2008 Presidential Election Coverage

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Sam Brownback

Samuel Dale Brownback (born September 12, 1956) is the senior United States senator from the U.S. state of Kansas. On January 20, 2007 he announced his intention to seek the Republican Party's nomination for President in the 2008 Presidential election.

Sam Brownback was born in Parker, Kansas to Nancy and Robert Brownback. He was raised in a farming family in Parker, Kansas; his ancestors settled in Kansas after leaving Pennsylvania following the Civil War. Brownback was state president of Future Farmers of America, and eventually went on to become the national vice president from 1976-1977. While at Kansas State University, he was elected student body president and was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho. He received his J.D. from the University of Kansas in 1982.

After college, Brownback spent approximately a year working as a broadcaster; he hosted a weekly half-hour show.

He was an attorney in Manhattan, Kansas before becoming the Kansas secretary of agriculture in 1986. In 1990, he was accepted into the White House Fellow program and detailed to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 1990-91. Brownback then returned to Kansas to resume his position as secretary of agriculture and remained in that position until 1993. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1994, and next ran in the 1996 special Senatorial election to replace Bob Dole, who had resigned his Senate seat during his presidential campaign.

He is married to the former Mary Stauffer, whose family owned and sold a successful media company in 1995. They have five children including an adopted son and daughter.

Raised as a Methodist, Brownback later joined a nondenominational evangelical church, and in 2002 he became Catholic. He joined the Catholic Church through Opus Dei member Father C. John McCloskey in Washington DC. Brownback himself, however, is not a member of the Opus Dei organization.[

Senator Brownback replaced U.S. Senator Sheila Frahm who had been appointed to fill the seat of U.S. Senator Bob Dole in November 1996, when Senator Dole resigned in the middle of his term to campaign for president.

In the primary set up to fill out the remainder of Dole's term, Brownback defeated U.S. Senator Sheila Frahm, a former Lieutenant Governor, who had been appointed to temporarily fill the Senate seat. In the general election, he defeated Democrat Jill Docking and was elected to a full term in the Senate in 1998. He won re-election in the 2004 Senate election with 69% of the vote, easily defeating his Democratic challenger, Lee Jones, a former Washington, D.C. lobbyist who was considered less than viable, especially after losing the Democratic Primary.

Brownback is a member of the Judiciary Committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee (where he chairs the Subcommittee on District of Columbia), the Joint Economic Committee, and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission. He is the current Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, which monitors compliance with international agreements reached in cooperation with Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Brownback has announced that he would not run for reelection in 2010, in accordance with his support of term limits for members of Congress.

In 2000, Brownback and Congressman Chris Smith led the effort to enact the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). President Clinton signed the legislation in October 2000. According to Christianity Today, the stronger enforcement increased the number of U.S. federal trafficking cases eightfold in the five years after enactment.

Senator Brownback had the worst attendance of those in the Senate pursuing Presidency as of 2/27/07; Senator Brownback had missed 22 votes (42.3% of those held). As of 5/10/07, Senator Brownback has missed 47 votes (29%) surpassed only by Senator McCain (R) with 75 votes missed (46.3%).

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