Pat Roberts

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Pat Roberts (2013)

Charles Patrick "Pat" Roberts (* 20th April 1936 in Topeka , Kansas ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . The former journalist has been one of the two US Senators for the state of Kansas since 1997 , which he previously represented in the US House of Representatives from 1981. Roberts will not stand for re-election in 2020.

Family, education and work

Pat Roberts comes from a family that was active in newspaper publishing and politics. His great-grandfather had founded the Oskaloosa Independent newspaper in the Kansas Territory , and his father, C. Wesley Roberts, had chaired the Republican National Committee , the federal party organization of the Republicans, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 . In 1958 he graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelor's degree in journalism . He was a Captain in the United States Marine Corps from 1958 to 1962 . He then worked as a reporter and editor for several newspapers in Arizona . In 1967 he returned to Kansas and worked for the then US Senator Frank Carlson . In 1969 he became assistant to Congressman Keith Sebelius , the father-in-law of the later governor and US Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius .

Roberts has been married to his wife Franki since 1969. You have three children.

Political career

Roberts with President Ronald Reagan (1988)

After Sebelius had announced that he would not stand for election in 1980 , Roberts ran in the 1980 election for his previous mandate in the 1st congressional electoral district of Kansas. This constituency comprised most of the state, especially the rural, heavily republican-dominated west. Roberts won without difficulty and entered the United States House of Representatives on January 3, 1981 , to which he served for eight terms until January 3, 1997.

In the 1996 election he was elected Senator for Kansas with 62 percent of the vote against the Democrat Sally Thompson and succeeded Nancy Kassebaums on January 3, 1997. In 2002 he was confirmed without an opponent from the Democrats with 82.5 percent of the vote, in 2008 he won with 60 percent of the vote against former Congressman Jim Slattery , in the 2014 election against the independent Greg Orman with 53 to 43 percent of the vote after he had narrowly won the Republican primary .

In the Senate, Roberts sits on the Armed Forces Committee and was chairman of the ethics committee between 1999 and 2001 (with a 17-day break) . From 2003 to 2007 he was chairman of the intelligence committee and as such led the investigation into the information situation of the intelligence services before the Iraq war , the final report of which, presented in July 2004, is also known as the Roberts Report . In summary, Roberts spoke of a "global intelligence failure". He has chaired the Agriculture Committee since January 2015 .

Roberts announced in January 2019 that he would not run again in the 2020 Senate election, which is why his mandate ends on January 3, 2021. Among the Republicans, a number of candidates showed interest in his successor. Former United States Attorney Barry Grissom may stand for the Democrats .

Positions

Roberts generally takes conservative positions, particularly in social politics . He spoke out against abortions ( Pro-Life ) and against same-sex marriages . In the Senate, Roberts in 2002 voted in favor of authorizing the Bush administration for the Iraq war and called generally for higher military spending. Under Democratic President Barack Obama, Roberts argued against many government initiatives , including in 2010 the Obamacare health care reform . In Donald Trump's presidency , Roberts supported, among other things, the tax reform passed in December 2017, which lowered corporate and top tax rates in particular.

In May 2017, he was among 22 Republican senators who wrote an open letter calling on President Donald Trump to leave the Paris Agreement . The Guardian reported in the context that Roberts 2012-2016 over 400,000 US dollars received in donations from oil, gas and coal companies. In June 2018, he was one of 13 Republican Senators to call on Trump to temporarily end the separation of illegally immigrant families .

Web links

Commons : Pat Roberts  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

supporting documents

  1. ^ A b c Gregory Lewis McNamee: Pat Roberts. In: Encyclopedia Britannica , May 21, 2015.
  2. ↑ US Intelligence Exaggerated Iraq's WMD, Report Says. In: Nuclear Threat Initiative , July 9, 2004
  3. ^ Wright Bryan, Douglas Hopper: Iraq WMD Timeline: How the Mystery Unraveled. In: National Public Radio , November 15, 2005.
  4. ↑ James Arkin: Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts to retire in 2020. In: Politico , January 4, 2019
  5. ↑ Bryan Lowry: 'Purple' Kansas? Former federal prosecutor mulls Senate run against Pat Roberts. In: McClatchy DC , December 17, 2018.
  6. ↑ Tom McCarthy, Lauren Gambino: The Republicans who urged Trump to pull out of Paris deal are big oil darlings. In: The Guardian , June 1, 2017.
  7. ↑ 13 GOP senators ask administration to pause separation of immigrant families. In: The Hill , June 19, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Roberts, Pat
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roberts, Charles Patrick (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician (Republican Party)
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Topeka , Kansas