RUDMAN, WARREN

RUDMAN, WARREN (1930– ), U.S. senator. Rudman was a native of Nashua, New Hampshire, where he was educated in its public schools and where he became an Eagle Scout in 1945 before going to Valley Forge Military School for high school (1948). He attended Syracuse University for his B.A. (1952) and Boston College Law School (1960). He was then admitted to the New Hampshire Bar. He served as attorney general of New Hampshire from 1970 to 1976 and as president of the National Association of Attorney Generals for 1975–76. Elected to the Senate in 1980 after emerging as the moderate in a crowded New Hampshire race of 11 Republican primary candidates, he was a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee where he became a budget hawk, seeking a balanced budget and caps on spending. He is best remembered for the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which he authored together with the Republican senator from Texas and the Democrat from South Carolina, that called for a pay as you go budget and set the climate for a balanced budget that was achieved during the latter part of the Clinton administration. He was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra hearings, an investigation as to whether the Reagan administration had traded arms for hostages and illegally funneled funds to the Contras contrary to an explicit act of Congress. Despite considerable popularity, Rudman left the Senate in 1992, declining to run for a third term. In private practice he was a member of the Concord Coalition, a bi-partisan citizen group interested in pushing budget reform. He was also appointed by President Bill Clinton a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, its acting chairman in 1995–96 and chairman in 1997–2001. He was on the board of the influential Council on Foreign Relations and spoke out often on issues of foreign and economic policy, especially in the areas of intelligence.

[Michael Berenbaum (2^nd ed.)]