1. Kenneth Robert Buck was born on February 16,1959 and is an American lawyer and politician who represented Colorado's 4th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2015 until his resignation in 2024.
58 Facts About Ken Buck
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Formerly the District Attorney for Weld County, Colorado, Ken Buck ran unsuccessfully for US Senate in 2010, losing to Democrat Michael Bennet.
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In Congress, Ken Buck joined the Freedom Caucus, and emerged as a staunch fiscal conservative, as well as one of the foremost proponents of antitrust enforcement in the Republican Party.
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Ken Buck earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics from Princeton University in 1981 with a 75-page long senior thesis titled "Saudi Arabia: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place".
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Ken Buck later said that the Princeton degree was "more important to [my father] than me".
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Ken Buck was an instructor at the University of Denver Law School and for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy in Colorado.
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In 1990, Ken Buck joined the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado, where he became Chief of the Criminal Division.
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Ken Buck was formally reprimanded and required to take ethics classes in 2001 for a meeting he had with defense attorneys about a felony case he thought should not be pursued.
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Ken Buck said he is "not proud" of the incident that effectively ended his career with the Justice Department, but that he felt it was unethical to prosecute such a "weak" case.
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Ken Buck was elected the District Attorney for Weld County, Colorado, in 2004.
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Ken Buck has said that his time enforcing laws for the Justice Department and Weld County stoked his desire to become a lawmaker himself.
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The tape, which Greeley police had the victim record during its investigation, was available before Ken Buck made his decision not to prosecute the woman's admitted rapist.
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The offender admitted he did it, but Ken Buck said I was to blame.
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Ken Buck further claimed he was not asking Bremer "to commit fraud", but asking "if he understood the decision of the central committee and if he was willing to follow the request of the Republican central committee".
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Ken Buck said he had no "personal stake in the process".
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Ken Buck stressed mounting governmental debt, an issue to which he frequently returned during the primary campaign.
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Ken Buck attempted to make a virtue of his meager war chest by positioning "himself as the small-money underdog" in an election cycle that saw a "populist push for outsider candidates to upset the Washington establishment".
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Ken Buck broke the rules, and the facts speak for themselves.
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Ken Buck was attacked for wanting to eliminate the Seventeenth Amendment and refusing to prosecute an alleged rapist as Weld County district attorney.
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Ken Buck had already filed to run on August 7,2013, before he sent out the email.
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In March 2014, Ken Buck withdrew from the race following the entrance of Cory Gardner and decided instead to run for Gardner's seat in Colorado's 4th congressional district.
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Ken Buck voted in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
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On March 4,2020, Ken Buck was one of only two representatives to vote against an $8.3 billion emergency aid package meant to help the United States respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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In September 2023, Ken Buck came out against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's decision to announce an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
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In February 2024, Ken Buck was one of three Republicans who voted against impeaching Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on both motions.
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Later the same year, Ken Buck was among the 71 Republicans who voted against the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.
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On October 3,2023, Buck was one of eight Republicans who voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House; he cited McCarthy's broken promises on spending negotiations as the main reason for his vote.
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Ken Buck was one of 20 Republicans to support a candidate other than Jim Jordan on the first ballot of the October 2023 Speaker vote, as he was concerned about Jordan's stance on the January 6 United States Capitol attack and his denial about the results of the 2020 presidential election.
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Ken Buck announced on November 1,2023, that he would not seek a sixth House term in the November 2024 election.
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Ken Buck announced on March 12,2024, that he would leave Congress within days, rather than when his term expired in January 2025.
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In December 2020, Buck was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated incumbent Donald Trump.
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Ken Buck later became one of a group of seven Republicans who did not support their colleagues' efforts to challenge the results of the election on January 6,2021.
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Ken Buck thus voted "present" in the nomination election and later did not vote for Jordan in any of the votes of the full House.
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Ken Buck stressed the need to elect a speaker and pass legislation .
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In 2022, Ken Buck was one of 39 Republicans to vote for the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act of 2022, an antitrust package that would crack down on corporations for anti-competitive behavior.
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In 2022, Ken Buck gave a speech on antitrust law and Big Tech at the National Conservatism Conference.
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Ken Buck opposed many of Colorado's COVID-19 restrictions, including the closing of businesses.
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Ken Buck voted against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, calling it "funding for pet projects in Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer's home states, money for Obamacare subsidies and Planned Parenthood, and stimulus checks for prisoners and illegal immigrants".
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In 2020, Ken Buck voted against the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021, which would prevent the president from withdrawing soldiers from Afghanistan without congressional approval.
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In 2021, during a House vote on a measure condemning the Myanmar coup d'etat that overwhelmingly passed, Ken Buck was among 14 Republican representatives who voted against it, for reasons reported to be unclear.
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In June 2021, Ken Buck was one of 49 House Republicans to vote to repeal the Use of Military Force Authorization against Iraq.
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In September 2021, Ken Buck was among 75 House Republicans to vote against the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022, which contains a provision that would require women to be drafted.
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Ken Buck was among 19 House Republicans to vote against the final passage of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.
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Ken Buck voted to provide Israel with support following 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
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Ken Buck opposes gun control and is endorsed by Gun Owners of America.
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Ken Buck has said he would "oppose any federal legislation to compile a database of gun owners or to further proscribe Americans' freedoms under the Second Amendment".
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Ken Buck opposes the health care reform laws enacted in 2010.
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Ken Buck supported the US military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.
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In 2015, Buck condemned the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v Hodges, which held that same-sex marriage bans violate the constitution.
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On June 19,2022, Ken Buck voted against The Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would protect the right to gay marriage at a federal level.
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In 2021 Ken Buck opposed the Equality Act, arguing that the legislation would force doctors to treat LGBT patients despite their religious objections, comparing it to forcing Jewish doctors to treat Nazi patients.
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In 2023 Ken Buck cosponsored the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023, which is a nationwide ban on transgender and intersex girls and women from participating in girls and women's sports.
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Ken Buck signed his support for Ajit Pai's motion to abolish net neutrality, alongside 106 other Republican representatives.
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Ken Buck proposed privatizing Veterans Administration hospitals so they would "be better run".
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Ken Buck was among the 71 Republicans who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.
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Ken Buck's son Cody was born on 1988 and is a 2011 graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, New York.
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Ken Buck married his second wife, Perry, in 1996 and they announced their divorce on November 9,2018, three days after the midterm election.
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Ken Buck's book Crushed: Big Tech's War on Free Speech was published in 2023.