Russ Feingold

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Russ Feingold (2009)

Russell Dana "Russ" Feingold (born March 2, 1953 in Janesville , Wisconsin ) is an American politician ( Democratic Party ). From 1993 to 2011 he represented the state of Wisconsin in the US Senate and ran again in the November 2016 election - without success - for this mandate.

Feingold worked with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (" McCain -Feingold Act" to reform election campaign financing) and in 2001 was the only Senator to vote against the introduction of the USA PATRIOT Act . He was listed as a possible 2008 presidential candidate. From 2013 to 2015 Feingold was the United States' Special Envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Family, education and work

Feingold is one of four children of a Jewish immigrant family who settled in Janesville in 1917. His parents are from Russia and Galicia . In his youth he admired John F. and Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King .

After attending Joseph A. Craig High School , Feingold studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude . He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity . In 1977 he went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship , where he earned another Bachelor of Arts. In Harvard in 1979 made Feingold a degree in law and worked from 1979 to 1985 in private law firms Foley & Lardner and La Follette & Sinykin .

Feingold married Sue Levine in 1977 and have two children with her (Jessica and Ellen); nine years later the marriage failed. He then married Mary Speerschneider, who was also divorced and brought two sons (Sam and Ted) into the marriage. On April 11, 2005, they jointly announced that they wanted to get divorced. In August 2013 he married the librarian Christine Ferdinand.

Political career

Feingold served in the Wisconsin Senate from 1982 until he was elected to the United States Senate in 1992.

US Senator from 1993 to 2011

1992 election

Russ Feingold's career as a senator began in the 1992 election to the US Senate with a surprising victory over Republican incumbent Bob Kasten . The five election promises he wrote on his garage door in contract form were remarkable:

  1. I will rely on the citizens of Wisconsin in most of my posts.
  2. I will be living in Middleton , Wisconsin. My kids will go to school here and I will spend most of my time here in Wisconsin.
  3. I will not accept any salary increases during my six year term.
  4. Each year of my six-year tenure, I will be holding an "office hour" in each of Wisconsin's 72 counties .
  5. I will assemble the majority of my Senate staff from Wisconsin residents or with a Wisconsin background.

Feingold's election campaign also received attention because it resembled Paul Wellstone's victorious Senate campaign in Minnesota in 1990. He made advertising in the form of short "Home Movies", amateur films in which he was portrayed as an "underdog". He was presented as close to the people and not aloof and presented his home and his children who went to a public school (i.e. not a private school). One of his humorous election commercials showed Feingold opening all of his closets to show that he hadn't hidden any skeletons in them (alluding to a German phrase that corresponds to the German saying “have no corpses in the basement”).

During the campaign, Feingold presented an 82-point plan that was supposed to balance the budget deficit through tax increases and cuts in the defense budget. He was criticized for this by the Republicans as an "extremist" and by his democratic rivals as "too liberal ". Feingold announced extensive financial and health reforms for the term of office and voted against new tax cuts.

In the Democratic primary, Feingold prevailed over the two long-time leading candidates, Joe Checota and Jim Moody , because he offered voters an alternative to their programs and did not lead a dirty campaign like them. He had this mud fight pictorially depicted in one of his election commercials with his cardboard opponents throwing mud at each other. He won the actual election against castes with 53% to 46%.

Senator Paul M. Simon acted as a mentor during his early days in Congress . Feingold then held regular consultation hours in all 72 counties, and since his election in 1992 over 850.

Election 1998

During the campaign for his re-election in 1998 , Feingold again avoided a costly election campaign. He refused to spend more than a dollar on each Wisconsin citizen (3.8 million). In addition, he set himself the same limits for the procurement of the money that he would have been exposed to under the McCain Feingold Act and did not let his party offer so-called " soft money " (money that is not donated directly, but e.g. via the party). His Republican opponent Mark Neumann then limited his campaign spending to $ 3.8 million, but financed himself further through soft money. Feingold was criticized by many party friends for risking his political career carelessly through his financial restrictions. On election day, Feingold won by around two percentage points thanks to the strong turnout in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison .

In the US Senate before the vote on the USA PATRIOT Act (2001)

Feingold received political prominence beyond the United States after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , because in October 2001 he was the only senator to refuse to vote for the USA PATRIOT Act , a security legislation restricting civil rights, and also the authorization of the US government Iraq war 2002 not supported. Feingold also kept his distance from the Democratic US senators and angered them, for example, when he did not support the motion to drop all allegations against President Clinton in the Lewinsky affair . In particular, his bipartisan initiative for a reform of political financing, which he had been preparing for seven years and which he brought into law with the Republican Senator John McCain in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002 , was criticized within the party because it gave the Republicans an even greater lead in donations threaten to become.

Election 2004

Won counties (blue) in the 2004 election

In the 2004 Senate election , Feingold defeated his republican opponent, the construction lion Tim Michaels , by twelve percentage points. He again capped his campaign expenses, but raised the limit and ended up spending nearly $ 11 million. When Republicans called Feingold's money limits hypocrisy, he countered it by showing that 90% of Wisconsin private money (averaging $ 60) came from private individuals. Feingold's lofty election victory was seen by many as general approval of the controversial positions he had taken during his second term. Feingold also won in counties that supported the Republican George W. Bush with a majority in the simultaneous presidential election .

During a troop visit to the Horn of Africa (2006)

Around Christmas 2004 Feingold was appointed one of four deputy whips (parliamentary group leaders ) of the Democrats in the Senate. Feingold assured that the new role would not affect his independence in the party or the chamber. After supporting the nomination of the conservative John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States in 2005, to the annoyance of some Democrats , he made himself unpopular with the Republicans in 2006 by becoming the first US Senator to set a schedule for the withdrawal of US troops from the United States Iraq demanded and campaigned for an official reprimand from US President George W. Bush by Congress because the government's administration had carried out communications surveillance without judicial authorization.

Rejection of the presidential candidacy in 2008

In January 2005 Feingold announced that it would explore the possibilities of running for the 2008 presidency, but would first travel across the country before making a decision. In March 2005, his staff registered websites for his potential campaign. After the Democrats' victory in the November 2006 election , however, he announced that he would not run because it would "disrupt his professional (as a senator) and personal life."

With trade unionists (2008)

In the wake of the global financial crisis , Feingold rejected the state rescue of financial companies in 2008 (“ bail-out ”) in the US Senate and (as the only Democrat) the regulation of the financial markets in 2010 because it did not go far enough for him. Feingold also voted against the Obama administration when the troop contingent was increased in the Afghanistan war in early 2009.

Election 2010

In the 2010 Senate election Feingold was defeated by his Republican challenger, the previous manager and political newcomer Ron Johnson , who received 51.9% of the vote. Feingold's poor result of 47% can be traced back to Wisconsin's difficult economic situation in the 2007 financial crisis , for which the democrats ruling at the federal level were held responsible; According to exit polls, four out of ten voters in Wisconsin had their personal situation worsened in the past two years. Feingold, even if he had voted against some of Obama's plans, campaigned for his unpopular health care reform and the comprehensive economic stimulus program , which Feingold cost many voters who were registered as independent and who called for restrictive fiscal policy; support for Obama's policies had declined more and more rapidly in this state than in most others. In this, with a total of 35 million US dollars, the most expensive Senate election campaign to date in Wisconsin, Feingold spent over 16 million US dollars. After his attempt to limit political donations and make them more transparent had finally failed due to a judge's verdict in the spring of this year, he was exposed to election campaign attacks that were financed by undisclosed donations amounting to around 4 million US dollars. About 2.2 million Wisconsin residents voted in the election, significantly fewer than in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections , which had about 3 million voters each, making conditions difficult for Democrats.

After leaving the US Senate

Africa Special Envoy Feingold with John Kerry and Ben Affleck (2014)
At a meeting with the Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo (2013)

Shortly after leaving the Senate in January 2011, Feingold founded the Political Action Committee Progressives United in February , which has set itself the goal of only allowing political donations from private individuals, curbing lobbying and fighting corruption after the US Supreme Court approved unlimited corporate campaign contributions in January 2010, undermining the McCain Feingold Act of 2002 to limit donations. Feingold wrote the book While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era , published in 2012 and containing a personal review and reflections on the Senate period since 9/11 , and has taught law at Marquette , Lawrence, and Universities Stanford . Prior to Obama's re-election in 2012 , Feingold was one of the 35 co-chairs of the campaign team ("co-chair").

In June 2013, US Secretary of State John Kerry Feingold appointed special envoy for the Great African Lakes region after a UN reaction force with an aggressive mandate was deployed in the Congo in March of that year . With Feingold's appointment, Kerry wanted to draw the attention of US foreign policy more to the protracted but barely noticed conflict there. Feingold had chaired the subcommittee on Africa in the US Senate and is considered one of the continent's best experts on US politics. He retired from this position in February 2015.

Candidate for the US Senate in 2016

Russ Feingold announced on May 14, 2015 that he would be running for his previous seat in the Senate election in November 2016 , so - after a victory in the Democratic primary - he was again running against the mandate holder Ron Johnson. The announcement was welcomed in the progressive Democratic camp (such as Elizabeth Warren ), as he is considered a representative of the political left. His formerly extreme positions (such as support for gay marriage or the rejection of strict security laws) had now reached the mainstream of the Democrats, so that the party establishment also welcomed his candidacy. Feingold promised to get involved in the spirit of bipartisan independence, while his Republican opponent drew the picture of a Washington insider who only knows politics. Most recently, in 1934, a US Senator managed to be re-elected for a seat from which he had previously been voted out. Feingold was clearly ahead of Johnson in the first polls. Because of the good poll numbers, Feingold was the favorite for most of the campaign. Therefore, the Democrats' campaign committee for the US Senate focused on other states. In the weeks leading up to the election, incumbent Johnson was able to sustainably improve his image through an intensive advertising campaign and increasingly close the gap in the polls.

In the election Feingold lost with 46.85% of the vote against Johnson's 50.2%.

Works

literature

  • Sanford D. Horwitt: Feingold: A New Democratic Party. Simon & Schuster, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-4165-3492-1 (preview) .
  • Russell D. Feingold (1953-). Served 1993-2011. In: Kurt F. Stone (ed.): The Jews of Capitol Hill. A Compendium of Jewish Congressional Members. Scarecrow, Lanham MD 2011, ISBN 978-0-8108-5731-5 , pp. 499-505 .

Web links

Commons : Russ Feingold  - Collection of Images
Wikiquote: Russ Feingold  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matthew Defour: On the Capitol: Legislative Campaigns Told to Return Contributions From Dead person. In: Wisconsin State Journal , Aug. 16, 2013; Dr Christine Ferdinand. In: Magd.ox.ac.uk .
  2. ↑ Promises Kept. ( Memento from January 1, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) In: RussFeingold.org
  3. ↑ a b c d JR Ross: Russ Feingold and His Ghosts. Can the Maverick Recapture His Old Job? In: Politico , May 14, 2015.
  4. ^ While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era
  5. ↑ Sandy Maisel, L., Brewer, Mark D.: Parties and Elections in America. The Electoral Process. 6th edition. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham MD 2012, ISBN 978-1-4422-0769-1 , pp. 141-144 .
  6. ^ A b Shailagh Murray: A Senate Maverick Acts to Force an Issue. In: The Washington Post , March 15, 2006.
  7. ^ Feingold Rules Out 2008 Run for President. ( Memento of March 20, 2007 on the Internet Archive ) In: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , November 11, 2006.
  8. ^ A b c Russell Berman: Russ Feingold Wants a Rematch. In: The Atlantic , May 15, 2015.
  9. ^ A b Katherine Q. Seelye: In Feingold's Loss, Independents Turn on One of Their Own. In: The New York Times , November 4, 2010.
  10. ↑ Julie Bosman: Wisconsin State Highlights. In: The New York Times Election 2010 .
  11. ↑ Russ Feingold. ( Memento of May 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: ProgressivesUnited.org .
  12. ^ Justin Moyer, The Speed ​​Read: 'While America Sleeps,' by Russ Feingold. In: The Washington Post , March 8, 2012.
  13. ^ A b Scott Bauer: Wisconsin's Feingold to Run for US Senate. In: ABC News , May 14, 2015.
  14. ^ Byron Tau: Obama Campaign Announces Co-Chairs. In: Politico , February 22, 2012.
  15. ↑ Steven Lee Myers: Ex-Senator Feingold Chosen as Special Envoy to African Region. In: The New York Times , June 18, 2013.
  16. ^ Senator Feingold: Final Speech as US Special Envoy to the DRC. In: United States Institute of Peace , February 24, 2015.
  17. ↑ Burgess Everett, Kevin Robillard, Seung Min Kim: How Democrats blew the Senate majority they knew was theirs. In: Politico , November 10, 2016.
  18. ↑ 2016 Election: Senate In: RealClearPolitics , November 10, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Feingold, Russ
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Feingold, Russell Dana (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Janesville , Wisconsin