Joe Lieberman was a former U.S. Senator and vice-presidential candidate who ran with Al Gore in 2000 and was the first person of Jewish faith on one of the two major parties’ U.S. presidential tickets.
- Died: March 27, 2024 (Who else died on March 27?)
- Details of death: Died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital from injuries sustained in a fall at the age of 82.
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Joe Lieberman’s legacy
Lieberman was a Yale University graduate who earned his law degree from Yale Law School and practiced in New Haven, Connecticut, before going into politics. He was elected to the Connecticut state senate in 1970 as a Reform Democrat, serving six years as Majority Leader and ten years overall. He was also Connecticut Attorney General from 1983 to 1989.
In an upset victory, Lieberman ascended to the U.S. Senate in 1988, defeating Republican Lowell Weicker with the help of conservative support. He made waves in the early 1990s when he launched an aggressive push against violence in video games, a cause that helped force reforms in the industry, including the creation of a video game ratings system.
Lieberman was among the first democrats to criticize President Bill Clinton for his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Despite this, Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, chose Lieberman as his running mate in the 2000 presidential election. The pair narrowly lost in a Supreme Court-decided election that is still considered among the most controversial in U.S. history.
In 2006, he lost the Democratic Primary to Ned Lamont and was pushed off the ticket. However, he ran in the general election as an Independent, and with the help of overwhelming support by Republican voters, won reelection to the Senate.
While in the Senate, Lieberman pushed for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), lobbied for reforms at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and ran for president in 2004, losing in the Democratic Primary. Though still caucusing with Democrats, in 2008, he endorsed Republican John McCain (1936–2018) over Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Lieberman and McCain had been close friends and allies. He endorsed Clinton and Biden in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
Lieberman left the senate in 2012 and practiced law in New York, but in 2023, he entered politics once more with No Labels, a political organization that has called itself a centrist alternative to the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in the 2024 election.
He was also an author, penning books on politics (1966’s “The Power Broker”), nuclear proliferation (1970’s “The Scorpion and the Tarantula”), a memoir of the 2000 election (2003’s “An Amazing Adventure”), and others. He received an American Patriot Award in 2011 from the National Defense University, and at the 2008 Jefferson Awards was given the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official.
On the influence of faith in his life:
“It’s a wonderful organizing principle of my life. It gives it order, a sense of purpose, but it also provides me, in terms of the Sabbath, with a sense of sanctuary in my week which has become more important to me as I’ve gone on in life and become busier.”—from a 1997 interview for Reuters
Tributes to Joe Lieberman
Full obituary: The New York Times
