Lieberman, Joseph Isadore << LEE bur muhn, JOH zehf IHZ uh dohr >> (1942-2024), represented Connecticut in the United States Senate from 1989 to 2013. A lifelong Democrat, Lieberman became an independent in 2006. Lieberman was the Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States in 2000. He and his running mate, Vice President Al Gore, lost to their Republican opponents, Texas governor George W. Bush and former U.S. secretary of defense Richard B. Cheney, in an extremely close election. Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, was the first Jewish vice presidential candidate of a major American political party.
Early life.
Lieberman was born in Stamford, Connecticut, on Feb. 24, 1942. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1964 and a law degree in 1967, both from Yale University. After graduation, he began practicing law.
In 1965, Lieberman married Elizabeth (Betty) Haas, whom he had met when they both worked as summer interns for Connecticut Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff. The couple had two children, Matthew and Rebecca. They divorced in 1981. In 1983, Lieberman married Hadassah Freilich, who had a son, Ethan, from a previous marriage. The couple had a daughter, Hana. Hadassah Lieberman worked in public relations and health care consulting.
Political career.
Lieberman ran for public office for the first time in 1970. He was elected to the Connecticut state Senate and served until 1981. From 1975 to 1981, he was the Senate majority leader. In 1980, Lieberman ran for the U.S. House of Representatives but lost. He served as Connecticut’s attorney general from 1983 to 1988. In 1989, Lieberman began his service as a U.S. senator representing Connecticut.
As a member of the Senate, Lieberman became known for his criticism of violence on television and in rap music and video games. He encouraged those industries to voluntarily reduce such violence so that legislation to restrict it would not be necessary. He supported an increase in the legal minimum wage, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. In 1998, Lieberman was the first Democratic senator to publicly criticize Clinton for having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and trying to cover up his misconduct. Lieberman chaired the Senate’s Committee on Governmental Affairs (later the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs) from 2001 to 2003. He became the committee’s chairman again in 2007.
In 2003, Lieberman announced that he would campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. However, he dropped out of the race in early 2004 due to insufficient voter support. In 2006, he lost a Senate Democratic primary race to businessman Ned Lamont. Lamont had criticized Lieberman for defending President Bush’s foreign policies, particularly the war in Iraq. The day after the primary election, Lieberman filed paperwork to run as an independent candidate. He defeated Lamont in the November 2006 election.
In 2007 and 2008, Lieberman strongly supported the presidential campaign of John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona. Lieberman, who described himself as an Independent Democrat, praised McCain’s approach to foreign policy and said that the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, lacked the experience to be president. Lieberman also spoke at the Republican National Convention in September. Obama won the November election but helped persuade Senate Democrats not to strip Lieberman of his chairmanship. Lieberman did not seek reelection to the Senate in 2012.
Lieberman wrote several books, including The Scorpion and the Tarantula (1970), about the spread of nuclear weapons; Child Support in America (1986); and In Praise of Public Life (2000). Lieberman died on March 27, 2024.
See also Gore, Al; Vice president of the United States.
