Senator Tom Daschle

Distinguished Senior Fellow

Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, Tom Daschle graduated from South Dakota State University in 1969. Upon graduation, he entered the United States Air Force where he served as an intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command until mid-1972.

Following completion of his military service, Sen. Daschle served on the staff of Sen. James Abourezk. In 1978, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where he served for eight years. In 1986, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and eight years later became its Democratic leader. Sen. Daschle is one of the longest serving Senate Democratic leaders in history and the only one to serve twice as both majority and minority Leader. During his tenure, Sen. Daschle navigated the Senate through some of its most historic economic and national security challenges. In 2003, he chronicled some of these experiences in his book, Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever.

Today, Sen. Daschle is a senior policy advisor to the law firm of DLA Piper where he provides clients with strategic advice on public policy issues such as climate change, energy, health care, trade, financial services, and telecommunications. Since leaving the Senate, he has distinguished his expertise in health care through the publication of Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis and has emerged as a leading thinker on climate change and renewable energy policy.

In 2007, he joined with former majority leaders George Mitchell, Bob Dole, and Howard Baker to create the Bipartisan Policy Center, an organization dedicated to finding common ground on some of the pressing public policy challenges of our time. Sen. Daschle serves on the board of the Center for American Progress, the National Democratic Institute, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. He also is a member of the Health Policy and Management Executive Council at the Harvard School of Public Health as well as a member of the Global Policy Advisory Council for the Health Worker Migration Initiative.

He is married to Linda Hall Daschle and has three children and four grandchildren.