Richard Blumenthal (D) is the senior U.S. Senator from Connecticut, first sworn in on January 5, 2011, and now serving his third term. Born February 13, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York, he was raised with a dedication to public service by a father who fled Nazi Germany at 18 and a mother who left Nebraska to become a social worker.

He was educated at Harvard College (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude) and Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and worked for Senators Abraham Ribicoff and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves in 1970 and was honorably discharged with the rank of Sergeant in 1976.

Blumenthal served as U.S. Attorney for Connecticut from 1977 to 1981, prosecuting drug trafficking, organized and white-collar crime, civil rights violations, consumer fraud, and environmental pollution. He then served in the Connecticut House of Representatives (1984–1987) and the Connecticut State Senate (1987–1990), before serving an unprecedented five terms as Connecticut’s Attorney General from 1991 to 2011, where he became a leader in the fight against Big Tobacco.