Joe Donnelly

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Joe Donnelly (2011)

Joseph Simon "Joe" Donnelly (born September 29, 1955 in Massapequa , New York ) is an American politician of the Democratic Party . From 2013 to 2019 he represented the state of Indiana in the United States Senate , after representing the 2nd Congressional constituency of that state in the US House of Representatives from 2007 to 2013 . After his defeat in the 2018 Senate election, Donnelly resigned from the Senate in January 2019. He is considered a centrist democrat who takes conservative positions on some socio-political issues.

Family, education and work

Joe Donnelly grew up in New York City and was raised by his father alone after his mother died when he was ten years old. He moved to Indiana at the age of eighteen and studied at the University of Notre Dame there until 1977 . After completing a law degree at the same university, he was admitted to the bar in 1981 and began to work as such. In 1996 he founded a company which he managed in the following years.

After leaving the Senate, Donnelly announced that he would join the largest lobbyist firm in the United States, Akin Gump , as a partner in April 2019 .

Donnelly is married and lives in Granger .

Political career

As a Democrat, Donnelly sat on the Indiana State Electoral Committee and served on a local school committee between 1997 and 2001. In 1988 he unsuccessfully sought the nomination of his party for the office of Attorney General (Attorney General) of Indiana. In 1990 he ran for the State Senate without success .

In the 2004 election he ran unsuccessfully as his party's candidate for the United States House of Representatives in the 2nd Congressional constituency of Indiana. In the 2006 election , Donnelly was elected to the US House of Representatives in the same district, where he succeeded Chris Chocola on January 3, 2007 and was re-elected twice, most recently in 2010 by one percentage point ahead of Republican Jackie Walorski . He was a member of the Finance and Veterans Committees and four sub-committees. His term in the House of Representatives ended on January 3, 2013.

In the November 2012 election, Donnelly ran for the US Senate. After the mandate holder Richard Lugar was defeated by the Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock in the Republican primary , a close election result was initially expected. When Mourdock argued in a televised debate that pregnancy was God's will even after rape , Donnelly took the lead and clearly beat Mourdock, even though Barack Obama lost the state in the presidential election. Mourdock's statement had also attracted so much attention because recently Missouri Republican Senate nominee Todd Akin had made an even more controversial medically untenable comment about rape.

On January 3, 2013, Donnelly began serving as a senator. With his centrist positioning, he has made enemies in both major parties, even if he is generally considered popular among Republicans. He was one of three Democratic senators that in 2017 the Republican proposal for the Supreme Court , Neil Gorsuch agreed. Donnelly also agreed more often than most of the other senators in his party (after Doug Jones and Joe Manchin ) in his decisions with the position of the president, according to FiveThirtyEight in over 55 percent of the cases (as of April 2018).

Donnelly ran for his seat again in the 2018 election and was considered one of the Democratic Senators' most vulnerable after Donald Trump won the structurally conservative state of Indiana by 19 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election . Donnelly won his party's primary unopposed after a challenger withdrew his candidacy in January 2018 . On the Republican side, Congressmen Luke Messer and Todd Rokita had long fought a hard-fought race, but were defeated in the May 2018 primary by politically inexperienced businessman Mike Braun , who was largely unknown. Braun took part in the Democratic primary elections before 2012, but during the election campaign he showed himself to be a supporter of President Trump and his policies (construction of a border wall, termination of free trade agreements). A survey from the beginning of September 2018 saw Donnelly with 49 to 43 percent in front and attested him good personal popularity ratings and lead among independents and members of the political center; Republican supporters also said 10 percent would vote for Donnelly. Nevertheless, Donnelly lost the election with 43.2 to 52.9 percent of the vote against Braun.

Donnelly resigned from the Senate on January 3, 2019.

Positions

Donnelly is considered a conservative democrat who advocates fiscal policy austerity ( austerity ) and a strong military, and takes protectionist positions on trade policy . In an April 2017 study by Georgetown University , Donnelly was the most politically moderate senator in the country after Joe Manchin . In terms of social policy, he rejected abortions and approves of private gun ownership . He advocates the promotion of alternative energy. He is popular with trade unions and the workforce, but not with environmentalists. He is committed to maintaining the Obamacare health care reform and social programs, and from 2013 supported the introduction of same-sex marriages , which he originally rejected. While he turned his party against himself in 2015 by voting against the promotion of Planned Parenthood , he supported President Barack Obama in the negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear program . Donnelly is not known far beyond his state and has been described as a credible trustee of small people in his reserved demeanor and moderate voting behavior.

Web links

Commons : Joe Donnelly  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthew Tully: Joe Donnelly's middle seat gets a little hotter. In: Indystar , September 16, 2015.
  2. ↑ Kate Ackley: Ex-Sen. Joe Donnelly Goes to K Street's Akin Gump. In: Roll Call , March 13, 2019.
  3. ↑ Kyle Fitzenreiter: Four NDLS Graduates Elected to US Congress. In: University of Notre Dame , November 8, 2012.
  4. ^ GOP's Akin, Mourdock loose Senate elections. In: The Washington Post , November 7, 2012.
  5. ^ A b c Adam Wren: The Loneliest Democrat in Trump Country. In: Politico , December 5, 2017.
  6. ↑ Tracking Congress In The Age Of Trump: Joe Donnelly. In: FiveThirtyEight .
  7. ↑ Stephanie Wiechmann: Donnelly Challenger Drops Out Of US Senate Race. In: Indiana Public Radio , Jan. 4, 2018.
  8. ↑ Steven Shepard: Indiana mystery man upends bloody GOP Senate primary. In: Politico , May 1, 2018.
  9. ^ Carrie Dann: Democrat Joe Donnelly has slight edge in the Indiana Senate race. In: NBC News , September 5, 2018.
  10. ^ Indiana US Senate Election Results. In: The New York Times , November 7, 2018.
  11. ^ Candidates: Joe Donnelly. In: Wall Street Journal , 2012; Joe Donnelly Opposes Assault Weapons Ban, Spokesman Says ( February 7, 2013 memento in the Internet Archive ). In: The Huffington Post , Jan. 30, 2013.
  12. ^ Matthew Tully: Joe Donnelly's middle seat gets a little hotter. In: Indystar , September 16, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Donnelly, Joe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Donnelly, Joseph Simon (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Massapequa , New York