Marty Meehan

Martin Thomas Meehan (born December 30, 1956) is an American academic administrator, politician, and attorney.

He graduated from Lowell High School in 1974.

Meehan attended the University of Massachusetts Lowell, graduating cum laude in 1978 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Education and Political Science.

From 1978 to 1979, Meehan served on the staff to Lowell mayor Raymond F. Rourke.

He was the press assistant to Representative James Michael Shannon from 1979 to 1981 and the head research analyst for the Massachusetts Senate's joint committee on election laws from 1981 to 1984.

In 1981, Meehan graduated from Suffolk University with a Master of Public Administration degree, and a Juris Doctor from the Suffolk University Law School in 1986.

He has received honorary degrees from the American College of Greece, Suffolk University, Green Mountain College in Vermont, and Shenkar College of Engineering & Design in Israel.

After completing law school, Meehan served as Director of Public Affairs to the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth and Deputy Secretary of State for Securities and Corporations from 1986 to 1990.

From 1987 to 1988, Meehan was a member of the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Harvard Law School.

Atkins had a record of weak performances in Meehan's hometown of Lowell, only winning the city by 2 votes in his close-run 1990 re-election campaign.

Atkins also was caught up in the House Bank overdraft scandal, with 127 overdrafts, the second most in the Massachusetts delegation.

From 1991 to 1992, Meehan was the First Assistant District Attorney for Middlesex County, where he established an innovative "priority prosecution" policy that targeted hardened criminals.

Meehan ran for the U.S. House in the 1992 election, challenging another Democrat, the 4-term incumbent Chet Atkins.

The delegation leader in bank overdrafts, Joseph Early with 140, lost re-election in 1992 to Republican Peter Blute.

Meehan beat Atkins, receiving 50,300 votes to Atkins' 26,855.

After winning the Democratic primary, Meehan was elected on November 3, 1992.

Meehan successfully ran for the House in 1992 on a platform of reform, including a commitment to pushing through term limits for members of the House.

As part of that platform, Meehan made a pledge not to serve more than four terms.

This is the result of raising more money than he spent in several campaigns since his first in 1992.

Meehan, a Democrat, served in the United States House of Representatives from 1993 to 2007 as the Representative for Massachusetts's 5th congressional district.

He took office in January 1993.

Meehan is generally considered to be a political liberal.

Meehan is a prominent advocate for campaign finance reform and was one of the major sponsors of Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (called the "Shays-Meehan Bill" in the House and the "McCain-Feingold Bill" in the Senate).

He has also been noted for his activism on gay rights issues, and was the chief sponsor of the measure repealing the don't ask, don't tell policy.

On the House floor in 1995, he scolded members who might go back on their promise to limit their tenure in office.

"The best test of any politicians' credibility on term limits," he said, "is whether they are willing to put their careers where their mouths are and limit their own service."

Meehan was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, one of seven children born to Martin T. Meehan (d. 2000), a compositor for The Lowell Sun, and Alice (Britton) Meehan (d. 2008).

Despite his pledge, Meehan again ran for Congress in the year 2000, exceeding four terms by two and a half times.

On October 10, 2002, Meehan was among the 81 House Democrats who voted in favor of authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

In the 2004 Congressional race, Meehan raised $3,170,733 and spent $459,977 of that, thus adding $2,710,756 to his cash on hand.

His opponent, Tom Tierney raised $30,943 and spent $30,406.

Overall, in the 2004 race, incumbents in the House of Representatives on average raised $1,122,505 compared to $192,964 for their challengers.

Meehan was mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2004, if Massachusetts' junior senator, John Kerry, had been elected to the presidency.

Meehan worked with former Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva and a bipartisan group of representatives to Capitol Hill to reintroduce the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, legislation that would repeal the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gay service members.

In January 2005, nearly three years after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime and as U.S. troops faced an "increasingly sophisticated insurgency in Iraq," Meehan published a Congressional white paper advocating that Iraqi security responsibilities be transferred to a new democratically elected government and that the U.S. develop an exit strategy to remove troops within 12 months to 18 months.

During a discussion panel at the Brookings Institution, Meehan expressed concerns about the Bush administration having "no endgame in sight."

He told the panel that "it's time for Congress to reassert its role in foreign policy and to take the lead in providing an exit strategy in Iraq."

Meehan's campaign fund was among the largest campaign accounts of any House member, with $4,829,540 cash on hand reported on October 15, 2005.

Since July 2015, Meehan has served as the President of the University of Massachusetts after serving as Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Lowell since September 2007.

In 2016, after his first year as president of UMass, Meehan closed his congressional campaign signaling an end to his political career so he could focus his energies on leading the UMass system.