore, Jr., in 2000; unsuccessful candidate for Democratic nomination for president, 2004; was not a candidate for reelection to the Senate in 2012.