The Associated Press reported that former Senator Joe Lieberman, who was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate during the 2000 U.S. presidential election, passed away on the 27th due to complications from a fall. He died at the age of 82.
The deceased, who served as a state senator and federal senator in Connecticut, was a member of the Democratic Party and ran as presidential candidate Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 presidential election. At the time, the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates were George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and after a controversy over a recount, Bush-Cheney won. The deceased, who was politically centrist, ran as a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential primary in 2004, but withdrew.
Diplomatically hawkish, he strongly supported the then-Bush administration’s Iraq War, which led to his defeat in the 2006 Senate primary by an anti-war political newcomer. He ran as an independent candidate despite opposition from the party leadership and was elected. During the 2008 presidential election, the deceased supported Republican presidential candidate John McCain instead of Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
The Associated Press reported that he was almost selected as McCain’s vice-presidential candidate at the time. At the Republican National Convention that year, he criticized Obama’s poor performance as a senator and said, “Oratory cannot replace a record.” He retired from the Senate at the end of his term in January 2013.
In his farewell speech to the Senate at the time, the deceased said, “Bipartisan leadership is required to unravel the tangled politics of Washington.” Until recently, he served as co-chair of the centrist political group ‘No Labels’ and worked to elect a third centrist candidate to run in the November presidential election.