Van Hollen, Chris (1959-…), a Democrat from the Southern state of Maryland, was elected to the United States Senate in 2016. Van Hollen had previously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Christopher Van Hollen, Jr., was born in Karachi, Pakistan, on Jan. 10, 1959. At that time, his father was working with the U.S. Foreign Service in South Asia. After the family returned to the United States in the late 1970’s, his mother worked as an intelligence analyst with the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. An intelligence analyst gathers information from a variety of sources and provides assessments of its importance to national security.
In 1982, Van Hollen completed a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He then earned a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University in Massachusetts in 1985. After receiving his master’s, he worked as an assistant to Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland and then as an aide to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He received a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1990. He then worked as a lawyer in private practice.
In 1990, Van Hollen won election to the Maryland House of Delegates, known as a house of representatives in other states. In 1994, he won election to the Maryland Senate. He was reelected in 1998. In 2002, Van Hollen was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing a Maryland district north of Washington, D.C. He won reelection every two years through 2014. In the House, Van Hollen served as a member of the powerful Budget Committee. In 2016, he ran a successful campaign to succeed U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, a fellow Democrat, who had not sought reelection. Van Hollen won reelection in 2022.
