Bradley, Bill (1943-…), a New Jersey Democrat, served in the United States Senate from 1979 to 1997. He did not run for reelection in 1996. In the Senate, Bradley was a leading supporter of tax reform. He first gained fame as an outstanding basketball player. In 1999, Bradley began campaigning for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, but he dropped out of the race in early 2000.
William Warren Bradley was born on July 28, 1943, in Crystal City, Missouri. He won all-America honors in basketball at Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton in 1965, he accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in England. Bradley began his professional basketball career in 1967, when he joined the New York Knickerbockers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a forward. He retired from basketball in 1977.
As a U.S. senator, Bradley attracted national attention for coauthoring the Bradley-Gephardt “fair tax” bill, which called for a reduction in the number of income tax brackets and elimination of most tax deductions. These concepts were incorporated into the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Bradley also strongly supported the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an oil stockpile designed to prevent future U.S. oil shortages.
