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| John J. Gilligan |
John J. GilliganJohn Joyce "Jack" Gilligan (born March 22, 1921) is a Democratic politician from the U.S. state of Ohio who served as its 62nd governor.
Gilligan was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1943 and the University of Cincinnati in 1947, serving in between in the U.S. Navy during World War II in the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean as a destroyer gunnery officer. He was awarded a Silver Star for gallantry in action at Okinawa.
After the war, Gilligan returned to Cincinnati to teach literature at Xavier University. He served on the Cincinnati City Council from 1953-1963. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1964, serving from 1965-1967. Gilligan lost his re-election bid in 1966 to Republican Robert Taft Jr. after the Ohio General Assembly redrew his district to be more Republican. In 1968, Gilligan defeated sitting U.S. Senator Frank J. Lausche in the Democratic primary; however, he lost in the general election to Republican William B. Saxbe.
Gilligan won the election for the Governorship of Ohio in 1970, defeating Republican Roger Cloud, and serving from 1971-1975. Gilligan lost the governorship to Republican James A. Rhodes in a tight race in 1974. He subsequently served as the administrator of USAID from 1977-1979 and taught at the University of Notre Dame and elsewhere.
In 1999, at age 78, Gilligan was elected to the Board of Education of the Cincinnati Public Schools, an office he still serves in. Gilligan is a family man, and walks with the help of a cane and walker. He lives with his 53 year old doctor-wife and does not plan to run for relection in CPS School Board for 2007. Instead, he will take on a well deserved (and much needed according to his family) retirement.
Gilligan is the father of four children, including governer Kathleen Sebelius, the current Governor of Kansas. They constitute the first father-daughter pair of governors in the United States. He is also grandfather of eight, and while his grandchildren call him "Gramps" Gilligan refers to himself in their presence as "Grumps".
See also:
- Election Results, U.S. Representative from Ohio, 1st District
- Election Results, Ohio Governor
- Election Results, Ohio Governor (Democratic Primaries)
- Election Results, U.S. Senator from Ohio
- List of United States Representatives from Ohio
- List of Governors of Ohio
Gilligan, John J.
Gilligan, John J.
Gilligan, John J.
Gilliagan, John
Gilliagan, John
March 22
March 22 is the 81st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (82nd in Leap years). There are 284 days remaining.
Events
- 238 - Gordian I and his son Gordian II are proclaimed Roman emperors.
- 1621 - The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sign a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags.
- 1622 - Jamestown massacre: Algonquian Indians kill 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony's population.
- 1630 - Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.
- 1638 - Anne Hutchinson is expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.
- 1765 - The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act, the first direct tax levied from England on the American colonies.
- 1809 - Charles XIII succeeds Gustav IV Adolf to the Swedish throne.
- 1849 - The Austrians defeat the Piedmontese at the Battle of Novara.
- 1871 - In North Carolina, William Woods Holden becomes the first governor of a U.S. state to be removed from office by impeachment.
- 1888 - The Football League is formed.
- 1894 - The first playoff game for the Stanley Cup starts.
- 1895 - First display (a private screening) of motion pictures by Auguste and Louis Lumière.
- 1933 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs into law a bill legalizing the sale of beer and wine.
- 1939 - World War II: Germany takes Memel from Lithuania.
- 1941 - Washington's Grand Coulee Dam begins to generate electricity.
- 1942 - World War II: In the Mediterranean sea, Regia Marina defeats Royal Navy in the Second Battle of Sirte.
- 1945 - The Arab League is founded when a charter is adopted in Cairo, Egypt.
- 1954 - Closed since 1939, the London bullion market reopens.
- 1958 - Faisal becomes King of Saudi Arabia.
- 1960 - Arthur Leonard Schawlow & Charles Townes receive the first patent for a laser.
- 1963 Please Please Me, the first Beatles album, is released in the UK.
- 1965 - Bob Dylan "goes electric," releasing his first album featuring electric instruments, Bringing It All Back Home.
- 1975 - A fire at the Brown's Ferry nuclear reactor in Decatur, Alabama causes dangerous lowering of cooling water levels.
- 1975 - In Stockholm, Sweden, Teach-In wins the twentieth Eurovision Song Contest for the Netherlands singing "Ding-a-dong."
- 1978 - Karl Wallenda of the Flying Wallendas dies after falling off a tight-rope between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
- 1984 - Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.
- 1989 - Fawn Hall, Oliver North's former secretary, begins two days of testimony at North's Iran-Contra trial in Washington.
- 1993 - The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64 bit data path.
- 1995 - Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in space.
- 1997 - Tara Lipinski, age 14 years and 10 months, becomes the youngest champion of the women's world figure skating competition.
- 2005 - Pat Summitt, coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols (women's college basketball), becomes the all-time leader in victories for both men's and women's college basketball, getting her 880th win as coach of the team.
Births
- 1212 - Emperor Go-Horikawa of Japan (d. 1234)
- 1366 - Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, English politician (d. 1399)
- 1459 - Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1519)
- 1503 - Antonio Francesco Grazzini, Italian writer (d. 1583)
- 1599 - Anthony van Dyck, Flemish painter (d. 1641)
- 1609 - King John II Casimir of Poland (d. 1672)
- 1663 - August Hermann Francke, German protestant minister (d. 1727)
- 1712 - Edward Moore, English writer (d. 1757)
- 1720 - Nicolas-Henri Jardin, French architect (d. 1799)
- 1723 - Charles Carroll, American lawyer and delegate to the Continental Congress (d. 1783)
- 1797 - King Wilhelm I of Germany (d. 1888)
- 1812 - Stephen Pearl Andrews, abolitionist (d. 1886)
- 1817 - Bahá'u'lláh, Persian prophet of the Bahá'í Faith (d. 1892)
- 1817 - Braxton Bragg, American Confederate general (d. 1876)
- 1860 - Alfred Ploetz, German physician, biologist, and eugenicist (d. 1940)
- 1868 - Robert Millikan, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)
- 1878 - Michel Théato, Luxembourg athlete (d. 1919)
- 1887 - Chico Marx, American comedian and actor (d. 1961)
- 1901 - Greta Kempton, American artist (d. 1991)
- 1907 - Lucia dos Santos, Portuguese nun (d. 2005)
- 1908 - Louis L'Amour, American author (d. 1988)
- 1909 - Gabrielle Roy, Canadian author (d. 1983)
- 1912 - Wilfrid Brambell, Irish actor (d. 1985)
- 1912 - Karl Malden, American actor
- 1913 - Tom McCall, Governor of Oregon (d. 1983)
- 1915 - Georgiy Zhzhonov, Russian actor and writer
- 1918 - Cheddi Jagan, President of Guyana (d. 1997)
- 1920 - Werner Klemperer, German actor (d. 2000)
- 1920 - Ross Martin, Polish-American actor (d. 1981)
- 1924 - Allen Neuharth, American businessman and writer
- 1923 - Marcel Marceau, French mime
- 1928 - Carrie Donovan, American fashion editor (d. 2001)
- 1928 - Ed Macauley, American basketball player
- 1930 - Derek Bok, American lawyer and educator
- 1930 - Pat Robertson, American televangelist
- 1930 - Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist
- 1931 - Burton Richter, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1931 - William Shatner, Canadian actor
- 1933 - May Britt, Swedish actress
- 1933 - Abolhassan Banisadr, President of Iran
- 1934 - Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator from Utah
- 1935 - M. Emmet Walsh, American actor
- 1936 - Ron Carey, labor leader
- 1936 - Roger Whittaker, British singer
- 1937 - Armin Hary, German athlete
- 1940 - Haing S. Ngor, Cambodian actor (d. 1996)
- 1941 - Jeremy Clyde, British actor and singer
- 1941 - Bruno Ganz, Swiss actor
- 1943 - George Benson, American musician
- 1943 - Keith Relf, British musician (The Yardbirds) (d. 1976)
- 1946 - Rudy Rucker, American author
- 1948 - Wolf Blitzer, American television journalist
- 1948 - Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer
- 1949 - Fanny Ardant, French actress
- 1952 - Bob Costas, American sports commentator and talk show host
- 1955 - Pete Sessions, American politician
- 1956 - Lena Olin, Swedish actress
- 1957 - Stephanie Mills, American actress, singer
- 1959 - Matthew Modine, American actor
- 1966 - Artis Pabriks, Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 1967 - Mario Cipollini, Italian cyclist
- 1970 - Leontien van Moorsel, Dutch cyclist
- 1972 - Shawn Bradley, American basketball player
- 1972 - Elvis Stojko, Canadian figure skater
- 1973 - Juninho, Brazilian football player
- 1974 - Marcus Camby, American basketball player
- 1976 - Teun de Nooijer, Dutch field hockey player
- 1976 - Reese Witherspoon, American actress
Deaths
- 1322 - Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, English politician (b. 1278)
- 1418 - Dietrich of Nieheim, German historian
- 1421 - Thomas of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Clarence, second son of Henry IV of England (killed in battle) (b. 1388)
- 1471 - Pope Paul II (b. 1418)
- 1544 - Johannes Magnus, last Catholic Archbishop of Sweden (b. 1488)
- 1602 - Agostino Carracci, Italian artist (b. 1557)
- 1685 - Emperor Go-Sai of Japan (b. 1638)
- 1687 - Jean Baptiste Lully, Italian-born French composer (b. 1632)
- 1758 - Jonathan Edwards, American minister (b. 1703)
- 1758 - Richard Leveridge, English bass and composer (b. 1670)
- 1772 - John Canton, English physicist (b. 1718)
- 1820 - Stephen Decatur, American naval officer (b. 1779)
- 1832 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer (b. 1749)
- 1896 - Thomas Hughes, English novelist (b. 1822)
- 1913 - Sung Chiao-jen, Chinese Nationalist (b. 1882)
- 1924 - William Macewen, Scottish surgeon (b. 1848)
- 1945 - John Hessin Clarke, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (b. 1857)
- 1951 - Willem Mengelberg, Dutch conductor (b. 1871)
- 1952 - Uncle Dave Macon, American musician (b. 1870)
- 1958 - Michael Todd, American film producer (b. 1909)
- 1977 - A.K. Gopalan, Indian communist leader (d. 1904)
- 1978 - Karl Wallenda, German acrobat (b. 1905)
- 1981 - James "Jumbo" Elliott, American track coach (b. 1915)
- 1986 - Charles Starrett, American actor
- 1990 - Gerald Bull, Canadian engineer (b. 1928)
- 1994 - Dan Hartman, American musician, songwriter, and record producer (b. 1950)
- 1994 - Walter Lantz, American cartoonist (b. 1899)
- 1999 - David Strickland, American actor (b. 1969)
- 2001 - William Hanna, American animator and studio founder (b. 1910)
- 2003 - Terry Lloyd, English reporter (b. 1952)
- 2004 - Ahmed Yassin, Palestinian co-founder of Hamas
- 2005 - Kenzo Tange, Japanese architect (b. 1913)
Holidays and observances
- The fourth day of Quinquatria in ancient Rome, held in honor of Minerva.
- Easter Sunday - 1818, 2285. In the Gregorian Calendar 22 March is the earliest date on which Easter Sunday can fall (25th April is the latest).
- World Water Day
External links
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/22 BBC: On This Day]
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March 21 - March 23 - February 22 - April 22 -- listing of all days
ko:3월 22일
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ja:3月22日
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th:22 มีนาคม
1921
1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar).
Events
- January 1 - In American football, California defeats Ohio State 28-0 in the Rose Bowl.
- January 2 - The first religious radio broadcast (KDKA AM in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
- January 2 - Spanish liner Santa Isabel sinks off Villa Garcia - 244 dead
- January 2 - DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park San Francisco opens.
- January 20 - Royal Navy K-boat K5 sinks in the English Channel with all 56 hands
- February 25 - The Democratic Republic of Georgia is occupied by Bolshevist Russia.
- February 27 - The International Working Union of Socialist Parties is formed in Vienna
- February 28 - Russian sailors rebel in Kronstadt - On March 17 the Red Army crushes the rebellion and number of sailors flee to Finland
- March 1 - The city Kiryu, located in Gunma, Japan, is founded.
- March 6 - The Portuguese Communist Party is founded.
- March 8 - Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato Iradier is assassinated while exiting the parliament building in Madrid.
- March 13 - Mongolia declares its independence from China
- March 17 - Marie Stopes opens the first birth control clinic in London, England. The Second Republic of Poland adopts the March Constitution.
- March 18 - The second Peace of Riga between Poland and Soviet Union ending Polish-Soviet war. Despite the recent Polish successes, Soviets annex Ukraine and Belarus.
- April 11 - The Emirate of Transjordan is created, with Abdullah I as emir.
- April 14 - In Britain, labour unions for mining, railway and transportation workers call for a strike - government threatens to call in the army
- April 24 - Referendum in Tyrol supports joining to Germany
- May 1-May 7 - Riots in Palestine of May, 1921
- 2 May-5 July - Third Silesian Uprising, the Poles in Upper Silesia rise against the Germans
- May 5 - Only 13 spectators attend the soccer match between Leicester City and Stockport County, the lowest attendance in The Football League's history.
- May 6 - General strike begins in Norway
- May 8 - Death penalty abolished in Sweden
- May 14 - May 17 - Violent anti-European riots in Cairo and Alexandria
- May 19 - The Emergency Quota Act passes the U.S. Congress establishing national quotas on immigration.
- May 31 - Race riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma
- May 24 - Elections are held for the first time for the new Northern Ireland Parliament.
- June 1 - Tulsa Race Riot of 1921: A race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma kills 85 people.
- June 26 - In Britain, rain ends 100 days of drought
- July 1 - Coal strike ends in England
- July 11 - The Irish War of Independence comes to an end when a truce is signed between the British Government and the Irish forces.
- July 11 - Mongolia becomes independent of China
- July 14 - A Massachusetts jury finds Nichola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti guilty of first degree murder following a widely-publicized trial.
- July 18 - The first BCG vaccination against tuberculosis
- July 22 - Irish Truce declared in Britain
- July 26 - US President Warren G. Harding receives Princess Fatima of Afghanistan - and Stanley Clifford Weyman...
- July 29 - Adolf Hitler becomes Chairman of the Nazi Party
- July 27 - Researchers at the University of Toronto led by biochemist Frederick Banting announce the discovery of the hormone insulin.
- August - The United States formally ends World War I, declaring a peace with Germany
- August 5 - First radio broadcast of baseball game; Harold Arlin announced Pirates-Phillies game from Forbes Field over Westinghouse KDKA Pittsburgh
- August 11 - 35 degree Celsius in Breslau - heat wave continues elsewhere in Europe as well
- August 23 - King Faisal is crowned in Baghdad
- August 24 - Airship ZR 2 explodes during a test flight near Hull, England - 41 dead
- August 26 - Rising prices cause riots in Munich
- August 29 - Assassination of German politician Matthias Erzberger causes the government to declare martial law
- September 1 - Poplar Strike in London - 9 members of Poplar borough council are arrested
- September 7 - In Atlantic City, New Jersey, the first Miss America Pageant is held.
- September 8 - 16-year-old Margaret Gorman won the Atlantic City Pageant's Golden Mermaid trophy; pageant officials later dubbed her the first Miss America.
- September 12 - Lotta Svärd founded in Finland.
- September 21 - Oppau explosion happened at BASF's nitrate factory in Oppau, Germany - 500—600 dead.
- October 10 - Teaching at the University of Szeged started in Hungary.
- October 21 - Peace conference between Irish and United Kingdom begins in London.
- October 24 - Spanish army defeats rifkabyls.
- October 29 - Construction of the Link River Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project completed.
- November 9 - Riots in Reykjavík - most of the small police force is injured.
- November 11 - During an Armistice Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding.
- December 1 - Rising prices cause riots in Vienna.
- December 16 - The Anglo-Irish Treaty establishing the Irish Free State is signed in London. See Ireland/History.
- December 13 - In the Four Power Treaty on Insular Possessions Japan, the United States, United Kingdom, and France agree to recognize the status quo in the Pacific.
- December 29 - William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes Canada's tenth prime minister.
- Agnes Macphail becomes the first woman to enter Canadian parliament
- Change of US presidency from Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) to Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
- Invention of the vibraphone.
- Abkhazia becomes an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union.
Fictitious Events
1921 is a song on the album Tommy by The Who.
Births
Date unknown
- Norma Macmillan, voice actress (d. 2001)
January
- January 5 - Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss writer (d. 1990)
- January 5 - Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
- January 10 - Rodger Ward, American race car driver (d. 2004)
- January 19 - Patricia Highsmith, American author (d. 1995)
- January 27 - Donna Reed, American actress (d. 1986)
- January 31 - Carol Channing, American actress
- January 31 - Mario Lanza, American tenor (d. 1959)
February
- February 4 - Betty Friedan, American feminist
- February 4 - K. R. Narayanan, President of India (d. 2005)
- February 5 - John Pritchard, English conductor (d. 1989)
- February 11 - Eva Gabor, Hungarian actress (d. 1996)
- February 11 - Lloyd Bentsen, American politician
- February 14 - Hugh Downs, American game show host and journalist
- February 22 - Wayne Booth, American literary critic (d. 2005)
- February 25 - Pierre Laporte, Canadian statesman (assassinated) (d. 1970)
March
- March 1 - Jack Clayton, British film director
- March 1 - Terence Cardinal Cooke, American Catholic archbishop (d. 1983)
- March 1 - Richard Wilbur, American poet
- March 2 - Robert Simpson, English composer (d. 1997)
- March 3 - Paul Guimard, French writer (d. 2004)
- March 5 - Elmer Valo, Czech Major League Baseball player (d. 1998)
- March 8 - Cyd Charisse, American actress and dancer
- March 11 - Frank Harary, American mathematician (d. 2005)
- March 12 - Giovanni Agnelli, Italian auto executive (d. 2003)
- March 12 - Gordon MacRae, American singer and actor (d. 1986)
- March 13 - Al Jaffee, American cartoonist
- March 13 - Cyril Poole, English cricketer (d. 1996)
- March 20 - Sister Rosetta Tharpe, American singer (d. 1973)
- March 21 - Arthur Grumiaux, Belgian violinist (d. 1986)
- March 25 - Simone Signoret, French actress (d. 1985)
- March 28 - Dirk Bogarde, English actor (d. 1999)
April-May
- April 1 - Beau Jack, American boxer (d. 2000)
- April 8 - Franco Corelli, Italian tenor (d. 2003)
- April 10 - Sheb Wooley, American actor and singer (d. 2003)
- April 14 - Thomas Schelling, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- April 15 - Georgi Beregovoi, Soviet cosmonaut (d. 1995)
- April 16 - Peter Ustinov, English actor and director (d. 2004)
- April 23 - Warren Spahn, baseball player (d. 2003)
- May 2 - Satyajit Ray, Indian filmmaker (d. 1992)
- May 5 - Arthur Leonard Schawlow, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
- May 6 - Erich Fried, Austrian author (d. 1988)
- May 9 - Sophie Scholl, resistance fighter in Nazi Germany (d. 1943)
- May 9 - Mona Van Duyn, American poet (d. 2004)
- May 11 - Hildegard Hamm-Brücher, German politician
- May 12 - Joseph Beuys, German artist (d. 1986)
- May 12 - Farley Mowat, Canadian writer and naturalist
- May 17 - Dennis Brain, English French horn player (d. 1957)
- May 18 - Sir Michael Epstein, British medical researcher
- May 19 - Karel van het Reve, Dutch writer (d. 1999)
- May 20 - Wolfgang Borchert, German writer (d. 1947)
- May 20 - Hal Newhouser, baseball player (d. 1998)
- May 21 - Andrei Sakharov, Russian physicist and activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (declined) (d. 1989)
- May 23 - James Blish, American science fiction author (d. 1975)
- May 25 - Jack Steinberger, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- May 25 - James C. Quayle, American newspaper publisher
- May 26 - Stan Mortensen, English footballer (d. 1991)
- May 28 - Heinz G. Konsalik, German author (d. 1999)
June-August
- June 1 - Nelson Riddle, American bandleader (d. 1985)
- June 8 - Alexis Smith, Canadian actress (d. 1993)
- June 10 - Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
- June 15 - Errol Garner, American jazz musician (d. 1977)
- June 25 - Celia Franca, Canadian ballet dancer
- June 26 - Violette Szabo, French World War II heroine (d. 1945)
- June 28 - P. V. Narasimha Rao, Prime Minister of India (d. 2004)
- July 4 - Gerard Debreu, French economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
- July 4 - Tibor Varga, Hungarian violinist and conductor (d. 2003)
- July 6- Nancy Davis Reagan, wife of U.S President Ronald Reagan
- July 10 - Harvey Ball, American designer (d. 2001)
- July 11 - Ilse Werner, German actress (d. 2005)
- July 13 - Friedrich Peter, Austrian poltitician (d. 2005)
- July 14 - Leon Garfield, English children's author (d. 1996)
- July 14 - Geoffrey Wilkinson, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- July 15 - Robert Bruce Merrifield, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- July 17 - František Zvarík, Slovakian actor
- July 17 - Hannah Szenes, Hungarian World War II heroine (d. 1944)
- July 19 - Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, American physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- July 22 - William Roth, U.S. Senator (d. 2003)
- July 30 - Grant Johannesen, American concert pianist (d. 2005)
- August 4 - Maurice Richard, Canadian hockey player (d. 2000)
- August 8 - John Herbert Chapman, Canadian physicist (d. 1979)
- August 9 - J. James Exon Governor of Nebraska and U.S. Senator (d. 2005)
- August 19 - Gene Roddenberry, American television producer (d. 1991)
- August 23 - Kenneth Arrow, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- August 25 - Monty Hall, Canadian actor and game show host
September-December
- September 3 - Thurston Dart, English harpsichordist and conductor (d. 1971)
- September 8 - Harry Secombe, Welsh entertainer (d. 2001)
- September 12 - Stanisław Lem, Polish science fiction writer
- October 2 - Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 2000)
- October 5 - Bill Willis, American football player
- October 13 - Yves Montand, French singer and actor (d. 1991)
- October 18 - Jesse Helms, U.S. Senator from North Carolina
- October 19 - Gunnar Nordahl, Swedish footballer (d. 1995)
- October 25 - King Michael of Romania
- November 3 - Charles Bronson, American actor (d. 2003)
- November 5 - Princess Fawzia of Egypt
- November 11 - Ron Greenwood, English football manager
- November 14 - Brian Keith, American actor (d. 1997)
- November 22 - Rodney Dangerfield, American actor and comedian (d. 2004)
- November 23 - Fred Buscaglione, Italian singer and actor (d. 1960)
- December 3 - Phyllis Curtin, American soprano
- December 6 - Otto Graham, American football player (d. 2003)
- December 26 - Steve Allen, American actor, composer, comedian, and author (d. 2000)
Deaths
- February 8 - Peter Kropotkin, Russian anarchist (b. 1842)
- February 26 - Carl Menger, Austrian economist (b. 1840)
- February 27 - Schofield Haigh, English cricketer (b. 1871)
- March 2 - King Nicholas I of Montenegro (b. 1841)
- April 27 - Arthur Mold, English cricketer (b. 1863)
- May 5 - Alfred Hermann Fried, Austrian writer and pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1864)
- June 5 - Georges Feydeau, French playwright (b. 1862)
- August 2 - Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor (b. 1873)
- September 2 - Henry Austin Dobson, English poet (b. 1840)
- September 11 - Subramanya Bharathy, Tamil poet (b. 1882)
- September 27 - Engelbert Humperdinck, German composer (b. 1854)
- October 25 - Bat Masterson, American gunfighter
- November 28 - `Abdu'l-Bahá, Persian religious leader (b. 1844)
- December 16 - Camille Saint-Saëns, French composer (b. 1835)
- December 31 - Boies Penrose, United States Senator from Pennsylvania (b. 1860)
Nobel Prizes
- Physics - Albert Einstein
- Chemistry - Frederick Soddy
- Medicine - not awarded
- Literature - Anatole France
- Peace - Karl Hjalmar Branting, Christian Lous Lange
-
ko:1921년
ms:1921
ja:1921年
simple:1921
th:พ.ศ. 2464
United States/Democratic Party
The Democratic Party, founded in 1792, is the longest-standing political party in the world. It is one of the two major parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party. Currently it is the minority party in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. Democrats control 20 state legislatures, as do the Republicans (nine states have different parties in control of the upper and lower chambers, while Nebraska's unicameral legislature is elected on a nonpartisan basis). In 2005, the Democrats regained a majority of legislative seats nationwide. Of the two major U.S. parties, the Democratic Party is to the left of the Republican Party, though its politics are not as consistently leftist as the traditional social democratic and labor parties in much of the world.
The Democratic Party is more notably factional than many major parties in the industrialized world, partly because American political parties in general do not have as much official power to control members as political parties in many other countries, and partly because the United States does not have a parliamentary goverment.
History
Beginnings
labor-1837).]]
The Democratic Party's origins lie in the original Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792. Today, that party is usually referred to as the "Democratic-Republican Party" to avoid confusion. After the disintegration of the Federalist Party, the Democratic-Republicans were the only major party in American politics. For 20 years, different factions of the party contended for the presidency, whose candidates were nominated by congressional caucuses. In 1824, a particularly bitter election was thrown to the House of Representatives, and won by John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. Jackson, recovering from his defeat, gathered together prominent leaders, including Martin Van Buren of New York and even Vice President John C. Calhoun to support his next bid for the presidency.
By the election of 1828, the unified party broke into two. One became the National Republican Party, and backed the incumbent President, and the other, which became known as the Democratic Party, after their insistence that the President hold a national mandate from the people, backed Andrew Jackson. The National Republican faction became the Whig Party (after their opposition to "King Andrew"), which would disintegrate in the 1850s when dissident Whigs and Northern Democrats formed the Republican Party.
Antebellum
Initially the Democratic Party was a coalition between Western pioneers in the Ohio River valley and Illinois - the "North West" of the U.S. at that time - and Southern planters and agrarians from the Jeffersonian coalition. This coalition was very similar to the one that Jefferson and Madison had worked to create, and lead to the belief that Jackson, and not John Quincy Adams, represented a continuous "Jeffersonian" tradition. This was in opposition to the Federalist and Hamiltonian conception of government which Adams was said to represent. The key issues were election access and the Bank of the United States. The Jeffersonians had opposed the first bank, but had allowed it to continue for 20 years of their time in power. The issue of the Bank, and tariffs would be the central domestic policy issue from 1828 to 1850, even though it was increasingly overshadowed by expansion and nativism in the run up to the Civil War.
The Democratic Party would lose the presidency to William Henry Harrison, only to gain it back when his Vice President took office, and proceeded to enact many policies the party favored. James Polk would solidify the party's hold on power with a coalition that was increasingly based on holding a solid South and taking enough states in the North to win national power. The party also became increasingly associated with continuation of slavery, including pressing for more and more aggressive laws to enforce the recapture of enslaved individuals who had escaped, and for more of the Great Plains to be opened to slavery. This ran into the Missouri Compromise, which had set a free line, north of which slavery would be prohibited, in return for keeping a balance of power in the Senate. With the disintegration of the Whig Party in 1856 into two factions, the American Party of Millard Fillmore and the Republican Party whose first candidate was John Fremont, it seemed as if the Democratic Party would have a permanent dominance of political power.
Civil War and Reconstruction
In the 1850s, following the disintegration of the Whig Party, the Democratic Party became increasingly divided, with its Southern wing staunchly advocating the expansion of slavery into new territories, in opposition to the newly founded Republican Party, which sought to prohibit such expansion. Democrats in the Northern states joined the Republicans in opposing the expansion of slavery, and at the 1860 nominating convention the Party split and nominated two candidates (see U.S. presidential election, 1860). As a result, the Democrats went down to defeat with the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, a link in the chain of events leading up to the Civil War. During the war, Northern Democrats divided into two factions, War Democrats, who supported the military policies of President Abraham Lincoln, and Copperheads, who strongly opposed them. After 1864, the Democratic Party's main opposition has come from the modern Republican Party.
The Democrats were shattered by the war but nevertheless benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. Once Reconstruction ended, and the disenfranchisement of blacks was re-established, the region was known as the "Solid South" for nearly a century because it reliably voted Democratic and there was, in many places, effectively only one party, there being no significant Republican presence. Though Republicans continued to control the White House until 1885, the Democrats remained competitive, especially in the mid-Atlantic and lower Midwest, and controlled the House of Representatives for most of that period. In the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland, the reforming Democratic Governor of New York, won the Presidency, a feat he repeated in 1892, having lost (but won the popular vote) in the election of 1888 (as had Samuel J. Tilden in the election of 1876).
Populism and Republican dominance
In the presidential election of 1896, widely regarded as a political realignment, Democrats favoring Free Silver defeated their conservative counterparts and succeeded in nominating William Jennings Bryan for the presidency (as did the agrarian Populist Party). Bryan, perhaps best known for his "Cross of Gold" speech delivered at the 1896 convention, waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern monied interests, but lost to Republican William McKinley in an election which was to prove decisive: the Republicans controlled the presidency for 28 of the following 36 years.
The New Deal
William McKinley
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression set the stage for a more progressive government and Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the election of 1932, campaigning on a platform of "Relief, Recovery, and Reform". This came to be termed "The New Deal" after a phrase in his acceptance speech. The Democrats also swept to large majorities in both houses of Congress, and among state Governors. Roosevelt altered the nature of the Party, away from laissez-faire capitalism, and towards an ideology of economic regulation and insurance against hardship.
After winning re-election in 1936, Roosevelt embarked on an ambitious legislative program that came to be called "The Second New Deal." He was stymied, however, by an alliance of Republicans and conservative Democrats, as well as by the Supreme Court. Frustrated by the conservative wing of his own party, Roosevelt made an attempt to rid himself of it; in 1938, he actively campaigned against five incumbent conservative Democratic senators, and to appoint more justices to the Court. However, Roosevelt's attempt to chastise the conservatives failed when all five senators won re-election despite Roosevelt's efforts, and his attempts to add justices to the Court became derisively known as "Court Packing".
Roosevelt's New Deal programs focused on job creation through public works projects as well as on social welfare programs such as Social Security. It also included sweeping reforms to the banking system, work regulation, transportation, communications, stock markets and attempts to regulate prices. His policies soon paid off by uniting a diverse coalition of Democratic voters called the New Deal Coalition, which included labor unions, minorities (most significantly, Catholics and Jews), and liberals. This united voter base allowed Democrats to be elected to Congress and the presidency for much of the next 30 years.
Under Roosevelt, the Democratic Party became identified more closely with modern liberalism, which included the promotion of social welfare, civil rights, and regulation of the economy.
Civil Rights Movement
In 1924 at the Democratic National Convention, a resolution denouncing the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan was introduced. After much debate, the resolution failed by just a single vote. This resolution later passed during the 1948 Democratic National Convention as part of a larger resolution endorsing civil rights.
civil rights when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.]]
The New Deal Coalition began to fracture as more Democratic leaders voiced support for civil rights, upsetting the party's traditional base of conservative Southern Democrats. After Harry Truman's platform showed support for civil rights and anti-segregation laws during the 1948 Democratic National Convention, many Southern Democratic delegates decided to split from the Party and formed the "Dixiecrats", led by South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond. Over the next few years, many conservative Democrats in the "Solid South" drifted away from the party. On the other hand, African Americans, who had traditionally given strong support to the Republican Party since its inception as the "anti-slavery party", shifted to the Democratic Party due to its New Deal economic policies.
The national party's dramatic reversal on civil rights issues culminated when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile, the Republicans were beginning their Southern strategy, which aimed to solidify the Republican Party's electoral hold over conservative white Southerners. Southern Democrats took notice of the fact that 1964 Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act on states rights grounds, and in the presidential election of 1964, Goldwater's only electoral victories outside his home state of Arizona were in the states of the Deep South.
The degree to which the Southern Democrats had abandoned the party became evident in the 1968 Presidential election when every former Confederate state except Texas voted for either Republican Richard Nixon or independent George Wallace, the latter a former Southern Democrat. Defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey's electoral votes came mainly from the Northern states, marking a dramatic shift from the 1948 election 20 years earlier, when the losing Republican candidate's electoral votes were mainly concentrated in the Northern states.
1970s
In 1972, the Democrats nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern as the Party's presidential candidate on a platform which advocated, among other things, U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans. McGovern was defeated in a landslide by incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon, the former winning only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
By 1976, however, things had changed dramatically. Nixon, under criticism during the Watergate scandal, resigned from the presidency in 1974. Prior to that, his Vice President, Spiro Agnew had been forced out by a separate scandal. After Agnew resigned, Nixon appointed Gerald Ford, a Republican Representative from Michigan as Agnew's replacement. Thus, when Nixon resigned, Ford became the first President in the nation's history to have been neither elected President nor Vice President. Ford soon pardoned Nixon. Mistrust of the administration, complicated by a combination of economic recession and inflation, sometimes called "stagflation," led to Ford's defeat in 1976 to Jimmy Carter, a former Governor of Georgia. In 1980, Carter lost to Ronald Reagan after serving one term in office.
1980s
Instrumental in the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1980, were Democrats who supported many conservative policies. The "Reagan Democrats" were Democrats before the Reagan years, and afterwards, but they voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 (and for George H. W. Bush in 1988), producing their landslide victories. They were mostly white ethnics in the Northeast who were attracted to Reagan's social conservatism on issues such as abortion, and to his strong foreign policy. They did not continue to vote Republican in 1992 or 1996, so the term fell into disuse except as a reference to the 1980s. The term is not used to describe southern whites who became permanent Republicans in presidential elections. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster analyzed white ethnic voters, largely unionized auto workers, in suburban Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63 percent for Kennedy in 1960 and 66 percent for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that Reagan Democrats no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle class aspirations, but instead saw it as being a party working primarily for the benefit of others, especially African Americans and the very poor. Bill Clinton targeted the Reagan Democrats with considerable success in 1992 and 1996.
The failure to hold the Reagan Democrats and the white South led to the final collapse of the New Deal coalition. Reagan carried 49 states against former Vice President and Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, a New Deal stalwart, in 1984. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, running not as a New Dealer but as an efficiency expert in public adminsitration, lost by a landslide in 1988 to Vice President George H. W. Bush.
In response to these landslide defeats, the Democratic Leadership Council was created. It worked to move the Party rightwards to the ideological center. With the Party retaining left-of-center supporters as well as supporters holding moderate or conservative views on some issues, the Democrats became generally a catch all party with widespread appeal to most opponents of the Republicans.
1990s
catch all party
In 1992, for the first time in 12 years, the United States elected a Democrat to the White House. They seemingly revived themselves only to lose both the House and Senate in the mid-year 1994 elections. While President Bill Clinton claimed and got credit for a balanced federal budget and welfare reform, congressional Republicans won on policy throughout the 1990’s. Clinton for example vetoed two welfare reform bills before signing the third, largely the same, right before the 1996 presidential elections. Labor unions, which had been steadily losing membership since the 1960s, found they had also lost political clout inside the Democratic Party: Clinton enacted the NAFTA free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico over the strong objection of these labor unions, much to the disappointment of those on the left of the Party.
When the DLC attempted to move the Democratic agenda in favor of more centrist positions, prominent Democrats from both the centrist and conservative factions (such as Terry McAuliffe) assumed leadership of the party and its direction. Some liberals and progressives felt alienated by the Democratic Party, which they felt had become unconcerned with the interests of the common people and left-wing issues in general. Some Democrats challenged the validity of such critiques, citing the Democratic role in pushing for progressive reforms.
21st century
During the 2000 Presidential election, the Democrats chose Vice President Al Gore to be the Party's candidate for the presidency. Although Gore and George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, clearly disagreed on issues such as abortion, gun control, environmentalism, gay rights, foreign policy, public education, trade unionism, alternative fuel research, global warming, judicial appointments, and affirmative action, some critics -- Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader in particular -- asserted that Bush and Gore were too similar because they held the same views on free trade and reductions in government-funded social welfare.
On election day, Gore won the popular vote by just over 500,000 votes, but lost in the electoral college by four votes. Some election observers blamed Nader's third-party candidacy for Gore's defeat. They pointed to the states of New Hampshire (4 electoral votes) and Florida (25 electoral votes), where Nader's total votes exceeded Governor Bush's margin of victory. In Florida, Nader received 97,000 votes; Bush defeated Gore by a mere 538. Winning either Florida or New Hampshire would have given Gore enough electoral votes to win the presidency.
Florida by 538 votes in Florida in one of the most controversial elections, although he won the national popular vote.]]
Republican Senators went from the majority in the 106th Congress to a split minority in the 107th Congress (with a Republican Vice President breaking a tie). However, when liberal Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vermont) changed his party affiliation to unaffiliated and chose to quorum with the Democrats, majoritarian status went to the Democrats but they lost it again in 2002.
In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the nation's focus was changed to issues of national security. All but one Democrat voted with their Republican counterparts to authorize President Bush's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Senatorial Democratic leader Tom Daschle pushed for his party to approve the USA PATRIOT Act and the invasion of Iraq. The Democrats were split over the 2003 invasion of Iraq and increasingly expressed concerns about both the justification and progress of the War on Terrorism and the domestic effects including threats to civil rights and civil liberties from the USA PATRIOT Act.
In the wake of the financial fraud scandal of Enron and other corporations, Congressional Democrats were integral in pushing for and developing a legal overhaul of business accounting with the intention of preventing further accounting fraud. With job losses and bankruptcies across regions and industries increasing in 2001 and 2002, the Democrats generally campaigned on the issue of economic recovery.
The Democrats began fielding Presidential candidates as early as December 2002, when Gore announced he would not run again in 2004. Ex-Governor Howard Dean of Vermont, an opponent of the war and a critic of the Democratic establishment, was the frontrunner leading into the Democratic primaries. Dean had immense grassroots support, especially from the left wing of the Party. John Kerry, a much more centrist figure, was nominated because he was seen as more "electable" than Dean.
In the time from 2003 to 2004, layoffs of American workers occurring in various industries due to outsourcing, some Democrats (including Howard Dean and Senatorial candidate Erskine Bowles of North Carolina) began to refine their positions on free trade and some even questioned their past support for it. By 2004, the failure of George W. Bush's administration to find weapons of mass destruction, mounting combat casualties and fatalities in Iraq, and the lack of any end point for the War on Terror were frequently debated issues in the election. That year, Democrats generally campaigned on surmounting the jobless recovery, exiting Iraq, and counterterrorism.
jobless recovery
Despite strong campaigning, the Republican Party won across the board. Kerry lost both the popular and electoral vote. Republicans gained four seats in the Senate and three seats in the House of Representatives. Also, for the first time since Barry Goldwater of Arizona won his first election to the Senate, the Democratic leader of the Senate lost re-election. In the end there were 3,660 Democratic state legislators across the nation to the Republicans' 3,557, and Democrats had gained governorships in Louisiana, New Hampshire and Montana. However, the Democrats lost the governorship of Missouri and a legislative majority in Georgia - which had once been a Democratic stronghold since Reconstruction.
The most common hypothesis for why the Democrats lost was that the Republicans ran in opposition to gay rights and used state ballot initiatives against same-sex marriage to attract more so-called "values voters" to the polls.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29#ref_4] Other hypothesis include that the Democrats had been tagged with too negative of a public image [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29#ref_3] and that the Democrats failed to clearly articulate its true values, goals and issue positions.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29#ref_2] Flaws in the electoral systems in Ohio and Florida led some to speculate the validity of the results (Bush received a majority of votes in both states); these controversies led Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and several Democratic U.S. Representatives (including John Conyers of Michigan) to force a Congressional debate on the issue when the 109th Congress first convened and propose disapproving the election results, a proposal that the neither House approved. (See 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities.)
Since then, many Democrats have voiced serious concern about the future of their party. Prominent Democrats began to rethink the party's direction, and a variety of strategies for moving forward were voiced. Some have suggested moving towards the right to regain seats in the House and Senate and possibly win the presidency in 2008. Others suggested that the party move more to the left and become a stronger opposition party.
These debates were reflected in the 2005 campaign for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, which Howard Dean won over the objections of many party insiders. Dean sought to move the Democratic strategy away from the establishment, and bolster support for the party's state and local chapters.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29#ref_6]
When the 109th Congress convened, Democratic Senators chose Harry Reid of Nevada as their Minority Leader and Richard Durbin of Illinois to replace Reid as their Assistant Minority Leader. Reid convinced the Democratic Senators to vote more as a bloc on important issues, something which forced the Republicans to abandon their push for privatization of Social Security and instatement of the "nuclear option" to end judicial filibuster. The Senate did not vote on either proposal.
Factions
Centrists
Centrist Democrats identify with centrism and compromise. Though centrist Democrats differ on a variety of issues, they typically foster a mix of political views and ideas. Compared to other Democratic factions, they're mostly more supportive of the use of military force, and are more willing to end or reduce government sponsored initiatives, as indicated by their support for welfare reform and tax cuts.
Prominent centrist Democrats in recent times have included former Arkansas governor and U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton, former First Lady/U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (New York), former U.S. Vice Pres. Al Gore (Tennessee), Gov. Tom Vilsack (Iowa), Gov. Mark Warner (Virginia), U.S. Sens. Joe Biden (Delaware), Joe Lieberman (Connecticut), Harry Reid (Nevada), and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards (North Carolina). This faction of Democrats are also affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council and are usually referred to as New Democrats.
Progressives
Many progressives are descendants of the New Left of Democratic Presidential candidate/Senator George McGovern of South Dakota; others were involved in the presidential candidacies of Howard Dean and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. Progressive Democratic candidates for public office have had popular support as candidates in urban areas, the Northeast, the Midwest, and among African-Americans nationwide, though they have also been supported by other groups. Unifying issues among progressive Democrats have been opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, opposition to economic and social conservatism, support for universal healthcare and steering the Democratic Party in the direction of being a more forceful opposition party. Compared to other factions of the party, they've been most critical of the Republican Party, and most supportive of social and economic equality.
Progressive Democrats have included Kucinich, Congressman John Conyers (Michigan), Congressman/civil rights activist John Lewis (Georgia), and late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone (Minnesota).
Labor
One of the most important parts of the Democratic Party coalition is the labor vote. They supply a great deal of the money, grass roots political organization and base of support for the party. While Union membership has fallen over the last four decades, the labor union component of the party is still very important. The Union vote tends to be more protectionist than centrists in the party. The labor wing is concerned with issues such as the minimum wage, as well as protection of pensions, collective bargaining and access to health insurance. Prominent members of this wing include Andy Stern of SEIU. Other important union organizations in the Democratic coalition include AFSCME, UAW, and the AFL-CIO. Most of the members in this faction tend to identify more with the progressive faction of the party.
Liberals
Liberal Democrats are to the left of centrist Democrats. The liberal faction was dominant in the party for several decades, until centrist forces asserted primary control. Compared to conservatives and moderates, liberal Democrats generally have advocated fair trade and other less conservative economic policies, and a less militaristic foreign policy, and have a reputation of being more forceful in pushing for civil liberties. Liberals are increasingly identified as being part of the larger progressive wing of the party.
Prominent liberal Democrats include U.S. Sens. Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Ted Kennedy (Massachusetts) and Tom Harkin (Iowa) and House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (California).
Conservatives
The Democratic Party was once a very conservative party, with a very influential Southern wing, though this changed as conservatives started to join the Republican Party. Many on the conservative wing of the party were referred to by terms such as "yellow dog Democrats", "boll weevils", "Dixiecrats", and "Reagan Democrats". Conservatives who left the party were known to make candidacies against Democrats who desired ethnic integration; some went as far as to establish third parties in order to run against other Democrats in general elections. Eventually, most of the once large conservative faction switched to the Republican Party as it became more conservative in the late 60s and 70s.
There remains, however, a viable conservative wing of the Democratic Party, one which was mostly southern. These Democrats have consisted typically of moderate conservatives who feel the Republican Party does not share the values they hold most important; these mostly include conservatives who disagree with the Republican Party's conservative views on trade, taxes and civil rights, who are critical of the policies and actions of the administration of George W. Bush, and who identify with the populism of past Democratic icons.
Prominent conservative Democrats of recent time include U.S. Senators Ben Nelson (Nebraska) and Mary Landrieu (Louisiana) and Congressmen Ike Skelton (Missouri), Gene Taylor (Mississippi), Colin Peterson (Minnesota), and Jim Marshall (Georgia).
Notable groups
There are several ideological groups within the modern-day Democratic Party. As the party is made up of several groups with different ideologies, several sub-groups within the party have been set up to promote the ideologies each respective group holds. Although some of these factions do not have official organizations representing them, they are often well-represented within the party.
African Americans have voted consistently for Democratic Party candidates in the 85 to 90% range, and as such can be considered a faction in the party. Democratic African American leadership coalesces around the Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights activists and is generally considered liberal in outlook. Senator Barack Obama, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Congressman John Conyers are prominent leaders of this faction.
The Democracy for America (DFA) political action committee generally supports fiscally responsible and socially progressive candidates at all levels of government. It was founded by ex-Vermont Governor and current Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean during his presidential campaign; its current Chairman is James H. Dean, Howard Dean's brother. The DFA fights against the influence of the far-right on American politics and works to rebuild the Democratic Party "from the bottom up".
One of the most influential factions is the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), an influential non-profit organization that advocates centrist positions for the party. Members often self-identify under the word "New Democrat". Centrist party leaders founded the DLC in response to the landslide victory of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan over Democratic candidate Walter Mondale during the 1984 presidential election, believing the Democratic Party needed to reform its political philosophy if it was to ever retake the White House, a goal which had eluded the party since the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter.
The DLC hails President Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of third way politicians and a DLC success story. However, critics contend that the DLC is effectively a powerful, corporate-financed mouthpiece within the Democratic Party that acts to keep Democratic Party candidates and platforms sympathetic to corporate interests and the interests of | | |