Peter Fitzgerald

His family has been continuously involved in commercial banking since the mid-1940s.

Peter Gosselin Fitzgerald (born October 20, 1960) is a retired American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Illinois.

He graduated from Portsmouth Abbey School, a Catholic boarding school in 1978, and from Dartmouth College in 1982.

He completed his post-graduate studies as a Rotary Scholar at Aristotelian University in Greece, and earned his J.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1986.

Fitzgerald ran for the Illinois House of Representatives in 1988, but lost the Republican primary to James M. Kirkland by 1.15%.

Fitzgerald was first elected to the state Senate in 1992.

He was a member of a group of conservative state senators elected in 1992.

They often challenged the leadership of the Illinois Republican Party and were dubbed the "Fab Five."

The group also included Steve Rauschenberger, Dave Syverson, Patrick O'Malley and Chris Lauzen.

He had previously served in the Illinois State Senate from 1993 to 1998.

His father built Suburban Bancorp, a chain of suburban banks, by aggressively founding and buying banks around the Chicago suburbs, which he sold in 1994 to a subsidiary of the Bank of Montreal for $246 million.

Fitzgerald challenged long-time incumbent Republican congressman Phil Crane in the 1994 Republican primary for the 8th Illinois congressional district.

In a multi-candidate field, Fitzgerald lost to Crane 40% to 33%.

Fitzgerald defeated Democratic incumbent Carol Moseley Braun in 1998, becoming the first Republican to win a U.S. Senate race in Illinois since Charles Percy twenty years earlier.

Fitzgerald announced his intention to challenge one-term Democratic incumbent U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun in the 1998 election.

He faced Illinois Comptroller Loleta Didrickson in the Republican primary.

Didrickson had the support of the state Republican party, including Governor Jim Edgar and former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, who served as her national campaign chairman.

A hard-fought primary ensued, and Fitzgerald narrowly defeated the establishment candidate, becoming the Republican nominee.

Despite great support from Republicans and Independents, he had alienated some of the party establishment during the primary.

Meanwhile, Braun was helped by notable Democrats such as First Lady Hillary Clinton and U.S. Congressman Luis V. Gutierrez; final polling had the candidates running even.

Fitzgerald defeated Moseley Braun in the general election by a 2.9% margin.

He was the first Republican in Illinois to win a U.S. Senate race in 20 years and the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent Democratic senator in the 1998 election cycle.

A member of the Republican Party, he served from 1999 to 2005.

Fitzgerald had two major moments in the spotlight in the Senate, the first in 2000 when he filibustered a massive federal spending bill because it included funds for the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield.

He accused Republican governor George Ryan, who later served a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence on a corruption conviction, of opposing competitive bidding so he could dole money to political allies, saying "I want Illinois to get a $150 million (Abraham Lincoln) library, not a $50 million library that just happens to cost $150 million."

His second major moment was following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when Congress quickly passed a massive bailout measure for most of the major airlines, which were in trouble financially.

Standing alone out of all members of the U.S. Senate, Fitzgerald delivered a speech, "Who will bail out the American taxpayer", arguing that the airlines would simply go through the money and remain financially unstable.

The bill passed 96–1.

Fitzgerald was staunchly conservative on such issues as opposition to abortion (except to save the life of the mother), gay marriage and taxes, but on some issues he broke with his conservative colleagues, particularly environmental issues; he opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge throughout his tenure in the US Senate.

Fitzgerald also supported "reasonable" gun control, immigration reform and the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.

Throughout his tenure in the Senate, Fitzgerald battled with the state Republican Party leadership.

He insisted on the appointment of an out-of-state US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald (unrelated ) to investigate corruption in the Illinois state government.

Though state party officials wanted a "friendly" attorney for Illinois, Fitzgerald insisted on someone who did not have friends or enemies in the Illinois government.

Several indictments resulted, including that of former Republican Governor George Ryan, who was eventually convicted of several criminal abuses of authority, and Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, who many years later was convicted of attempting to sell the Senate seat vacated by Fitzgerald's successor and future President Barack Obama.

The scandal was seen as ensuring Illinois' reputation as one of the most politically corrupt states.

When the Republican establishment made clear that they would not support him for reelection, Fitzgerald announced he would retire at the end of his current term.

Known as a maverick for his willingness to break party lines, Fitzgerald retired from the Senate in 2005 and was succeeded by Barack Obama.

After retiring from politics, he and his wife moved to McLean, Virginia.

The son of millionaire banking magnate Gerald Francis Fitzgerald, Peter founded Chain Bridge Bank in 2007.

Born in Elgin, Illinois, one of five children of Gerald Francis and Marjorie (née Gosselin) Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald spent most of his life in Inverness, a northwestern suburb of Chicago.