Patrick Leahy

• Born: March 31, 1940
• Place of Birth: Montpelier, Vermont

Democrat Patrick Leahy began representing his home state of Vermont in the US Senate in 1975. Over his political career, he emerged as something of a watchdog in Congress, speaking out on privacy and civil rights issues as they relate to anti-terrorism measures such as the 2001 USA Patriot Act. In early 2021, he was once again sworn in as the president pro tempore of the Senate.

Early Life

Patrick Leahy was born March 31, 1940, in Montpelier, Vermont. His father, who owned a printing business, came from an immigrant Irish Catholic family. His mother's parents came from Friuli, Italy, to Vermont to work in the granite quarries. The family's religious, ethnic, and Democratic political identity made them a minority, although a tolerated one, in the mostly Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, Republican state. Leahy literally grew up in the shadow of politics, across the street from the statehouse in Montpelier.

Leahy graduated from two Catholic institutions: St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont (1961) and Georgetown University Law School (1964). He has cited the writings of two prominent Catholic thinkers, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Henri Nouwen, as large influences on his beliefs. Nouwen, who became Leahy's close friend, often held retreats at Leahy's house.

In 1962, Leahy married Marcelle Pomerleau, the daughter of a French Canadian couple who moved to Vermont during the Great Depression. The Leahys ultimately settled on a tree farm and raised two sons and a daughter.

Prosecutor to Politician

In 1964, Leahy passed the Vermont bar. He practiced law in Burlington for two years, and served as Chittenden County State's attorney, winning an honor as one of the top three prosecutors in the nation, until 1974. That year, his legal reputation helped ensure his election to the US Senate.

In 1980, 1986, 1992, and 1998, Vermont voters reelected Leahy, who would go on to become one of the longest-serving members of the US Senate. Into the first decade of the twenty-first century, he was perhaps best known for chairing two Senate committees: Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (1987–95) and Judiciary (January 3–20, 2001; June 6, 2001–January 3, 2003).

Cyber Senator

Because of his early and ongoing interest in information technology, Leahy acquired the nickname "cyber senator." As cocreator and cochair of the Congressional Internet Caucus beginning in 1996, he has addressed online freedom of speech, copyright, and privacy issues. As chair of the Senate Democratic Task Force on Privacy, he oversaw hearings on electronic medical records and confidentiality. In 1995, he had become one of the first members of Congress to publish an official website. The site won acclaim from critics and colleagues alike.

Responding to Terrorism

Leahy gained attention of an altogether different nature and magnitude following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when an unknown person or persons sent anthrax-contaminated letters to various public figures. A number of individuals, chiefly postal workers, suffered illness or death as a result. There was tremendous media coverage across an already panicked nation.

On October 15, 2001, an aide to Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle opened one of the contaminated letters. The Senate office buildings were promptly shut down. At the local mail processing facility, the FBI quarantined bulk mail barrels and discovered a similar-looking anthrax letter addressed to Leahy, who may have been targeted as chair of the Judiciary Committee. FBI Director Robert Mueller immediately advised Leahy of the threat.

Leahy praised the swift reaction to the anthrax letters. He also worked with Republicans to create and pass 2001's Uniting and Strengthening America (USA) Patriot Act, which expanded government's surveillance and intelligence powers in the hopes of preventing further terrorist attacks. However, Leahy, the former prosecutor, soon emerged as a leading watchdog of President George W. Bush's administration and its implementation of the act. Where Attorney General John Ashcroft saw efforts to safeguard national security, Leahy saw abuses of power and violations of basic civil liberties.

Surviving Controversy

The nation's overall political climate has become far more conservative than it was during the 1970s, when Leahy first entered the Senate, with many Democrats shifting toward the political center. Leahy was not among them. In 1995, for example, he received a 0 percent rating from the American Conservative Union and a 100 percent rating from the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action.

Yet Leahy has weathered numerous controversies over a broad range of "hot-button" issues in addition to the USA Patriot Act. These have included the US invasion of Iraq, environmental laws, agricultural subsidies, death penalty reform, and the Bush administration's judicial nominations, which Leahy was charged with stalling.

Disagreement with Leahy has come from the left as well as the right, especially regarding his stance on abortion. Leahy has often worked with the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) on matters such as death penalty reform and maternal/child welfare advocacy. Leahy has proudly recounted his personal role in matching up a birth mother with a compatible adoptive couple, who then named their child in Leahy's honor. Yet in defending legal abortion as part of a right to privacy, Leahy has diverged from the USCC's "seamless garment" or "consistent life" ethic, which defines a legal right to life as beginning at conception and ending at "natural death." In 1998, he lost the endorsement of the National Organization for Women (NOW) for his belief that Roe v. Wade does not establish a right to "abortion on demand," and for his support of a ban on the late-term procedure called "partial-birth" abortion.

Liberal and conservative commentators alike have credited Leahy's popularity among his constituents, who are on the whole more liberal than the national average, to his skill at drawing upon his rank and experience in the Senate. At least one commentator has also mentioned that Leahy appears "mainstream" in comparison to Vermont's other congressional representative, Independent Bernie Sanders. Leahy was reelected in 2004, and in 2007 he once again took over as chair of the Judiciary Committee.

In November 2009, Leahy defended Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to bring criminal charges against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, at a federal courthouse in Manhattan. However, Holder later reversed this decision. Leahy was reelected in 2010.

Political Career in the 2010s and 2020s

Two years later, after he had ultimately succeeded in getting the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act passed and signed into law in 2011 in a long-fought effort to overhaul laws related to patents, he began, as the most senior member of the chamber belonging to the Democratic majority party, serving as the Senate's president pro tempore for the first time following the death of Senator Daniel Inouye.

Due to the American public becoming aware of the National Security Agency's collection of private phone call information, Leahy helped introduce and advocate for privacy legislation called the USA Freedom Act in 2014, but it did not pass the Senate late that year due to a filibuster; however, after it was introduced again in 2015, the bill passed and was signed by President Barack Obama. In the general election of 2016, Leahy retained his Senate seat for an eighth term. During the administration of President Donald Trump, which began in 2017, he became a prominent opponent of federal budgetary initiatives, such as building a wall along the southern border with Mexico.

When Democrats once again gained control of the Senate following 2020's general election, Leahy, who had ended his last period as Judiciary Committee chair in 2015, was sworn in as president pro tempore of the Senate once more in January 2021 in addition to taking on the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee. When, in early February, Trump, who had recently vacated the office of the presidency but had been impeached by the House for a second time (in this instance on a charge of incitement of insurrection related to the storming of the US Capitol that had occurred in early January), was tried, Leahy presided over the trial as Senate pro tempore rather than the Supreme Court's chief justice. While he had been inside of the Capitol taking part in the certification of the 2020 election results at the time of the alleged insurrection and voted in favor of conviction, he asserted that he had remained impartial in his role in the trial that ultimately ended in Trump's acquittal. In November 2021, Leahy announced he would not be running in the 2022 election, and in January 2023, he officially stepped away from the Senate after nearly fifty years of service. Mayor Miro Weinberger of Burlington announced the city's airport would be named after Leahy. That same year, he received an honorary OBE, or Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, as recognition for his service to relations between the United States and Britain during his tenure in the Senate.

In 2024, in light of the conflict between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah that began in 2023, Leahy addressed questions about the Leahy Law. Originally passed in the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act of 1997 and revised several times after, the Leahy Law prohibits the US from providing monetary assistance to organizations thought to be committing human rights violations. It has been part of every foreign appropriations bill since it first passed and is considered a significant part of Leahy's Senate legacy. Leahy expressed some concern that aid being provided by the United States to Israel in early 2024 could involve violation of the Leahy Law.

Bibliography

Baruth, Philip. Senator Leahy: A Life in Scenes. UP of New England, 2017.

"Biography." Patrick Leahy, www.leahy.senate.gov/about. Accessed 30 Apr. 2021.

Clarke, Sara. "10 Things You Didn't Know about Patrick Leahy." U.S. News and World Report, 20 Apr. 2017, www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-04-20/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-patrick-leahy. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Cochrane, Emily. "Trifecta of Roles for Leahy: Witness, Juror and Judge in Trump's Trial." The New York Times, 9 Feb. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/us/politics/patrick-leahy-impeachment-trial.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

"Honorary Awards to Foreign Nationals in 2023." United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, 26 Oct. 2023, www.gov.uk/government/publications/honorary-british-awards-to-foreign-nationals-2023/honorary-awards-to-foreign-nationals-in-2023. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Leahy, Patrick. "I Created the Leahy Law. It Should Be Applied to Israel." Washington Post, 20 May 2024, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/20/israel-leahy-human-rights-aid/. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Norton, Kit. "Leahy Reflects on Time in the Senate as He Turns 80." VTDigger, 31 Mar. 2020, vtdigger.org/2020/03/31/leahy-reflects-on-time-in-the-senate-as-he-turns-80. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Sistrand, Carolyn. "Burlington International Airport to be Renamed After Sen. Patrick Leahy." NBC, 4 Apr. 2023, www.mynbc5.com/article/burlington-international-airport-to-be-renamed-after-sen-patrick-leahy/43500718. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.