Originally sworn in on January 5, 2011, Richard Blumenthal is serving his third term as a United States Senator from the State of Connecticut.
With a father who fled Nazi Germany at age 18, and a mother who left Nebraska’s farmland to become a social worker, Richard Blumenthal was raised with a deep dedication to public service, a duty to give back by helping others, and a bedrock belief in hard work.
Those values carried him through his childhood and his education at Harvard College (Editorial Chairman The Harvard Crimson, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude), and Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. To a year working as assistant to Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he was Assistant to the President of the United States. And to enlisting in the United States Marine Corps Reserves in 1970. He was honorably discharged with the rank of Sergeant in 1976.
After graduating law school in 1973, Senator Blumenthal clerked for then U.S. District Judge Jon Newman, and then for United States Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun.
He then transitioned to lead U.S. Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff’s staff as an Administrative Assistant (now known as Chief of Staff).
From 1977 to 1981, Senator Blumenthal served as a U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, prosecuting drug trafficking, organized and white-collar crime, civil rights violations, consumer fraud, and environmental pollution. He served in the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1984 to 1987, and the Connecticut State Senate from 1987 to 1990. As a volunteer attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Senator Blumenthal saved the life of an innocent, wrongly convicted death row inmate who came within hours of execution.
