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Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. | Russell Dana Feingold (born March 2, 1953) is an American politician and has been a U.S. senator from Wisconsin since 1993. He is a member of the Democratic Party.
Personal Background
Feingold was born in Janesville, Wisconsin to Leon and Sylvia Feingold. He is married to Mary Feingold. He has two daughters from a previous marriage, Jessica and Ellen and two step-children, Sam and Ted Speerschneider. When not in Washington, Feingold resides in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Education and Early Career After receiving his diploma from Joseph A. Craig High School in Janesville, Feingold went on to graduate from UW-Madison with honors in 1975, went to the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship in 1977, and finished Harvard University Law School in 1979 with honors. He worked as an attorney at private law firms from 1979 until 1985. In 1982 he was elected to the Wisconsin State Senate where he served until his election to the United States Senate.
Campaigns
Senate Feingold's senatorial career began in 1992 with a surprising victory over Republican incumbent Robert W. Kasten, Jr. Feingold won the Democratic Senate primary against two opponents. During the general election cycle, Feingold's campaign created several offbeat political ads emphasizing Kasten's perceived lack of availability to the people of Wisconsin, a strategy which helped him achieve victory with a 6% edge over Kasten.
Feingold continued to oppose soft money during his 1998 reelection campaign, despite millions of dollars spent by his opponents in attack ads against him during the general election. In the end Feingold managed a 2% win over his Republican opponent Mark Neumann.
In the 2004 Senate elections, Feingold defeated Republican candidate Tim Michels 56%-44%, earning a third term. Notably, the Feingold campaign was assisted by significantly more soft money than it did during the 1998 campaign. Some Republicans charged that this was hypocritical considering his positions on campaign finance reform, but his supporters noted that candidates have little control over outside political action committees. In either case, Feingold's victory was seen by many pundits as a vindication of the many controversial stances that he had taken during his second term, as it was by far his largest electoral victory thus far. Feingold even won many counties which also supported the re-election of Republican president George W. Bush.
Senator Feingold regularly holds what he refers to as "listening sessions" in all 72 Wisconsin counties to listen to his constituents' concerns, and has held more than 850 since he was elected to office.
Perhaps as a result of his success in the 2004 elections, in late December 2004 Feingold was appointed as one of four deputy whips for Senate Democrats. Feingold pledged the new role would not sway his maverick stance within the party or the chamber.
Possible Presidential run There is talk of Feingold seeking the Democratic Party's Presidential or Vice-Presidential nomination in 2008. In December of 2004 a Draft Feingold (http://www.draftruss.org/) website appeared. In late January of 2005, Feingold told the Tiger Bay Club of Volusia County, Florida that he intended to travel around the country before deciding whether or not to run in 2008. [1] (http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/feb05/298859.asp)
Bills and policy positions Feingold's primary legislative focus has been on campaign finance reform, fair trade policies, health care reform, environmentalism, a multilateral foreign policy, Social Security, and abolishing the death penalty. Senator Feingold was the only Democratic senator to vote against a motion to dismiss Congress' 1998-1999 impeachment case of President Bill Clinton, and in 2001 was the deciding vote to allow a full floor vote on the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft. Neither decision was popular with his party, but Feingold claims that he voted based on respect for the due process of law and the right for a President to choose his Cabinet, not because of his own personal opinions on Clinton or Ashcroft. Feingold has also been an opponent of NAFTA and other free trade agreements, an unpopular position among some Democrats, but one lauded by others.
Recently, the senator has been devoting his attention to the issue of Congressional pay raises. During his 1992 campaign, one of his three major campaign promises was that he would accept no pay raises during his term. Since then, he has returned more than $50,000 of pay raises to the U.S. Treasury. He is perhaps one of Congress's least wealthy members, with a declared net worth of $150,000.
On December 21, 2004, Feingold wrote an article (http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/12/21/alabama/index_np.html) for popular webzine Salon.com regarding his golfing trip to Greenville, Alabama. After noting how friendly the people were, and that Wisconsin had many similar places, he expressed his sorrow that such a poverty-stricken area was "the reddest spot on the whole map", in spite of Republican policies that Feingold considered incredibly destructive to the lives of the poor and middle class. Alabama's Republican governor Bob Riley and Greenville mayor Dexter McLendon were perturbed at Feingold's description of "check-cashing stores and abject trailer parks, and some of the hardest-used cars for sale on a very rundown lot." McLendon invited Feingold back for a more complete tour of the city, and Feingold agreed.
Campaign finance reform Feingold is perhaps best known for his work alongside Senator John McCain on the campaign finance reform law, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known as the McCain-Feingold bill.
Patriot Act Feingold was the only senator to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act, which, he said, infringed upon citizens' civil liberties. Many at the time predicted his political career was over, but a majority of Wisconsin residents had little problem with his vote. Later, as public opinion turned against certain portions of the Act, his vote became a major selling-point for his re-election campaign.
Ideological rankings Americans For Democratic Action, a liberal advocacy group which rates members of Congress on a scale of 0 to 100, with zero being totally conservative and 100 being completely progressive, gave Senator Feingold a lifetime average rating of 96. With the death of Minnesota's Senator Paul Wellstone in 2002, this leaves Feingold tied with California's Senator Barbara Boxer for the title of the most progressive person in the Senate according to that advocacy group. At the same time, the Concord Coalition (http://www.concordcoalition.org/), a nonpartisan advocacy group that pushes for fiscal responsibility, has placed him on its "Senate Honor Roll" every year since 1997, making their suggestion that Senator Feingold is also one of the top budget hawks in Congress.
Committee Assignments
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