Former U.S. senator and former Democratic Party vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman died Wednesday at age 82 in New York City after suffering complications from a fall, his family said.
“His beloved wife, Hadassah, and members of his family were with him when he died,” the statement read. “Senator Lieberman’s love for God, his family, and the United States endured throughout his life of serving the public interest.”
Lieberman was the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party led by Al Gore in the 2000 elections, won by Republican George W. Bush. Lieberman was the first Jewish candidate to make the presidential ticket of a major party in the United States.
He failed in his bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, hampered by his support for the Iraq war.
A centrist politician, Lieberman was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988. He lost the state Democratic primary in 2006 but retained his seat by winning the general election as an independent candidate.
In a further break with the Democratic Party, Lieberman supported Republican Senator John McCain for president in a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008.
However, Lieberman would later support Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 in their presidential candidacies.
Lieberman retired from the Senate in 2013 after four six-year terms.
“Joe was the finest American imaginable and one of the nicest people I met during my time in Washington,” former Republican President George W. Bush said in a statement.
More recently, Lieberman led No Labels, a centrist group hoping to launch an independent bid for the White House.
In a recent interview with Reuters, Lieberman talked about the effort and how, at times, it felt like he was building a plane in the air. “We’re doing something that I don’t think has ever been done before.”
Lieberman served as a member of the Connecticut state Senate and then as Connecticut’s attorney general before becoming a U.S. senator.
He had three children from two marriages; her first marriage ended in divorce.
Source: Terra
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