Ted Kaufman
| Ted Kaufman | |
 | |
| Basic facts | |
| Location: | Wilmington, Del. |
| Affiliation: | Democrat |
| Education: | •Duke University •Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania |
| Website: | Official website |
Ted Kaufman is a political advisor working in the state of Delaware. Kaufman is a former U.S. senator, appointed to fill the seat of Joe Biden (D) after Biden became vice president in 2009. After leaving the Senate in 2010, Kaufman became a visiting professor of law at Duke University.
Career
From 1973 to 1995, Ted Kaufman worked on the staff of then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.). For 19 of those years, Kaufman was Biden's chief of staff.[1] In 1995, Kaufman became a charter board member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, described on the Duke University website as an "independent, autonomous, entity responsible for all U.S. government and government sponsored non-military international broadcasting."[2]
After Biden was elected vice president in 2008, former Governor of Delaware Ruth Ann Minner (D) appointed Kaufman to succeed Biden in the U.S. Senate. Kaufman immediately noted that he would not run for re-election when the term expired in 2010, saying, "I do not think that Delaware’s appointed senator should spend the next two years running for office. I will do this job to the best of my ability to serve the people of Delaware."[3] During his time in the Senate, Kaufman was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services Committee and worked on the Dodd-Frank Act.[4] Along with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Kaufman "co-sponsored an amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act that would restrict the non-deposit liabilities of banks to two percent of the gross domestic product, effectively capping the growth of financial institutions infamously deemed 'too big to fail,'" according to the media company Morning Consult.[5]
In a 2010 interview with NPR, Kaufman noted the relationship between elected officials and their staffers, calling it "like volleyball where the staff people are the setters and the senators are the spikers." Kaufman went on to explain the differences between being chief of staff for Joe Biden and being a senator himself: "And I think when you're a chief of staff, you really do [...] worry about everything. And if you don't wake up one or two nights a week, staring at the ceiling, worried about something, then you're not really doing the job. But as a senator, not once did I ever wake up in the middle of the night worried about things."[6]
In 2013, Campaigns and Elections named Kaufman one of the top 10 influencers in the state of Delaware. The magazine noted, "Kaufman was Vice President Joe Biden's political advisor before he stepped into the spotlight to fill his patron's former seat. He's an integral part of the party fabric."[7]
Kaufman earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Duke University, going on to receive an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.[1]
Top influencers by state
Influencers in American politics are power players who help get candidates elected, put through policy proposals, cause ideological changes, and affect popular perceptions. They can take on many forms: politicians, lobbyists, advisors, donors, corporations, industry groups, labor unions, single-issue organizations, nonprofits, to name a few.
In 2015, Ballotpedia identified Ted Kaufman as a top influencer by state. We identified top influencers across the country through several means, including the following:
- Local knowledge of our professional staff
- Surveys of activists, thought leaders and journalists from across the country and political spectrum
- Outreach to political journalists in each state who helped refine our lists
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 'Ted Kaufman'. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ted Kaufman, "Meet Ted," accessed December 9, 2015
- ↑ Duke University School of Law, "Ted Kaufman," accessed December 9, 2015
- ↑ Politico, "Ted Kaufman to succeed Biden in Senate," November 24, 2008
- ↑ University of Delaware Library, "Edward E. 'Ted' Kaufman Papers at the University of Delaware Library," accessed December 9, 2015
- ↑ Morning Consult, "Ted Kaufman, Biden’s Guy," November 4, 2015
- ↑ NPR, "An Exit Interview With Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman," November 10, 2010
- ↑ Contact Center Industry News, "The Influencers 500 (Campaigns and Elections)," January 22, 2013
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