Joseph Patrick Kennedy III (born October 4, 1980) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 4th c...
Joseph Patrick Kennedy III (born October 4, 1980) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 4th congressional district from 2013 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented a district that extends from Boston's western suburbs to the state's South Coast. He worked as an assistant district attorney in the Cape and Islands and Middlesex County, Massachusetts, offices before his election to Congress.
A member of the Kennedy family, he is a son of U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, a grandson of U.S. Senator and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a grandnephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, and a great-grandson of U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.
Born in Boston, Kennedy was raised in the area with his twin brother, Matthew Rauch Kennedy. After graduating from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree, he spent two years in the Dominican Republic as a member of the Peace Corps before earning a Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School in 2009. He resigned from his role as assistant district attorney in early 2012 to run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by the retiring Barney Frank. Kennedy was sworn into office in January 2013 and sat on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
In 2020, rather than run for reelection to his House seat, Kennedy unsuccessfully challenged Senator Ed Markey for the Democratic nomination in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate election. Upon the conclusion of his term on January 3, 2021, he left Congress.
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Steve King
Steven Arnold King (born May 28, 1949) is an American politician and former businessman who served as the U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressi...
Steven Arnold King (born May 28, 1949) is an American politician and former businessman who served as the U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressional district from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Iowa's 5th congressional district until redistricting.
Born in 1949 in Storm Lake, Iowa, King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970 but left without graduating. He founded a construction company in 1975 and worked in business and environmental study before seeking the Republican nomination for a seat in the Iowa Senate in 1996. He won the primary and the general election, and was reelected in 2000. In 2002 King was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa's 5th congressional district after the incumbent, Tom Latham, was reassigned to the 4th district after redistricting. He was reelected four times before the 2010 United States Census removed the 5th district and placed King in the 4th, which he represented from 2013.
King is an opponent of immigration and multiculturalism, and has a long history of racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric and white-nationalist affiliations. The Washington Post described King as "the Congressman most openly affiliated with white nationalism." King has been criticized for alleged affiliation with white supremacist ideas, and has made controversial statements against immigrants, and supported European right-wing populist and far-right politicians accused of racism and Islamophobia.For much of King's congressional tenure, Republican politicians and officials were silent about his rhetoric, and frequently sought his endorsement and campaigned with him because of his popularity with northwest Iowa's conservative voters. Shortly before the 2018 election, the National Republican Congressional Committee withdrew funding for King's reelection campaign and its chairman, Steve Stivers, condemned King's conduct, although Iowa's Republican senators and governor continued to endorse him. King was reelected, but after a January 2019 interview in which he questioned the negative connotations of the terms "white nationalist" and "white supremacy", he was widely condemned by both parties, the media and public figures, and the Republican Steering Committee removed him from all House committee assignments. King ran for reelection but, campaign funding and support having declined, lost the June 2020 Republican primary to Randy Feenstra.
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