Patrick Leahy
United States Senator
As the chairman or ranking member of the Judiciary
Committee, Senator Leahy has authored, advocated
and enacted a wide range of anti-crime and
anti-drug initiatives. He wrote the charter for
the current federal grant program for the nation's
first responders, and his all-state minimum for
the program's formula has brought millions of
federal equipment dollars to Vermont's police,
fire and EMS units. He has worked tirelessly to
help Vermont communities and local law enforcement
to address rural drug and alcohol addiction. He
recently authored and successfully passed a
reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act
that included an expansion of programs to ensure
that all victims regardless of their gender or
sexual identity have access to these important
programs. In his Judiciary Committee role, Patrick
Leahy also gives Vermonters a leading voice in
confirming nominations to the Supreme Court and
other federal courts. He knows that America's
independent judiciary is the envy of the world,
and he fights to keep it independent. A longtime
leader in efforts to reform the death penalty,
Patrick Leahy is the author of the Innocence
Protection Act, bipartisan reforms in the use of
the death penalty that help ensure access to
competent legal counsel and by allowing
post-conviction DNA testing to reduce the
possibility of executing innocent individuals,
while raising the possibility of finding the real
criminals.
As the most senior member of the Agriculture
Committee he has long led on dairy policy. He has
authored several key conservation programs that
have helped forge working partnerships between
farmers and vital environmental and conservation
goals, drawing from Vermont's experience and ethic
of environmental stewardship. He is the "father"
of the highly successful national organic
standards and labeling program, and the Leahy
charter for U.S. organic agriculture has helped
the organic sector thrive to become a $39
billion-a-year sector of the American economy.
Patrick Leahy has championed effective child
nutrition and anti-hunger programs, gaining
bipartisan support for addressing the nation's
obesity crisis and leading efforts to implement
hands-on nutrition education programs in the
nation's schools. He has led in forging
congressional partnerships with communities in
Vermont and states around the country in the
successful and growing Farm To School movement.
Drawing on his Green Mountain heritage, he is one
of the Senate's leading advocates of forest
conservation, clean water and clean air policies,
and sound environmental stewardship. He opposed
the Keystone pipeline, has fought Republican
efforts to open the pristine Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling, and has
supported efforts to drill in the Missisquoi
Wildlife Refuge in Vermont. He has worked to
protect and enlarge the Green Mountain National
Forest, which has expanded by nearly 150,000 acres
during his Senate service. He led efforts to
tackle the health dangers of mercury pollution,
and year after year he leads in securing federal
partnership support for cleaning his beloved Lake
Champlain, "the Jewel of New England." He has
secured crucial funding that has helped enliven
and conserve the character and culture of downtown
business districts in several Vermont communities.
Vermont's tireless and best-placed advocate in the
Nation's Capital, Patrick Leahy is the most senior
member of the U.S. Senate -- where seniority
counts -- giving Vermonters not only a voice but a
front-row seat at the table when key decisions are
made. That has included when times were tough such
as when Hurricane Irene devastated parts of
Vermont in August, 2011. The epic storm required
an historic federal relief effort that totaled
over half a billion dollars. He is a tireless
promoter of the Vermont business community working
closely with Vermonters to promote job growth and
expand markets overseas. He-provided the initial
funding of the most successful technology
incubator in Vermont, the Vermont Center for
Emerging Technologies (VCET).
The son of a printer and the grandson of stone
cutters, born in Montpelier, raised across the
street from the State House, and schooled in
Montpelier and Colchester, Patrick Leahy has spent
most of his adult life working for Vermonters. He
knows and he appreciates what makes Vermont a
great place to live, work and raise families, and
he carries those values throughout his
wide-ranging efforts to expand opportunity and the
quality of life in Vermont. He was the first on
either side of his family to attend college. After
graduating from Saint Michael's College in 1961 he
earned his law degree from Georgetown University
Law Center in 1964. Then he returned home to
Vermont to the private practice of law. For eight
years after that, he served as the State's
Attorney in Chittenden County, where he earned a
national reputation for his law enforcement work.
In 1974 he became the first Democrat who
Vermonters ever elected to the United States
Senate, where he is now the Senate's longest
serving member. He serves as ranking member of
both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the
Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign
Operations – the State Department's budget
committee. He also is the senior-most member
overall of the Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry Committee and of the Appropriations
Committee.
Patrick Leahy has always worked to infuse Vermont
values into U.S. foreign policy and has been a
champion of international human rights. He has
long been a leader in the U.S. and international
campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines writing
the world's first law to ban the export of these
indiscriminate weapons. Offering help and hope to
the innocent victims of war, he led congressional
efforts to create ongoing practical support
through a program his colleagues later renamed The
Leahy War Victims Fund, which provides up to $12
million a year for humanitarian work in clinics in
war-torn countries across the globe. He has also
long advocated changes in 50 years of failed U.S.
policy on Cuba, including ending the ban on
Americans' travel to Cuba. On Dec. 17, 2014,
President Obama sent Patrick Leahy at the head of
a delegation to Havana to bring home Alan Gross,
after 5 years of imprisonment.
He is the co-chair of the Senate's 75-member
National Guard Caucus, and he has won enactment of
several of his "Guard Empowerment" reforms,
including adding the Guard to representation on
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has fought to
improve access to health care, education and
retirement benefits for Vermont's citizen-soldiers
and to make sure that they are treated equally
with the active forces. In recognition of his
service to our men and women in uniform, Senator
Leahy has been awarded the George Washington
Freedom Award from the Adjutants General of the
U.S. Association, the Eagle Award from the
Enlisted National Guard Association, and the Harry
S. Truman Award for "sustained contributions of
exceptional and far-reaching magnitude to the
defense and security of the United States in a
manner worthy of recognition at the national
level."
Sometimes referred to as the "cyber senator" for
his enthusiasm for and leadership on technology
and digital issues, Patrick Leahy was the second
senator to post an official homepage on the
internet and the first to start a blog. Since its
creation in 1995, the Leahy Senate website - and
his use of his social media sites -- have often
won awards as one of the Senate's best. His
interest in technology also led him to co-found
the Congressional Internet Caucus, which he
co-chairs, and to spearhead efforts to expand
broadband access to Vermont. Mindful of new
hazards presented by the internet, he is also a
leader in the effort to protect intellectual
property rights and privacy. He has methodically
built wide bipartisan support for his reforms to
end NSA's dragnet collection of Americans'
telephone communications - his USA FREEDOM Act -
as well as for his bipartisan email privacy
legislation.
Patrick and Marcelle Leahy live on a tree farm in
Middlesex and have been married since 1962.
Marcelle is a Registered Nurse who has worked in
Vermont, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
Most recently she worked as a staff nurse in the
Medical-Surgical Unit of Arlington Hospital in
northern Virginia. She is now a member of the
Advisory Board of the University of Vermont
College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Marcelle
Leahy is also the honorary chair of the Vermont
National Guard Family Support Program, which helps
ensure that the families of the state's
citizen-soldiers receive the assistance and care
they need during lengthy deployments of their
loved ones. The Leahys have two sons, a daughter,
two daughters-in-law, a son-in-law, and five
grandchildren.
Paid for
by Leahy for U.S. Senator.
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