Joseph Isadore Lieberman

Joseph Isadore Lieberman was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to an observant Orthodox Jewish family. He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School, serving as Connecticut Attorney General from 1983 to 1988 before pulling off an upset victory over liberal Republican Senator Lowell Weicker in 1988.

Lieberman served four terms in the US Senate, gaining a reputation as an independent centrist and foreign-policy hawk. In August 2000, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore selected Lieberman as his running mate, making Lieberman the first Jewish American on a major-party national ticket; the Gore-Lieberman ticket won the national popular vote by over 500,000 votes before losing the Electoral College following the contested Supreme Court decision in Florida. Following the September 11 attacks, Lieberman championed legislation establishing the Department of Homeland Security. After losing the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary, he won re-election as an independent, later serving as founding chairman of the bipartisan political group No Labels.