Whitehouse worked as Rhode Island Governor Bruce Sundlun's executive counsel beginning in 1991, and was later tapped to serve as director of policy. He oversaw the state's response to the Rhode Island banking crisis that took place soon after Sundlun took office.[7] In 1992, Sundlun appointed Whitehouse the state's Director of Business Regulation, where he oversaw the state's workers' compensation insurance system.[citation needed]
In 1998, Whitehouse was elected Rhode Island Attorney General. He initiated a lawsuit against the lead paint industry that ended in a mistrial; the state later won a second lawsuit against former lead paint manufacturers Sherwin-Williams, Millennium Holdings, and NL Industries that found them responsible for creating a public nuisance.[9] This decision, however, was unanimously overturned by the Rhode Island Supreme Court on July 1, 2008. The court found that under Rhode Island law it is the responsibility of property owners to abate and mitigate lead hazards.[10]
When Black Providence police officer Cornel Young Jr. was shot and killed by two fellow officers while he was off duty in January 2000,[11] Whitehouse was criticized for not appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate the shooting.[12] Later that year, Whitehouse was criticized when 15-year-old Jennifer Rivera, a witness in a murder case, was shot by a relative of the man she was to testify against later that year.[13]
Whitehouse launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by Lincoln Chafee, a Republican, on April 4, 2005.[15] By September 30, he had raised over $600,000 for his campaign, including $360,000 of his own, more than doubling Chafee's fundraising.[16] Whitehouse campaigned heavily against the Iraq War and the United States's dependence on foreign oil.[17] After winning the Democratic primary by a large margin, he defeated Chafee with 53 percent of the vote in the 2006 general election.[18] With his victory, Whitehouse became the first Democrat to win this Senate seat since John Pastore in 1970.
On November 6, 2012, Whitehouse won reelection to a second term in office, defeating Republican challenger Barry Hinckley by 30 points, with 64.9 percent of the total vote.[19]
Whitehouse is running for a fourth Senate term in 2024.[21]
In August 2024, Whitehouse said that if Democrats won control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives in the 2024 elections, they would be "virtually certain" to pass a Supreme Court reform bill by a simple majority, which would evade the 60-vote requirement for cloture. Whitehouse said Democrats would include 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and establish ethics and recusal rules in an omnibus package that would also include a bill creating a national right to abortion.[22]
Upon Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement in September 2014 of his intention to step down, some speculated that Whitehouse could be nominated as Holder's replacement.[29][30]
In February 2016, after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, USA Today named Whitehouse as a possible nominee to fill the vacancy. Whitehouse's service as a U.S. Attorney and as Attorney General of Rhode Island gives him both legislative experience and experience as a legal official, though not as a judge.[31] Whitehouse was ultimately not nominated.
Allegations of insider trading and failure to disclose stock purchases
Whitehouse has faced some criticism for alleged insider trading, avoiding big losses by trading stocks after top federal officials warned congressional leaders of "the coming economic cataclysm" on September 16, 2008.[32] After meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on September 16, and being briefed on the unfolding financial crisis, Whitehouse sold a number of positions, valued between $250,000 and $600,000, over the next six days.[33][34][35] After coming under scrutiny due to possible insider trading, a spokesperson for his office denied it, saying Whitehouse "is not actively involved in the management" of the implicated accounts and that he "neither directed his financial advisor to undertake any transaction during that time, nor ever took advantage of any exclusive or secret information".[36]
In March 2022, Business Insider reported that Whitehouse had violated the STOCK Act, which is designed to combat insider trading, by failing to disclose two personal stock purchases by the federal deadline. The stocks in question were for the Target Corporation and Tesla, Inc. Whitehouse's office acknowledged that he missed the disclosure deadline, blaming it on a staff transition in his office.[37][38][39][40]
In September 2022, an investigation by The New York Times found that Whitehouse was among the members of Congress who had bought or sold stock that intersected with his congressional work, including trading stock in public companies that came before the committees on which he serves.[41][42]
According to Politico, during Whitehouse's chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee, he turned the committee into a de facto climate panel. He has sought to subpoena the executives of leading oil companies and to impose a carbon tax.[47]
D.C. statehood
In a 2018 interview with the Providence Journal, Whitehouse expressed opposition to D.C. statehood. He was dismissive of efforts to give District residents representation in Congress, suggesting they should be satisfied with the amount of federal activity nearby.[48][49] In July 2020, he cosponsored a Senate bill to grant D.C. statehood.[50]
Environmental issues
In November 2011, Whitehouse introduced the Safeguarding America's Future and Environment (SAFE) Act, a bill that would require federal natural resource agencies to be concerned with the long-term effects of climate change, encourage states to prepare natural resource adaptation plans, and "create a science advisory board to ensure that the planning uses the best available science".[51]
Of a proposed action on mandatory emissions curbs, Whitehouse told The Hill, "I am not hearing anybody on our side, even the people who are more economically concerned about the climate legislation who come from coal states, that sort of thing, saying, 'What are we going to say about this, is this a problem?'"[52]
Whitehouse has said that the development of alternate energy sources, including solar power, will eliminate U.S. dependence on foreign oil. He has cited the installation of new solar panels on three new bank branches in Rhode Island, saying that the projects "created jobs, they put people to work, they lowered the cost for these banks of their electrical energy, and they get us off foreign oil and away, step by step, from these foreign entanglements that we have to get into to defend our oil supply". PolitiFact investigated the economics of renewable energy and determined that solar and wind investments would not have a large effect on oil consumption, calling Whitehouse's comments "mostly false" due to "this misimpression—and because of the other inaccuracies in Whitehouse's speech".[54]
In April 2019, Whitehouse was one of 12 senators to sign a bipartisan letter to top senators on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development advocating that the Energy Department be granted maximum funding for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), arguing that American job growth could be stimulated by investment in capturing carbon emissions and expressing disagreement with President Trump's 2020 budget request to combine the two federal programs that do carbon capture research.[56]
Since 2012, Whitehouse has spoken on the Senate floor about climate change every week the Senate has been in session, giving his 250th speech on the issue on July 24, 2019.[57]
Foreign policy
Whitehouse supported a vote that would limit continuing U.S. support for the War in Yemen. Initially, he was one of the two Democratic holdouts in the Senate, but an activist effort, including mobilizing fans of the Rhode Island band Downtown Boys, contributed to changing his position.[58][59]
Gun policy
Whitehouse is a supporter of gun control legislation.[60] In 2022, Whitehouse voted for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a gun reform bill introduced following a deadly school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The bill enhanced background checks for firearm purchasers under the age of 21, provided funding for school-based mental health services, and partially closed the gun show loophole and boyfriend loophole.[61][62]
Health care
He voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[63] During its passage, Whitehouse cautioned that conservative opposition to the bill was moving toward historical instances of mob violence.[64]
In December 2009, Whitehouse said "birthers", "fanatics", and "people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups" opposed Obamacare.[65]
LGBTQ rights
In September 2014, Whitehouse was one of 69 members of Congress to sign a letter to then-FDA commissioner Sylvia Burwell requesting that the FDA revise its policy banning donation of corneas and other tissues by men who have had sex with another man in the preceding five years.[66][67] He has publicly supported reintroducing the Equal Rights Amendment.
Whitehouse has been a staunch critic of so-called "dark money", or political spending by nonprofit organizations that are not required to disclose their donors.[68] According to Roll Call, "Whitehouse hasn't been as convincing as he'd hoped in his campaign to curb conservative anonymous donors and their influence on the Supreme Court—even as that 'dark money' now floods in to support the judicial nomination process his party controls." Roll Call wrote that when talking about undisclosed political spending, Whitehouse "can sound conspiratorial". Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, serving as a witness at one of Whitehouse's congressional hearings about political spending, said Whitehouse was on a "quixotic crusade".[69] The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have complained that, while positioning himself as someone opposed to dark money, Whitehouse has a history of accepting dark money and overlooking it when such contributions flow to his Democratic colleagues.[70][71]
Whitehouse critiqued conservative dark money groups who backed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's nomination. The Washington Post criticized him for not addressing anti-Kavanaugh groups with the same scrutiny.[72]
In 2019, Whitehouse announced that he intended to introduce legislation that would require groups that file amicus curiae briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court to disclose their donors.[73]
In March 2021, Whitehouse convened a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing titled "What's Wrong with the Supreme Court: The Big-Money Assault on Our Judiciary". He alleged that a "multi-hundred million dollar covert operation" influences the U.S. Supreme Court.[75]
Also in March 2021, Whitehouse wrote U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland a letter asking him to investigate "what appears to have been a politically constrained and perhaps fake FBI investigation into alleged misconduct by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh."[76] Senator Ben Sasse critiqued Whitehouse's allegation that the FBI investigation of Kavanaugh had been "fake", saying "This kind of paranoid obsession is Nixonian poison to public trust."[77]
Whitehouse's longtime ties to the elite private club Bailey's Beach have attracted scrutiny. The New York Times called the club a haven for members of America's "ruling class" and various media outlets have said it has an all-white membership.[82][83] In June 2021, Whitehouse defended his family's membership in the club.[84] Asked whether the club had any nonwhite members, he replied, "I think the people who are running the place are still working on that, and I'm sorry it hasn't happened yet." Asked whether such clubs should continue to exist, he said, "It's a long tradition in Rhode Island." A spokesperson for Whitehouse said the club did not have any restrictive racial policies and that it had members of color. Whitehouse declined to provide details of the club's membership, and the club initially refused to answer questions about its policies or membership.[85][86][87] The club ultimately put out a statement saying reports that all its members were white were "inaccurate and false". The club's president urged members to use "restraint" when speaking to the media. Whitehouse said he would not ask his family members to resign from the club because "they are on the right side of pushing for improvements" and "my relationship with my family is not one in which I tell them what to do".[88]
Whitehouse later acknowledged belonging to a Newport sailing club that he said lacked diversity, saying, "Failing to address the sailing club's lack of diversity is squarely on me, and something for which I am sorry."[89]
Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy. Sheldon Whitehouse, Melanie Wachtell Stinnett. New Press, New York, 2019 ISBN978-1620974766
The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court. Sheldon Whitehouse, Jennifer Mueller. New Press, New York, Oct. 2022. ISBN978-1-62097-738-5
Electoral history
Rhode Island gubernatorial Democratic primary results, 2002[92]
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