Richard Durbin
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| Richard Durbin | |
| | |
| 1997–Present | |
| Political party: | Democratic |
|---|---|
| Preceded by: | Paul Simon |
| Succeeded by: | Incumbent (2009) |
| Born: | November 21, 1944 East St. Louis, Illinois |
| Spouse: | Loretta Schaefer |
| Religion: | Roman Catholic |
Richard Joseph Durbin, usually called Dick Durbin, (born November 21 1944) is currently the senior United States Senator from Illinois and Democratic Whip, the second highest position in the party leadership in the Senate. He will become Majority Whip of the US Senate when the 110th Congress convenes.
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[edit] Early life and family
Durbin was born in East St. Louis to an Irish-American father, William Durbin, and a Lithuanian-American mother, Ann Kutkin. He graduated from Assumption High School in East St. Louis in 1962. During his high school years he worked at a meat packing plant. He earned a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1966. He served as an intern in the office of Illinois Senator Paul Douglas during his senior year in college. Durbin earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1969 and was admitted to the Illinois bar later that year.
Durbin then opened a law practice in Springfield. He served as legal counsel to Lieutenant Governor Paul Simon from 1969 to 1972, and then as legal counsel to the Illinois State Senate Judiciary Committee from 1972 to 1982. He ran for Lieutenant Governor in 1978 as the running mate of State Superintendent of Schools Michael Bakalis; they were defeated by the Republican incumbents, Jim Thompson and Dave O'Neal. He then served as an associate professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine for five years while maintaining his law practice.
In 1982, Durbin won the Democratic nomination for the 20th Congressional District, which includes most of Springfield. He scored a huge upset, defeating 22-year incumbent Paul Findley. Durbin was reelected six more times, rarely facing serious opposition. He often points out that up until the campaign against Findley, he had never won an election–even losing an election to be a ward chief for the Democratic Party. But since the Findley campaign, he has never lost a race, either before the voters or within the House or Senate Democratic caucuses.
Durbin and his wife Loretta have two daughters, Christine and Jennifer, and a son, Paul.
[edit] Service in the U.S. Senate
Durbin became the Democratic Party's candidate for the Senate to replace the retiring Democratic incumbent, Paul Simon, in 1996. The two had long been friends, and Durbin considers Simon his mentor. He faced Republican State Representative Al Salvi in November.
Although the election was initially expected to be competitive, Durbin won by a surprising 15-point margin, undoubtedly helped by Bill Clinton's 18-point win in Illinois that year. He was handily reelected in 2002 as the Democrats nearly swept the state, taking all but one statewide office up for election.
Durbin has a reliably liberal voting record on most issues<ref>http://bolson.org/gov/us/senate/2005/Durbin.html</ref>. Among his legislative causes are asbestos regulation and environmental protection, particularly the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He has also been noted for his work, along with Senators Patrick Leahy and Charles Schumer, in blocking conservative judicial nominations, as well as his efforts to avert the closure of military bases in Illinois.
Durbin was one of the 23 US senators to vote against the Iraq Resolution to employ military force in 2002. <ref>http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/11/02/war/index.html</ref>
On November 5, 2004, Durbin announced that he had enough committed votes to become the Democratic Whip in the 109th Congress. Prior to this, he had been the Assistant Democratic Floor Leader, a position to which he was appointed by former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. During his time as the minority whip, he has been noted for his sharp debating skills. Durbin has also been noted for his effectiveness at framing and articulating the Democrats' message, and many have said that he is an effective whip both because of his strategic skills and because he has assiduously avoided any talk of higher aspirations.
In January of 2005, Durbin changed his longstanding position on sugar tariffs and price supports. After several years of voting to keep sugar quotas and price supports, Durbin now favors abolishing the program. "The sugar program depended on congressmen like me from states that grew corn," Durbin said, referring to the fact that, though they were formerly a single entity, the sugar market and the corn syrup market are now largely separate.<ref>http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/il10_kirk/sugarbloomberg.html</ref>
In April of 2006, TIME Magazine listed Senator Durbin as one of the American's 10 Best Senators<ref>http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1183948,00.html</ref>.
In May 2006, Durbin campaigned to maintain a $0.54 per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Durbin justified the tariff by joining Senator Barack Obama in stating that "ethanol imports are neither necessary nor a practical response to current gasoline prices," arguing instead that domestic ethanol production is sufficient and expanding.<ref>http://harkin.senate.gov/news.cfm?id=255348</ref>
In late 2006, when fellow Illinois Senator Barack Obama stated that he was considering a 2008 Presidential bid, Durbin became a vocal supporter of such an effort.
[edit] Interest group ratings
Senator Durbin's ratings from interest groups indicate how often he votes in agreement with their priorities; his particular scores indicate a liberal-Democratic record. Given his leadership position - especially since the Whip's job is to cajole senators to toe the party line - Durbin's voting record is very similar to the Democratic caucus position.
- AFL-CIO: 85%
- American Association of Retired Persons: 90%
- American Civil Liberties Union:60%
- American Public Health Association: 100%
- Cato Institute: 17%
- Christian Coalition: 0%
- Gun Owners of America: F-
- League of Conservation Voters: 89%
- NARAL: 100%
- National Education Association:91%
- National Rifle Association: F
- National Taxpayers Union:14%
- U.S. Chamber of Commerce: 35%
- Citizens Against Government Waste: 4%
[edit] Controversy
Sen. Durbin sparked controversy on June 14, 2005<ref>http://durbin.senate.gov/gitmo.cfm</ref> on the U.S. Senate floor during debate when he compared interrogation techniques used at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay described in an FBI report with those utilized by 20th century regimes including Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Khmer Rouge:
- When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here -- I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:
- On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold....On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
- If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
Republicans demanded an apology, claiming that comparing U.S. actions to the regimes Durbin included was insulting to both the U.S. and to victims of genocide, and provided terrorists with propaganda. Radio host Rush Limbaugh and White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove accused Durbin of treason.<ref>http://harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html Harper's Magazine, Stabbed in the Back!: The past and future of a right-wing myth]</ref> On 18 June, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called on the Senate to censure Senator Durbin for his comments.<ref>http://www.newt.org/backpage.asp?art=1843</ref> The leader of the Veterans of Foreign Wars also demanded that Senator Durbin apologize to American Troops for his statement on Guantanamo, calling on "every member of Congress and all 900,000 veterans in the State of Illinois to make their displeasure known to Senator Durbin"<ref>http://www.vfw.org/index.cfm?fa=news.newsDtl&did=2655</ref> Durbin at first refused to apologize, replying that the White House should apologize for fostering an environment which permitted the alleged abuse to occur. <ref>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/17/politics/main702631_page2.shtml</ref> In the face of increasing criticism, however, the most influential critic being Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, he went before the Senate, on June 21, 2005, to tearfully apologize for his statement <ref>http://durbin.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=239278</ref>, saying, "More than most people, a senator lives by his words ... occasionally words fail us, occasionally we will fail words."
Many influential commentators supported Durbin, however. Notably, a fomer editor of The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan, a supporter of the Iraq war, praised Durbin for raising serious moral issues about U.S. policy <ref>http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/07/quote_for_the_d_10.html</ref>. Other commentators (including popular liberal commentator Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of Daily Kos) actively condemned Durbin issuing any form of apology to his critics, believing Durbin to have made a mistake in making himself (rather than detainment and torture concerns at Guantanamo Bay) the focus of media coverage. <ref>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0506230236jun23,0,1250714.column?coll=chi-ed_opinion_columnists-utl</ref> <ref>http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/6/22/132428/176</ref> An article in Harper's magazine referred to the intense criticism of Durbin as a contemporary example of the Dolchstosslegende, or the 'stabbed-in-the-back' myth of the Nazi era.<ref>http://harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html Harper's Magazine, Stabbed in the Back!: The past and future of a right-wing myth]</ref>
[edit] Abortion
As a congressman Richard Durbin voted consistently to uphold pre-existing restrictions on abortion or impose new limitations--including supporting a Constitutional amendment that would have nullifed Roe v. Wade. <ref>http://www.nrlc.org/Judicial/Durbin/index.html</ref>
Congressman Durbin reversed this stance in 1989, and has since voted to maintain access to abortion, including support for Medicaid funding of the procedure, and opposition to any limitation that he considers a practical or potential encroachment upon Roe. <ref>http://www.massscorecard.org/Social/Richard_Durbin_Abortion.htm</ref>
Senator Durbin has maintained that this reversal came about as a result of personal reflection and his growing awareness of potentially harmful implications of his previous policy with respect to women facing dangerous pregnancies. <ref>http://www.nrlc.org/Judicial/Durbin/DurbinMeetPress.html</ref>
Durbin's stance on abortion has invited criticism from some within the Roman Catholic Church, which prompted his staff to commission a study which demonstrated that the views of senators within the Democratic Caucus were more consonant with Roman Catholic doctrine, overall, than their Republican counterparts, on issues other than abortion.<ref>http://atheism.about.com/b/a/090213.htm</ref>
[edit] References
<references />
[edit] External links
- Senate website
- Campaign web site (www.DickDurbin.com)
- Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Richard Durbin at the Notable Names Database
- 2004 campaign finance data
- A pro-Durbin article from The Nation
- An anti-Durbin student group based at the University of Illinois
- Voting record maintained by the Washington Post
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: Paul Findley | United States Representative for the 20th Congressional District of Illinois 1983–1997 | Succeeded by: John Shimkus |
| Preceded by: Paul Martin Simon | United States Senator (Class 2) from Illinois 1997 – | Succeeded by: Incumbent |
| Preceded by: Harry Reid | Senate Minority Whip 2005–2007 | Succeeded by: Trent Lott |
| Preceded by: Mitch McConnell | Senate Majority Whip 2007- | Succeeded by: Incumbent |
fr:Richard Durbin pl:Richard Durbin ru:Дурбин, Ричард sv:Richard Durbin
Categories: 1944 births | Computer and video game censorship and ratings | Living people | Illinois lawyers | Irish-American politicians | Lithuanian-Americans | Roman Catholic politicians | Members of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois | United States Senators from Illinois | Georgetown University alumni | Debaters | People from St. Clair County, Illinois | Irish-Americans
