Richard Blumenthal was born Feb. 13, 1946 in Brooklyn to German Jewish immigrant Martin Blumenthal and his wife Jane Rosenstock. Richard’s father became president of a commodities trading firm and his father-in-law was a cattle rancher in Nebraska. At Harvard University, Blumenthal was editorial chairman of The Harvard Crimson, and later became editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Fellow students at Yale were Bill and Hillary Clinton, Robert Reich, Clarence Thomas, and Michael Medved. Following graduation, Blumenthal enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, serving stateside from 1970 to 1976.
Blumenthal worked in all three branches of the U.S. government before winning elective office himself. He was an aide to U.S. Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, an assistant to Daniel Moynihan during his time in the Nixon White House, and a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun.
After practicing in a private law firm, Blumenthal was appointed as U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, serving from 1977 to 1981. He was elected in 1984 to the Connecticut House of Representatives, and stepped up to the Connecticut Senate in 1987 following a special election. In 1990, he was elected as the attorney general of Connecticut. He fought to have MySpace and Facebook ban convicted sex offenders and to have Craigslist remove erotic and adult service categories from its site. In 2010 Blumenthal ran successfully for the U.S. Senate. He was reelected in 2016 and 2022.
He has served on the following committees in the Senate: Armed Services; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Judiciary; Veterans Affairs and on the Special Committee on Aging. In 2017, he sponsored legislation to make it a federal crime to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel or Israeli settlements. The bill was opposed on free speech grounds and ultimately died in Congress.
Blumenthal married Cynthia Malkin in 1982 and the couple has four children, one of whom, Matt Blumenthal, has followed in his father’s footsteps, graduating Harvard College, Yale Law School, and going on to be elected in 2018 to the Connecticut House of Representatives.
Tomorrow: February 14: Carl Bernstein
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SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article