Jeffords Jim

American politician, a third-term U.S. Senator who announced on 5/24/2001 that he was quitting the Republican Party to become an Independent, a move that changed the balance of the Senate toward the Democrats. He explained that he found himself at odds with the Bush administrations views on abortion, defense, energy and other issues and as a matter of his own conscience, he would quit the GOP and vote as an Independent. The news was a bombshell in Washington with a ripple effect that moved from the White House through both government houses. The Democratic takeover of Congress will touch every aspect of President Bushs agenda. It was a not a move that Jeffords made lightly. After 27 years in Congress with one party, he wrestled with his own belief system before coming to an anguished decision. Jeffords is considered a man who could be described by one word: honest. The son of Olin M. Jeffords, former Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, he was a quiet and serious kid. He graduated Yale, 1956 and Harvard Law, 1962, and spent three years in the Navy before running for the state senate. He won his first congressional seat in 1974, soon gaining a reputation as being something of a maverick. In 1988, he was elected to the U.S. Senate where he is currently serving his third term (2001). Jeffords married Liz Daley in 1961 and had two kids, Leonard and Laura. He and Liz have a complex relationship, divorced in 1979 for eight years before they remarried in 1986. They live on 100-acre property in Vermont when not in the Washington DC townhouse and neighbors describe Jeffords as unassuming and gracious. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less