Sheldon Whitehouse

Sheldon Whitehouse (born October 20, 1955) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Rhode Island since 2007.

Whitehouse was born on October 20, 1955, in New York City, the son of Mary Celine (née Rand) and career diplomat Charles Sheldon Whitehouse, and grandson of diplomat Edwin Sheldon Whitehouse (1883–1965).

Whitehouse's father served as the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand and Laos.

Among his great-great-grandfathers were Episcopalian bishop Henry John Whitehouse and railroad robber baron Charles Crocker, who was among the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad.

With his victory, Whitehouse became the first Democrat to win this Senate seat since John Pastore in 1970.

Whitehouse graduated from St. Paul's School, an elite boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, and from Yale College in 1978.

He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1982.

Whitehouse worked as a clerk for Justice Richard Neely of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia from 1982 to 1983.

He also worked in the Rhode Island Attorney General's office as a special assistant attorney general from 1985 to 1990, chief of the Regulatory Unit (which oversaw utilities) from 1988 to 1990, and as an assistant attorney general from 1989 to 1990.

Whitehouse worked as Rhode Island Governor Bruce Sundlun's executive counsel beginning in 1991, and was later tapped to serve as director of policy.

He oversaw the state's response to the Rhode Island banking crisis that took place soon after Sundlun took office.

In 1992, Sundlun appointed Whitehouse the state's Director of Business Regulation, where he oversaw the state's workers' compensation insurance system.

A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island from 1993 to 1998 and as the 71st attorney general of Rhode Island from 1999 to 2003.

A political progressive and climate hawk, Whitehouse became chair of the United States Senate Committee on the Budget in 2023.

He has given hundreds of Senate floor speeches about climate change and has made his assertion that politically conservative "dark money" groups are conducting a campaign to seize control of the American government, specifically the Supreme Court of the United States, a hallmark of his Senate tenure.

President Bill Clinton appointed Whitehouse United States Attorney for Rhode Island in 1994.

Whitehouse held the position for four years.

With the 1996 extortion conviction of mobster Gerard Ouimette, he was the first prosecutor to convict a member of organized crime under Clinton's "three strikes law".

Ouimette was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Whitehouse initiated the investigation into municipal corruption in Rhode Island that led to Operation Plunder Dome, in which Mayor of Providence Vincent "Buddy" Cianci was eventually convicted on conspiracy charges.

In 1998, Whitehouse was elected Rhode Island Attorney General.

He initiated a lawsuit against the lead paint industry that ended in a mistrial; the state later won a second lawsuit against former lead paint manufacturers Sherwin-Williams, Millennium Holdings, and NL Industries that found them responsible for creating a public nuisance.

When Black Providence police officer Cornel Young Jr.. was shot and killed by two fellow officers while he was off duty in January 2000, Whitehouse was criticized for not appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate the shooting.

Later that year, Whitehouse was criticized when 15-year-old Jennifer Rivera, a witness in a murder case, was shot by a relative of the man she was to testify against later that year.

Whitehouse ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of Rhode Island in 2002.

He lost the primary election to former State Senator Myrth York, who was unsuccessful in the general election against Republican Donald Carcieri.

Whitehouse launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by Lincoln Chafee, a Republican, on April 4, 2005.

By September 30, he had raised over $600,000 for his campaign, including $360,000 of his own, more than doubling Chafee's fundraising.

Whitehouse campaigned heavily against the Iraq War and the United States's dependence on foreign oil.

After winning the Democratic primary by a large margin, he defeated Chafee with 53 percent of the vote in the 2006 general election.

In 2007, the National Journal ranked Whitehouse the second-most liberal senator.

He voted to confirm Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

In the spring of 2007, Whitehouse joined other senators in calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's resignation.

After Gonzales's first appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee related to the controversy, Whitehouse told NPR, "[Gonzales] had a hard sell to make to me, and he didn't make it."

He continued to question Gonzales's service in the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.

This decision, however, was unanimously overturned by the Rhode Island Supreme Court on July 1, 2008.

The court found that under Rhode Island law it is the responsibility of property owners to abate and mitigate lead hazards.

On November 6, 2012, Whitehouse won reelection to a second term in office, defeating Republican challenger Barry Hinckley by 30 points, with 64.9 percent of the total vote.

Upon Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement in September 2014 of his intention to step down, some speculated that Whitehouse could be nominated as Holder's replacement.

On November 6, 2018, Whitehouse was reelected to a third term, defeating Republican Robert Flanders by 23 points.