DAY 986 - A.B.B.

I did two Republicans in a row, so we'll do two Democrats in a row. Today's Democrat is Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI). Russell Dana Feingold was born on March 2nd, 1953 (send him a birthday card!) in Janesville, Wisconsin. His father was an attorney and his mother worked at a title company. After public high school, Feingold graduated with a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, then went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Upon returning to the U.S., Feingold received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979. He married Sue Levine in 1977, and they had two children. They divorced in 1986. In 1991, he married Mary Erpenbach Speerschneider (whew!), whom he divorced in 2005.

Feingold worked at private law firms after finishing his schooling, and in 1982, he entered politics by winning a seat in the Wisconsin State Legislature. He served there until winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1992. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1998 and 2004.

Feingold could best be described as a maverick populist. His political hero is undoubtedly the late Senator Paul Wellstone of neighboring Minnesota. During his first run for the US Senate, he posted a contract with voters on his garage door which consisted of the following:

1. I will rely on the Wisconsin citizens for most of my contributions.
2. I will live in Middleton, Wisconsin. My children will go to school here and I will spend most of my time here in Wisconsin.
3. I will accept no pay raise during my six-year term in office.
4. I will hold a "Listening Session" in each of Wisconsin's 72 counties each year of my six-year term in office.
5. I will hire the majority of my Senate staff from individuals who are from Wisconsin or have Wisconsin backgrounds.

At this point, he has lived up to each of these promises. His major legislative achievement has been the passing of the campaign finance reform act known as "McCain-Feingold", which we've covered earlier. Feingold has also come out strongly against government waste, even returning appropriations money that his office doesn't use. Feingold voted against the war in Iraq, was the only Senator to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act, which he opposed on civil liberties grounds, and has been leading the fight against the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance program. He has been named the "most progressive person" in the Senate by the Americans for Democratic Action. He has a 93% rating with NARAL, 91% with the NEA, 80% with the ACLU, and 100% with the AFL-CIO and the League of Conservation Voters. Feingold serves on the Judiciary Committee (Constitution Subcommittee), Committee on Foreign Relations (Africa Subcommittee), Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Special Committee on Aging, and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Feingold's campaign funding, as his promise #1 suggests, comes primarily from Wisconsin citizens. In his last campaign in 2004, Feingold raised $11 million, 90% of which were from individuals, and a majority of whom were from Wisconsin.

I'd have to say Feingold could either be 2008's amped-up version of Dennis Kucinich, or 2008's George McGovern. Neither of these outcomes would bode well either for him or the Democratic Party. He'll either force the eventual nominee to veer further leftward than he or she might want, or he'll somehow snag the nomination on a wave of populist fervor, leading to a crushing defeat in the general election. "Unelectable" is the word that jumps out from Feingold's record. American voters have not elected anyone like Feingold since Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Carter's election came after the extraordinary circumstances of Watergate. Carter's record was also less well known than Feingold's, which is an open book. In addition, Carter was a born-again Christian from the South and Feingold is most decidely neither of those things. For any conservative or moderate not already thrown off by Feingold's progressivism and his no vote on Iraq, there is the matter of his two divorces. No twice-divorced, not-currently-married person has ever even run for president, let alone been elected. The last non-married man to be elected president was Grover Cleveland in 1884. In his defense, Feingold's integrity in the Senate has been impeccable, and he certainly has the credentials to be president, but that's not nearly enough in the polarized environment in which we find ourselves.