Bio
Phil Bronstein
Phil Bronstein was named executive chair of the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting in April 2012, when the organization merged with The Bay Citizen. Bronstein joined the CIR board in 2006 and became board chair in 2011. He is now in charge of overall operations. Previously, Bronstein was editor-at-large and director of content development for Hearst Newspapers. Before that, he was executive vice president and editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle, after serving as the newspaper’s editor from 2000 to 2008. Bronstein was editor of the San Francisco Examiner, which merged with the Chronicle in 2000, from 1991 to 2000. He started at the Examiner as a reporter in 1980, where he specialized in investigative projects and was a foreign correspondent for eight years. He was a 1986 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work in the Philippines. Before joining the Examiner, he was a reporter with public television station KQED in San Francisco. He is the former chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ International Committee and is currently on the advisory board of Litquake, the annual San Francisco literary festival.
Mark Halperin
Mark Halperin has been the Political Director of ABC News since October of 1997. As Political Director, Halperin is responsible for the planning and editorial content of all political news on the network.
In this role, he works with correspondents and producers for all ABC News programs, including "World News with Charles Gibson," "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," "Nightline," "Good Morning America," "20/20," and news specials.
John Heilemann
John Heilemann is the national political correspondent and columnist for New York magazine.
An award-winning journalist and the author of Pride Before the Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era and coauthor of Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, he is a former staff writer for The New Yorker, Wired, and The Economist.
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Encyclopædia Britannica Articles
- Clinton, Hillary Rodham
(born Oct. 26, 1947, Chicago, Ill., U.S.) U.S. lawyer, first lady, and politician. She attended Wellesley College and Yale Law School, from which she graduated first in her class. Her early professional interests focused on family law and children's rights. In 1975 she married her Yale classmate Bill Clinton, and she became first lady of Arkansas on his election as governor in 1979. She was twice named one of America's 100 most influential lawyers by the National Law Journal. When her husband became president (1993), she wielded power and influence almost unprecedented for a first lady. As head of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, she proposed the first national health-care program in the U.S. but saw the initiative defeated. In 2000 she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, thereby becoming the first wife of a president to win elective office; she was reelected in 2006. Clinton sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 but lost the closely contested race to Barack Obama. In 2009 she became secretary of state in President Obama's administration.
- Clinton, Hillary Rodham on britannica.com
- Democratic Party
One of the two major political parties in the U.S., historically the party of labour, minorities, and progressive reformers. In the 1790s a group of Thomas Jefferson's supporters called themselves “Democratic Republicans” or “Jeffersonian Republicans” to demonstrate their belief in the principle of popular government and their opposition to monarchism. The party adopted its present name in the 1830s, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Democrats won nearly every presidential election in the years 1836–60, but the issue of slavery split the party. The Southern Democrats called for the protection of slavery in the new territories, whereas the Northern Democrats, led by Stephen A. Douglas, advocated allowing each territory to decide by popular sovereignty whether to accept slavery within its borders. As a result, in 1860 the new antislavery Republican Party won its first national victory under Abraham Lincoln. From 1861 to 1913 the only Democratic president was Grover Cleveland; in these years the party was basically conservative and agrarian-oriented, and its members were opposed to protective tariffs. It returned to power under Woodrow Wilson, instituting greater federal regulation of banking and industry, but the Republicans' frank embrace of big business drew voters amid the prosperity of the 1920s. Democrats became dominant again in 1932, electing Franklin D. Roosevelt. A coalition of urban workers, small farmers, liberals, and others sustained Democrats in office until 1953, and the party regained the presidency with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. In the 1970s and '80s the Democrats held the presidency only during the single term of Jimmy Carter (1976–81) but retained majority control of the House of Representatives. They regained the presidency in 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton but lost control of both the House and the Senate in 1994. In the presidential election of 2000, Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, was defeated by Republican George W. Bush. In 2004 the party's presidential nominee, John Kerry, was defeated by Bush, and the Democrats lost seats in both houses of Congress. Aided by growing opposition to the Iraq War, Democrats regained control of both the House and the Senate following the 2006 midterm elections. In the 2008 presidential election Democratic nominee Barack Obama defeated Republican John McCain, and the Democrats increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate. The modern Democratic Party generally supports a strong federal government with powers to regulate business and industry in the public interest; federally financed social services and benefits for the poor, the unemployed, the aged, and other groups; and the protection of civil rights.
- Democratic Party on britannica.com
© 2010 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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