Politician
Joe Lieberman made two bids for the vice presidency of the United States, for two different parties, but fell short each time.
The Connecticut senator was just a short distance away from becoming vice president when he ran with Al Gore on the Democratic ticket in the controversial 2000 elections.
His politics changed as he grew older and eight years later, as an independent, he was seriously considered as Republican candidate John McCain's running mate in his failed bid to defeat Barack Obama.
Lieberman's individualism, and especially his heckling of Democratic presidential candidate Obama during the 2008 presidential election, upset many Democrats, the party he aligned with in the Senate.
Yet over the years, his support for gay rights, civil rights, abortion rights and environmental causes has sometimes earned him the praise of many liberals.
Lieberman defended his partisan choices as a matter of conscience and said he always had the best interests of Connecticut voters in mind. Critics accused him of pursuing narrow self-interest and political opportunism.
Lieberman was born in 1942 and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, where his father ran a liquor store. Lieberman graduated from Yale University and Yale Law School in New Haven.
He was first elected to the Connecticut Senate in 1970 and served as the state's attorney general from 1983 to 1988. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988, defeating moderate Republican incumbent Lowell Weicker by 10,000 votes, thanks in part to the votes of conservative Republicans who were dismayed by Weicker's voting record.
However, the first-year senator was his own man and that appealed to his voters: in 1994 he was re-elected with a majority of more than 350,000.
Lieberman courted controversy in 1998 when he blasted President Bill Clinton, his longtime friend, for “disgraceful behavior” in an explosive speech on the Senate floor during the height of the scandal over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
However, Lieberman later voted against Clinton's impeachment.
Those harsh comments may have been one of the reasons Al Gore added Lieberman to his ticket, to put distance between himself and President Clinton.
He was the first practicing Jew to run for vice president, and only a lawsuit over the outcome in Florida kept Lieberman from making bigger history. He briefly ran for president in 2004, but soon dropped out of the race.
In 2006, Lieberman lost a renomination bid for his Senate seat to a more liberal Democrat, but retained his seat after running as an independent candidate. Although he remained loyal to the Democrats, Lieberman was a strong supporter of the Iraq War and enthusiastically supported his friend John McCain's doomed quest for the presidency.
In 2011, Lieberman announced that he would retire from the Senate at the end of 2012, but he continued to be involved in politics, defending third parties, as well as being interviewed by President Donald Trump for the position of FBI director in 2017.
Lieberman died on March 27 in New York City due to complications from a fall. He was 82. — Agencies