John J Markey Popular Books

John J Markey Biography & Facts

Edward John Markey ( MAR-kee; born July 11, 1946) is an American lawyer, politician, and former Army reservist serving as the junior United States senator from Massachusetts since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he served 20 terms (18 full, two partial) as the U.S. representative for Massachusetts's 7th congressional district from 1976 to 2013. Before his congressional career, he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1973 to 1976. In 2013, after John Kerry was appointed United States Secretary of State, Markey was elected to serve out the remainder of Kerry's Senate term in a 2013 special election. Markey defeated Stephen Lynch in the Democratic primary and Republican Gabriel E. Gomez in the general election. He was elected to a full term in the Senate in 2014. Markey fended off a primary challenge from Joseph Kennedy III and was reelected in 2020 by a wide margin. Markey is a progressive who has focused on climate change and energy policy and was chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming from 2007 to 2011. He is the Senate author of the Green New Deal. Markey is the dean of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, having served in Congress since 1976. His progressive policies have led to widespread support among young voters. The Hill has called him "an icon to Gen Z activists". Early life and education Markey was born on July 11, 1946, in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of Christina M. (née Courtney) and John E. Markey, a milkman. Markey's mother was the valedictorian of her high school class but was unable to attend college because her mother died and she was needed to care for the family. The family was Irish Catholic, and Markey was educated at Immaculate Conception School and Malden Catholic High School. Starting in the summer of 1965, Markey was the driver and salesperson for an ice cream truck in Lexington, Massachusetts. He was known as "Eddie the Ice Cream Man" to neighborhood children and used the proceeds from the HP Hood route to pay tuition at Boston College. In the late 1960s Markey was cited by the Lexington Police for the ringing of his bell to announce the ice cream truck's presence. Soon after the citation, the selectmen of Lexington changed the ordinance and he was allowed to ring his bell. Markey graduated from Boston College in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts and from Boston College Law School in 1972 with a Juris Doctor. Career After graduating, Markey worked as a lawyer in private practice. He served in the United States Army Reserve from 1968 to 1973, attaining the rank of Specialist Fourth Class. He joined while a junior in college, and has said that he enlisted before knowing whether he would receive a Vietnam War draft notice. Markey also said that even though he opposed the war, he would have answered the induction notice and gone to Vietnam if he had been drafted, despite having secured a position in the Reserve. His South Boston reserve unit included Thomas P. O'Neill III, Steve Grossman, and Markey's brothers Richard and John. Markey was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he represented the 16th Middlesex district (Malden and Melrose) and 26th Middlesex district from 1973 to 1976. U.S. House of Representatives Elections On May 21, 1976, incumbent Congressman Torbert Macdonald died in office. Markey, who had just been elected to a third term in the state house, entered a twelve-candidate Democratic primary for what was then the 7th district. In the primary—the real contest in this heavily Democratic district—Markey won the nomination with a plurality of 22% of the vote. In the November 1976 election he defeated Republican Richard Daly 77%–18%. That election doubled as both a special election for the balance of Macdonald's 11th term and a regular election for a full two-year term, and so Markey took office later that night. This gave him greater seniority than other Representatives first elected in 1976. Markey was challenged in a Democratic primary three times, first in 1980, when he won 85%; then in 1984, when he won 54%; and finally in 2002, when he won 85% of the vote. Markey was reelected 19 more times from this district, which included most of the northern suburbs of Boston. His lowest vote total was 62% in 1992, in a three-way election. Markey faced no Republican opposition in eight of his bids for reelection, in 1978, 1980, 1986, 1988, 1990, 2000, 2002, and 2006. His district was renumbered the 5th after the 2010 census, in which Massachusetts lost a district. Tenure Markey was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the National Journal gave him a "Composite Liberal" score of 89.2. Environment and energy In December 2007, Markey became the first US politician to use Second Life, through which he addressed the delegates of the UNFCCC in Bali as part of OneClimate's Virtual Bali event. It was estimated that the carbon dioxide he saved by not flying to Bali was around 5.5 tons. Pressure from Markey prompted BP to provide a live underwater video feed showing oil leaking out of a pipe in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Markey has been a longtime critic of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and has been critical of the NRC's decision-making on the proposed Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design and the NRC response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In reply to Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin's position on how the American Clean Energy and Security Act (also known as Waxman-Markey, named after Markey and Henry Waxman) could have a negative impact for Alaskans, Markey wrote an article criticizing Palin's inaction on global warming and her environmental positions. Markey sarcastically suggested in August 2010 that global warming deniers form their own country on an iceberg: "An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country." Markey also said that, at the time, 2010 was the hottest recorded year and that "scientists agree Arctic ice is a canary in a coal mine that provides clear warnings on climate". Markey has derided Republicans' stance on global warming, stating during a hearing: "I won't physically rise, because I'm worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating about the room." In January 2011, House Republicans eliminated the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, which Nancy Pelosi created in 2006 and Markey chaired. Objection to the 2004 presidential election Markey was one of the 31 House Democrats who voted not to count Ohio's 20 electoral votes in the 2004 presidential election. George W. Bush had won Ohio by 118,457 votes. Without Ohio's electoral votes, the election would have been decided by the U.S. House of Representatives, with each state having one vote, as dictated by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Domestic .... Discover the John J Markey popular books. Find the top 100 most popular John J Markey books.