44 Facts About Chris Shays

Christopher Hunter Shays was born on October 18,1945 and is an American politician.

Chris Shays previously served in the United States House of Representatives as representative of the 4th District of Connecticut.

Chris Shays was the most senior member of the House of Representatives to be defeated in the 2008 election.

In 2009, Chris Shays was appointed to co-chair the Commission on Wartime Contracting.

Chris Shays co-chaired the government watchdog commission that identified and raised alarm over $60 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse in wartime contingency contracting and presented to Congress reforms to address this wasteful spending.

Chris Shays was a candidate for the 2012 Republican US Senate nomination to replace retiring Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman.

Chris Shays was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Margaret "Peggy" and Thurston Crane Chris Shays.

Chris Shays grew up in Darien, and graduated from Darien High School in 1964.

Chris Shays attended the Christian Science Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, and received both a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Public Administration from New York University.

At the age of 29, Chris Shays was first elected to the Connecticut House where he served from 1975 to 1987.

Chris Shays served simultaneously as the ranking member of both the Appropriations Committee and the Committee on Finance, Revenue, and Bonding.

Chris Shays served as a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Chris Shays served six days in jail on a contempt charge when he was a member of the Connecticut Legislature protesting judicial corruption.

In 1987, Chris Shays won a special election to fill the vacant seat of the late Congressman Stewart McKinney.

Chris Shays represented the 4th congressional district until losing to Jim Himes in 2008.

Chris Shays verbally berated his unpaid college intern for the miscommunication.

Chris Shays is labeled by his supporters as a "maverick" and "independent thinker", while conservative detractors regard him as a RINO.

Chris Shays is pro-choice on abortion but voted for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Chris Shays was endorsed by the Brady Campaign for his support for gun control and was one of only six Republicans to vote against banning lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors in 2005.

Chris Shays was one of the few Republicans to oppose amending the Constitution to ban flag-burning.

Chris Shays was one of only four Republicans to vote against all four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.

Chris Shays is a member of or supported by the Republican Main Street Partnership, The Republican Majority for Choice, Republicans for Environmental Protection, It's My Party Too, and the Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus.

Chris Shays voted in favor of the 2003 congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq.

From 2003 until August 24,2006, Chris Shays was a "stalwart supporter" of the War in Iraq, and of a continued US military presence there.

Chris Shays has faced a continued political challenge to his views in a district where recent polls show a solid majority of voters disapprove of the 2003 US decision to invade Iraq.

On June 11,2006 Chris Shays told the Hartford Courant that his position on the war was a matter of principle and he was not going to stop talking about it.

Chris Shays said he was still a supporter of the war, but supported a timetable in order to "encourage some political will on the part of Iraqis".

Chris Shays has staunchly disputed media claims that he has flip-flopped his position on Iraq.

That same day, he told other reporters, "I totally support the war," and Chris Shays supported the President's decision to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq on February 17,2007, when he voted in favor of the surge.

Chris Shays served as a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1975 to 1987, representing part of Stamford.

Just a few months after starting his seventh term in the state house, Chris Shays entered a special election for the 4th District after 16-year incumbent Stewart McKinney died of AIDS, and won with 57 percent of the vote.

Chris Shays won the seat in his own right in 1988 and was reelected nine times.

From 1988 to 2002, Chris Shays was reelected fairly handily, never dropping below 57 percent of the vote even as the 4th turned more Democratic at the national level.

In 2006, Chris Shays was in "the fight of his political life", facing a rematch with Farrell.

Chris Shays lost Bridgeport, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport, and Weston to Farrell, but her margin in those communities was insufficient to overcome Chris Shays' lead in the more Republican towns in the district.

Chris Shays' defeat resulted in there being no Republicans representing New England in the House for the first time since the GOP's inception in the 1850s.

Chris Shays officially entered the 2012 US Senate race on August 22,2011, to replace retiring senator Joe Lieberman.

The Chris Shays campaign asserted the former Congressman showed more electability than McMahon, due to her loss in an open Senate seat contest in 2010 by a large margin despite spending $50 million of her own money, citing her high unfavorable numbers among state voters, and the weak fundraising numbers of the McMahon campaign.

Outspent by more than $60 million, Chris Shays was defeated by a three-to-one margin in the primary.

Chris Shays faced Democratic Representative Chris Murphy in the general election and lost, marking her second consecutive defeat in two years.

In 2013, Shays was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v Perry case.

Chris Shays was mentioned as a potential candidate for Governor of Connecticut in 2014, but ultimately did not enter that race.

Chris Shays served as a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics in Spring 2017.

Chris Shays endorsed Joe Biden, for President of the United States of America in the 2020 United States elections.