Sheldon Whitehouse
Sheldon Whitehouse (born October 20, 1955, New York, New York, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2006 and began representing Rhode Island in that body the following year. In 2024 Whitehouse comfortably won reelection against Republican challenger Patricia Morgan.
He was born in New York, the son of Charles Sheldon Whitehouse, a diplomat who later served as ambassador to Laos and Thailand. After earning a bachelor’s degree in architecture (1978) from Yale University, he studied law (J.D., 1982) at the University of Virginia. He then clerked with the Supreme Court of West Virginia before moving to Rhode Island, where in 1984 he was appointed a special assistant attorney general. He remained in the attorney general’s office until 1990. During that time he married (1986) Sandra Thornton, and the couple later had two children. In 1991 he entered the executive administration of Gov. Bruce Sundlun, serving as legal counsel and later as policy director (1992). Whitehouse was director of the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation when Pres. Bill Clinton appointed him the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island in 1994. During his four years in the post, he notably prosecuted cases involving organized crime and corruption. In 1998 he was elected attorney general of Rhode Island, serving from 1999 to 2004. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002.
In 2006 Whitehouse entered the race for the U.S. Senate and defeated the Republican incumbent Lincoln Chafee. After taking office in 2007, he became known as a liberal Democrat, though he did not always vote with the party. He notably opposed Pres. Barack Obama’s administration on certain cap-and-trade provisions meant to reduce effects of climate change, arguing that they did not go far enough. He also was critical of numerous foreign-policy measures that related to the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he voted against laws that increased the police powers of the government. Whitehouse was vocally in favour of imposing a greater share of the tax burden on wealthy individuals and on corporations, and he opposed efforts to repeal the estate tax. He won reelection by a wide margin in 2012 and 2018.