Joseph Isadore Lieberman is an American politician, lobbyist, and attorney who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013.
85 Facts About Joe Lieberman
2.
Joe Lieberman was elected as a Reform Democrat in 1970 to the Connecticut Senate, where he served three terms as Majority Leader.
3.
Joe Lieberman narrowly defeated Republican Party incumbent Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the US Senate and was re-elected in 1994,2000, and 2006.
4.
Joe Lieberman was the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in the 2000 presidential election, running with presidential nominee and then Vice President Al Gore, and becoming the first Jewish candidate on a US major party presidential ticket.
5.
Joe Lieberman unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in the 2004 US presidential election.
6.
Joe 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.
7.
Joe Lieberman was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Henry, who ran a liquor store, and Marcia Joe Lieberman.
8.
Joe Lieberman's family is Jewish; his paternal grandparents emigrated from Congress Poland and his maternal grandparents were from Austria-Hungary.
9.
Joe Lieberman's roommate was Richard Sugarman, a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Vermont and advisor to 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
10.
Joe Lieberman later attended Yale Law School, receiving his LLB degree in 1967.
11.
Joe 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.
12.
Joe Lieberman 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.
13.
Joe 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.
14.
Joe Lieberman 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.
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In 1994, Joe 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.
16.
In 1998, Joe Lieberman was the first prominent Democrat to publicly challenge Clinton for the judgment exercised in his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
17.
Joe Lieberman sought the Democratic Party's renomination for US Senate from Connecticut in 2006 but lost to the comparatively more liberal Ned Lamont, a Greenwich businessman and antiwar candidate.
18.
Mel Sembler, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman, helped organize a reception that raised a "couple hundred thousand dollars" for Joe Lieberman, who was personally in attendance.
19.
When control of the Senate switched from Republicans to Democrats in June 2001, Joe Lieberman became Chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, with oversight responsibilities for a broad range of government activities.
20.
Joe Lieberman was 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.
21.
When Republicans gained control of the Senate in January 2003, Joe Lieberman resumed his role as ranking minority member of the committees he had once chaired.
22.
In 2002, as Chairman of what was then known as the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Joe Lieberman led the fight to create a new Department of Homeland Security.
23.
Joe Lieberman urged FEMA to implement the reforms at a quicker pace.
24.
Joe Lieberman actively oversaw the government response to the H1N1 influenza pandemic and held four hearings on the subject in 2009, including one in Connecticut.
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Joe Lieberman 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.
26.
Joe Lieberman was 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.
27.
Joe Lieberman was the first Jewish candidate on a major political party ticket.
28.
Joe Lieberman decided to run for re-election to maintain his seat, as Johnson, Bentsen and Biden did.
29.
On January 13,2003, Joe Lieberman announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination as a candidate in the 2004 presidential election.
30.
On February 3,2004, Joe Lieberman withdrew his candidacy after failing to win any of the five primaries or two caucuses held that day.
31.
Joe Lieberman acknowledged to the Hartford Courant that his support for the war in Iraq was a large part of his undoing with voters.
32.
Finally Joe Lieberman withdrew from the race without winning a single contest.
33.
Joe Lieberman 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.
34.
Joe Lieberman spoke at the 2008 Republican National Convention on behalf of McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
35.
Joe Lieberman was alongside McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham during a visit to French president Nicolas Sarkozy on March 21,2008.
36.
Joe Lieberman was mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee on a McCain ticket.
37.
ABC News reported that Joe Lieberman was McCain's first choice for vice president until several days before the selection, when McCain had decided that picking Joe Lieberman would alienate the conservative base of the Republican Party.
38.
Joe Lieberman had been mentioned as a possible Secretary of State under a McCain administration.
39.
Many Democrats wanted Joe 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.
40.
Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reached out to Joe Lieberman, asking him to caucus with the Republicans.
41.
Ultimately, the Senate Democratic Caucus voted 42 to 13 to allow Joe Lieberman to keep chairmanship.
42.
Subsequently, Joe Lieberman announced that he would continue to caucus with the Democrats.
43.
Joe Lieberman credited President-elect Barack Obama for helping him keep his chairmanship.
44.
In September 2018, Joe Lieberman gave a 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.
45.
Joe Lieberman was a supporter of the Iraq War and has urged action against Iran.
46.
In July 2008, Joe Lieberman spoke at the annual conference of Christians United for Israel then later, in July 2009, accepted from John Hagee CUFI's "Defender of Israel Award".
47.
Joe Lieberman has favored greater use of surveillance cameras by the federal government and referred to attempts by Congress to investigate illegal wire-tapping as "partisan gridlock".
48.
On June 19,2010, Joe Lieberman introduced a bill called "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010", which he co-wrote with Senator Susan Collins and Senator Thomas Carper.
49.
Joe Lieberman has been a major opponent of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
50.
Joe Lieberman was one of the Senate's strongest advocates for the war in Iraq.
51.
Joe Lieberman is a strong supporter of the US-Israel relationship.
52.
Joe Lieberman is a supporter of abortion rights and of the rights of gays and lesbians to adopt children, to be protected with hate crime legislation, and to serve openly in the military.
53.
Joe Lieberman was one of the Senate's leading opponents of violence in video games and on television.
54.
Joe Lieberman was an integral part in attempting to stop WikiLeaks from publishing further material using US-based corporations in the United States diplomatic cables leak of 2010.
55.
In June 2015, Joe Lieberman was a signatory to a public letter written by a bipartisan group of 19 US diplomats, experts, and others, on the then-pending negotiations for an agreement between Iran and world powers over Iran's nuclear program.
56.
Joe Lieberman announced on January 19,2011 that he would retire from the Senate at the end of his fourth term.
57.
In March 2013, it was announced that Joe 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.
58.
In February 2014, Joe Lieberman was named as Counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research.
59.
In 2015, Joe Lieberman served as co-chair of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, a commission that recommended changes to US policy regarding biodefense.
60.
Joe Lieberman headed the organization with former Governor Tom Ridge, and the Study Panel assembled in Washington DC for four meetings concerning current biodefense programs.
61.
In March 2016, Joe Lieberman was hired by the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation to assist the group in challenging Connecticut laws giving exemptions to only the top two state gaming tribes to build casinos.
62.
In 2016, Joe Lieberman joined the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, an organization founded to address anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bigotry in the United States.
63.
Joe Lieberman is on the advisory board of the Counter Extremism Project.
64.
In early 2017, Joe Lieberman introduced President elect Donald Trump's nominee as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee.
65.
On May 17,2017, Joe Lieberman was interviewed by President Donald Trump for the position of FBI Director, to replace recently fired James Comey.
66.
On May 25,2017, Joe Lieberman officially withdrew his name from consideration.
67.
Crowley would run on the Working Families Party line, without support of a major party, similar to how Joe Lieberman defeated Lamont in 2006.
68.
In January 2019 Joe Lieberman officially registered as a lobbyist working for ZTE but has stated that his work for the corporation will be limited to assess national security concerns and will not include actual lobbying.
69.
In July 2022, Joe Lieberman became one of the founding members of a group of US business and policy leaders which shares the goal of engaging constructively with China and improving US-China relations.
70.
Joe Lieberman met his first wife, Betty Haas, at the congressional office of Senator Abraham Ribicoff, where they worked as summer student interns.
71.
Joe Lieberman has held senior positions at the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, the American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International, Pfizer, National Research Council, Hoffmann-La Roche, and Lehman Brothers.
72.
Joe Lieberman has a stepson from Hadassah's previous marriage, Ethan Tucker.
73.
Joe Lieberman is the former head of the school of Greenfield Hebrew Academy in Atlanta.
74.
Joe Lieberman was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2020 United States Senate special election in Georgia.
75.
Rebecca, Joe Lieberman's daughter, graduated from Barnard College in 1991, and from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1997.
76.
Joe Lieberman is related to Disney Channel star Raviv Ullman of Phil of the Future.
77.
Joe Lieberman's second wife, Hadassah, is an observant Modern Orthodox Jew.
78.
Joe Lieberman 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.
79.
In one notable instance, then-Senator Joe Lieberman walked to the Capitol after Sabbath services to block a Republican filibuster.
80.
Joe 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".
81.
Joe Lieberman attends Congregation Agudath Sholom in his hometown of Stamford.
82.
Joe Lieberman is an admirer of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
83.
Joe Lieberman was the first person of Jewish background or faith to run on a major party Presidential ticket.
84.
Joe Lieberman says that he likes to sing, and is a fan of Frank Sinatra, whose song "My Way" was the theme of his first Senate campaign.
85.
In 2008, Joe Lieberman received the US Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.