The Senate has a new Number Two man. With the death on December 17 of Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who had served in the upper chamber since 1963, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) succeeded to the office of President Pro Tempore (pro tem) of the Senate. Sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden on December 17, Leahy wielded the gavel during the recent lame duck session that avoided the so-called “fiscal cliff” at the end of 2012.
An office created by the Constitution, the President pro tem (Latin meaning “for the time being”) of the Senate is the Senate’s second-highest-ranking official, after the Vice President. Under the Constitution, the Vice President is also the President of the Senate, and the Senate must choose a president pro tem to run things in the VP’s absence. By long-standing tradition the Senate unanimously elects the most senior senator in the majority party to be the president pro tem. The president pro tem is third in the line of succession to the presidency, after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.
Born March 31, 1940, in Montpelier, Vermont, Patrick Joseph Leahy is the son Alba (née Zambon) and Howard Francis Leahy, a printer. His grandparents had immigrated to Vermont from Italy and Ireland during the 19th century to work at the state’s stone quarries. Growing up across from the Vermont Statehouse, Leahy graduated from St. Michael’s High School in Montpelier in 1957. He earned a B.A. in Political Science at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont, in 1961 and a J.D. at Georgetown University in 1964.
Admitted to the Vermont Bar in 1964, Leahy practiced law for two years before successfully running for State’s Attorney in Chittenden County, where he served two four-year terms.
Elected to the Senate at age 34 in 1974, Leahy was the youngest U.S. Senator ever elected from Vermont. He is also the first and only Democrat Vermonters have ever sent to the Senate, although not the most left-wing, as socialist Bernie Sanders has served as Vermont’s junior Senator since 2007.
At present, Leahy is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the most senior member of the Appropriations Committee and a senior member of the Agriculture Committee. Leahy has generally served as one of the more liberal members of the Senate, which is in keeping with the political preferences of Vermont voters. A Catholic, Leahy nevertheless supports gay rights and opposes attempts to limit abortion rights.
An advocate of privacy rights, Leahy has supported information privacy and open government. In 2006, Leahy was one of only 10 senators who voted against the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act, a bill to extend the USA PATRIOT Act. He is also the chief sponsor of the Innocence Protection Act, which addresses flaws in the administration of capital punishment.
Leahy was one of two senators targeted in the 2001 anthrax attacks, along with South Dakota Democrat Tom Daschle.
In one of the highlights of his career, Leahy’s Judiciary Committee probe into the mass firings of U.S. Attorneys as part of a White House strategy to exert political influence over the Justice Department (DOJ) led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and DOJ’s entire top tier of George W. Bush political appointees in 2008.
Leahy is a big fan of the Batman comic books and movies—he even had small parts in three of the recent Hollywood movies—and also of the Grateful Dead, members of which have performed at Leahy fundraisers, with Leahy joining them onstage.
Leahy met his wife, Marcelle Pomerleau, while both were earning their degrees at St. Michael’s, and they married in 1962. They have a daughter, two sons, and five grandchildren. The Leahys live on a tree farm in Middlesex, Vermont.
- Matt Bewig
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Roll Call)
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