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Lowell Weicker was born in Paris in 1931, an heir to the family behind E.R. Squibb, and went through Lawrenceville, Yale and the University of Virginia law school before serving as an Army first lieutenant. He was first selectman of Greenwich and won a U.S. House seat in 1968. In 1970 he took a Connecticut Senate seat with 41.7 percent after Thomas Dodd lost the Democratic primary to Joseph Duffy and ran as an independent. On the Senate Watergate Committee he became the first Republican senator to call for Richard Nixon's resignation, drawing obscene gestures from constituents before his popularity surged and he won easily in 1976.

A Rockefeller Republican, he voted for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, helped override Ronald Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act, opposed Robert Bork and William Rehnquist's elevation, laid groundwork for the Americans with Disabilities Act and funded early AIDS research. He lost in 1988 to Joe Lieberman as conservatives, including William F. Buckley Jr., backed the Democrat. In 1990 he won the governorship on his own A Connecticut Party line, faced a $2.4 billion deficit, and reversed his campaign pledge by forcing through a 6 percent income tax after vetoing three budgets. The deficit turned into a surplus, and he declined to seek a second term.

• Buckley's camp circulated bumper stickers asking whether Lowell Weicker made voters sick.
• The 1991 tax package cut the sales tax from 8 to 6 percent and paired with $1.2 billion in spending cuts.
• An estimated 40,000 protesters rallied in Hartford, spitting at him and burning him in effigy.
• He received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and later sat on the WWE board from 1999 to 2011.
• In 2006 he backed Ned Lamont against Lieberman, whose ads depicted him as an old wounded bear.

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Hannibal Hamlin was born in 1809 in Paris, Maine, then part of Massachusetts, and as a gravely ill infant was saved by Molly Ockett, a Native American medicine woman who prescribed warm cow's milk. He ran his father's farm, edited the Oxford Jeffersonian, passed the bar in 1833, married Sarah Jane Emery, and entered the Maine House as a Democrat in 1835. During the 1839 Aroostook War, a timber border dispute with New Brunswick, he helped ease tensions on the path to the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. In Congress he backed the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the Compromise of 1850, and in 1856, after Democrats endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he left the party for the new Republicans.

He won the Maine governorship in a landslide, served only weeks, and returned to the U.S. Senate before joining Abraham Lincoln's 1860 ticket. As vice president he was shut out of cabinet meetings, compared himself to a fifth wheel, pressed for emancipation and the arming of Black Americans, and urged the appointment of General Joseph Hooker. In 1864 the National Union ticket replaced him with Andrew Johnson, whom Hamlin swore in amid Johnson's intoxicated address weeks before Lincoln's assassination. He later resigned as collector of the Port of Boston in protest, served two more Senate terms and as minister to Spain, and died on July 4, 1891.

• In summer 1864 he refused an exemption and reported with Company A of the Maine State Guard to Fort McClary.
• At the fort he stood guard, was promoted to corporal, and took on the duties of company cook.
• Mary Todd Lincoln reportedly disliked him, and he and Lincoln were not personally close.
• His son Cyrus argued early for enlisting Black troops and commanded a brigade of freedmen.
• His son Charles and daughter Sarah were at Ford's Theatre the night Lincoln was shot.

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Larry Pressler was born in 1942 and raised on a South Dakota farm, where 4-H sent him to Cairo in 1961 and a national citizenship award brought him to meet John F. Kennedy in 1963. He led the student association at the University of South Dakota, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a Harvard master's in public administration, then enlisted in the Army and served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968, earning a Bronze Star. After work as a Foreign Service officer and a Harvard law degree in 1971, he filed on the last day for a 1974 House race without state party funding and became one of six Republicans to flip a Democratic seat that year.

In the House he refused a pay raise, opposed foreign aid, pushed cheese tariffs and sought new inquiries into the Kennedy and King assassinations, weathered a 1976 plagiarism controversy, and won reelection with nearly 80 percent. Elected to the Senate in 1978 as its first Vietnam veteran, he turned down an Abscam bribe from FBI agents posing for Arab sheiks and reported it. He wrote the Pressler Amendment and, as Commerce chair, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, then lost that year to Tim Johnson. He later taught at more than 20 universities, ran in 2014 as an independent losing to Mike Rounds, and endorsed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

• Judge George C. Pratt singled him out as setting the standard citizens should expect from representatives under pressure.
• The Pressler Amendment barred most U.S. aid to Pakistan unless the president certified yearly it had no nuclear explosive device.
• The 1996 telecom law let local phone, long distance and cable companies compete in each other's markets.
• His 2014 platform pledged one term, no caucus commitment, and no fundraising while in office.
• He signed an amicus brief supporting marriage equality and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 73.

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Lyndon B. Johnson was born in 1908 in a farmhouse on the Pedernales River in Texas and went without a first name for three months while his parents argued over it. Arriving in Washington in 1931 as secretary to Congressman Richard Kleberg, he effectively ran the office and took over the Little Congress, a club for congressional aides, by organizing mailroom clerks, elevator operators and typists into a voting bloc and calling a snap election. In the 1948 Texas Democratic Senate primary he won by 87 votes amid allegations about Box 13 in Jim Wells County, where late ballots were reportedly added in alphabetical order in the same handwriting, earning him the nickname Landslide Lyndon.

In the Senate he rose quickly to majority whip and leader, cultivating Georgia's Richard Russell and using the Johnson treatment of flattery, pressure and physical closeness to win votes. After losing the 1960 nomination to John F. Kennedy he became a sidelined vice president, then took the oath aboard Air Force One after the 1963 assassination, sworn in by Judge Sarah T. Hughes. He pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, won a landslide that year, and launched the Great Society, while escalation in Vietnam produced a credibility gap, inflation and unrest. He withdrew from the 1968 race and died four years after leaving office.

• His mother insisted on the spelling L-Y-N-D-O-N when he was finally named after a local county lawyer.
• He branded his world with the initials LBJ, from Lady Bird and daughters Lynda and Luci to his dog Little Beagle Johnson.
• A scandal involving protege Bobby Baker fed 1963 rumors that Kennedy might drop him from the ticket.
• After signing the Civil Rights Act he told aide Bill Moyers the South would be lost to Democrats for a generation.
• On the flight home in January 1969 he lit his first cigarette since his 1955 heart attack.

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Kelly Ayotte was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1968, attended Penn State and Villanova Law, and joined the state attorney general's office as a line prosecutor in 1998. She worked on the 2001 Dartmouth College murders, became deputy attorney general, and in 2004 was appointed by Governor Craig Benson as New Hampshire's first woman attorney general. Democratic Governor John Lynch reappointed her twice. She personally prosecuted the 2006 killing of Manchester police officer Michael Briggs, securing a capital conviction, and argued Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood before the U.S. Supreme Court. She won an open U.S. Senate seat in 2010 with backing from John McCain and Mitt Romney.

In the Senate from 2011 to 2017 she opposed the Iran nuclear deal and closing Guantanamo, backed an Obama clean power plan, and cointroduced the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, while critics noted New Hampshire was the only New England state that did not join a multistate suit against Purdue Pharma during her time as attorney general. In October 2016 she withdrew her endorsement of Donald Trump after the Access Hollywood tape and said she would write in Mike Pence, then lost to Governor Maggie Hassan by 1,017 votes out of more than 700,000. She joined the boards of Blackstone and BAE Systems, and in 2024 endorsed Trump and defeated Joyce Craig to become governor.

• She served as the sherpa guiding Neil Gorsuch through his 2017 Supreme Court confirmation.
• A Washington Post report revealed Homeland Security plans for a detention hub in a Merrimack warehouse.
• Public records obtained by the ACLU showed the state's Division of Historical Resources had worked with DHS on the site.
• Acting ICE director Todd Lyons testified he had shared economic impact data with her, which she denied.
• In February 2026 she announced DHS would not move forward with the Merrimack facility.

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Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California, in October 1964 to Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian biomedical scientist who spent 40 years in breast cancer research, and Donald J. Harris, a Jamaican born economist who became the first Black scholar tenured in Stanford's economics department. After her parents divorced when she was seven, she lived in Urbana, Evanston and Madison, visited her grandfather in Chennai, and finished high school in Montreal before attending Howard University, where she joined Alpha Kappa Alpha. She earned her law degree at UC Hastings in 1989 and began as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County in 1990. In 2003 she defeated her former boss Terrence Hallinan to become San Francisco's district attorney.

She narrowly beat Republican Steve Cooley for California attorney general in 2010, won a U.S. Senate seat in 2016, and drew national attention for prosecutorial questioning of nominees including Brett Kavanaugh, Jeff Sessions and Kirstjen Nielsen. Her 2020 presidential bid raised $1.5 million in its first 24 hours but ended before the Iowa caucuses. As Joe Biden's vice president she cast a record 33 tie breaking votes in an evenly split Senate. After Biden withdrew in July 2024 she ran a 107 day campaign with Tim Walz, and on November 5, 2024, lost to Donald Trump 312 to 226 in the Electoral College and 48.3 to 49.8 percent in the popular vote, amid an inflation driven backlash against incumbents worldwide.

• As district attorney she cleared 27 of 74 backlogged homicide cases in her first six months.
• Her Back on Track reentry program reported recidivism under 10 percent, against a state average above 50 percent.
• As attorney general she walked away from the initial national mortgage settlement and secured billions more for California homeowners.
• She conceded the 2024 race at Howard University and certified the result as president of the Senate.
• Afterward she signed with CAA, published a book titled 107 Days, and ruled out a 2026 run for California governor.

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Joseph Manuel Montoya was born on September 24, 1915, in Peña Blanca, New Mexico, to Roman Catholic parents descended from 18th century Spanish settlers. He graduated from Bernalillo High School in 1931, attended Regis College in Denver, and in 1934 moved to Washington, D.C., to study at Georgetown Law. In 1936, at 21 and still a law student, he became the youngest person ever elected to the New Mexico House of Representatives, won reelection before finishing his degree in 1938, and was Democratic majority floor leader by 1939. He then became the youngest member ever elected to the New Mexico Senate, rising to majority whip and Judiciary Committee chairman, and served three terms as lieutenant governor between 1947 and 1957.

The death of Congressman Antonio M. Fernandez opened a House seat in a 1957 special election, and Montoya served in the U.S. House until 1964, earning a reputation as a moderate, diligent legislator on the Appropriations Committee. After Senator Dennis Chavez died, Governor Edwin L. Mechem resigned so his successor could appoint Mechem to the vacant seat, and Montoya defeated him in 1964. In the Senate he served on Appropriations, Public Works, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and the Senate Watergate Committee. In 1976, a strong year for Democrats nationally, Republican Harrison Schmitt beat him 57 to 42 percent after 40 years of continuous officeholding. He died in Washington on June 5, 1978, at 62.

• He campaigned for the New Mexico House from Washington while studying law, relying on his family's established network back home.
• He alternated between the state senate and the lieutenant governor's office for two decades before moving to Congress.
• In the House he defeated Republican Jack C. Redmond in 1962 and secured a seat on the Appropriations Committee in 1963.
• He authored the Vocational Education Act and sponsored the Wilderness Act of 1964.
• His Senate tenure ran from 1964 to 1977, with no scandal cited in his decisive 1976 defeat.

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Jon Kyl was born in Oakland, Nebraska, in 1942 and grew up in Iowa, where his father, John Henry Kyl, served in Congress. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Arizona, where he edited the Arizona Law Review, and worked as a lawyer and lobbyist in Phoenix and Denver before winning Arizona's 4th District House seat in 1986. There he backed the 1987 Abandoned Shipwrecks Act, which asserted federal title to historic wrecks and transferred it to the states. He won a Senate seat in 1994 over Democrat Sam Coppersmith and in 2006 beat Jim Pederson in a costly race shaped by immigration, where his leave first and reapply proposal differed from John McCain's approach.

Kyl rose to policy committee chairman, conference chairman and, in late 2007, minority whip, and Time named him one of America's 10 best senators in 2006. With Dianne Feinstein he turned a stalled victims' rights amendment into the Crime Victims' Rights Act of 2004, and his long push against online betting produced the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, attached at midnight to must pass legislation. His 2010 objection to working through Christmas week on the Zadroga Act and a 2011 Planned Parenthood figure that his office said was not intended to be a factual statement drew criticism from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. He retired in 2013, joined Covington and Burling, guided Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, and in 2018 was appointed to John McCain's seat.

• In 2010 he placed holds on six Treasury nominees until the department issued rules to enforce the gambling law.
• His 2018 appointment made him only the sixth person since 1913 to return to the Senate by appointment.
• During that four month return he voted to confirm Kavanaugh and against the First Step Act, then resigned on December 31 for Martha McSally.
• Jeff Flake succeeded him when he first retired in 2013.
• He announced a dementia diagnosis in December 2025 and died in Phoenix on September 17, 2026, at 84, leaving his papers to the University of Arizona.

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John Sherman Cooper was born in 1901 in Somerset, Kentucky, to the town's wealthiest family, captained the Yale basketball team, joined Skull and Bones and went on to Harvard Law. In 1924 his father died and the fortune proved gone, so he left Harvard, passed the bar on his own, and spent 20 years paying family debts and his six siblings' college costs. As Pulaski County judge during the Depression he paid rent for poor families to spare them eviction, earning the name poor man's judge. In 1942, at 41, he turned down an officer's commission to enlist as a private, rose to captain in George Patton's Third Army, persuaded Patton to rescind forced repatriation of Soviet nationals' families, and vetted 239 new judges for Bavaria's courts.

Elected to the Senate in 1946, he voted with his party only 51 percent of the time in his first term, and he condemned Joseph McCarthy's methods while refusing to strip his chairmanships. After losing in 1954 to Alben Barkley, he served as Dwight Eisenhower's ambassador to India, befriending Jawaharlal Nehru and pressing John Foster Dulles for aid. On the Warren Commission he rejected the single bullet theory and told Jacqueline Kennedy he did not accept the official conclusion. With Frank Church he wrote the Cooper-Church amendments to cut funding for U.S. ground operations in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, and he opposed anti-ballistic missile deployment before retiring in 1973.

• Kentucky voters elected him a circuit judge while he was still in Europe and not campaigning.
• Republican leader Robert Taft demanded to know whether he was a Republican or a Democrat.
• He married socialite Lorraine Rowan Shevlin just before taking the India post.
• Gerald Ford named him the first U.S. ambassador to East Germany.
• He fought legislation to name a dam and recreation area after him and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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John Randolph of Roanoke was born in 1773 into the Bland and Randolph families of Virginia, a distant cousin of Thomas Jefferson who claimed descent from Pocahontas. His father died when he was a toddler, and his stepfather, judge St. George Tucker, reportedly abused him. A youthful case of tuberculosis, or possibly Klinefelter syndrome, left him beardless with a soprano voice, and he relied on opium for pain. He drifted through Princeton and Columbia and left William and Mary after a duel over the pronunciation of a word. Elected to the House in 1799 at 26, he answered Speaker Theodore Sedgwick's question about his age with ask my constituents, and chaired the Ways and Means Committee as a Jefferson ally.

In 1805 he broke with Jefferson over the bid for Spanish Florida and the failed impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase, and in 1806 formed the Tertium Quids, or Old Republicans. He mocked the War Hawks' cry of Canada, Canada, Canada and predicted the Capitol would be left in ruins, which happened in 1814. He brought hunting dogs into the House until Speaker Henry Clay banned them, beat Willis Alston with his cane, and in 1826 dueled Clay over his Puritan and Blackleg insult, firing into the air and telling Clay, you owe me a coat. His will freed nearly 400 enslaved people after his 1833 death and bought them land in Ohio, where armed mobs drove them away in 1846.

• He opposed abolishing entail and primogeniture, warning that old Virginia families would sink into overseers' sons and daughters.
• He and Alston once hurled tableware at each other across a Washington boarding house dining room.
• A religious conversion around 1818 left him writing that he regretted owning a single slave.
• He joined Henry Clay in founding the American Colonization Society in 1816.
• Twentieth century conservative Russell Kirk drew on his defense of limited government and local control.