From Wikipedia:
Richard Mauze Burr (born November 30, 1955) is the senior United States Senator from North Carolina. A Republican, Burr represented North Carolina's 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives for five terms, and was elected to represent North Carolina as a U.S. Senator in the 2004 election. He defeated the Democratic Party nominee, former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, in the open seat contest. With the 2008 election of Kay Hagan (D), Burr became North Carolina's senior senator. He easily defeated NC Secretary of State Elaine Marshall (D) in 2010.
Background
Burr was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, the son of Martha (née Gillum) and Rev. David Horace Burr, a minister. He graduated from Richard J. Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem, N.C. in 1974 and earned a B.A. from Wake Forest University in 1978. Burr was on the football team at both Reynolds High School and Wake Forest. Burr lettered for the Demon Deacons during the 1974 and 1975 seasons; however, the team went winless in ACC play during his tenure. He is a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity.
Prior to running for Congress, Burr worked for 17 years as a sales manager for Carswell Distributing Company, a distributor of lawn equipment. Burr is currently a board member of Brenner Children's Hospital, as well as of the group Idealliance - a group of local, academic, and government officials working to expand North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad Research Park.
In 1984, Burr married Brooke Fauth; the couple has two sons.
Burr's father claims he is a 12th cousin of Aaron Burr, the former Vice-President who killed Founding Father Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel. He is the first Burr in the Senate—and only the second person with his last name to win election to Congress (the first being the presumably unrelated Albert G. Burr)—since Aaron.
House careerIn 1992, Burr ran against incumbent Democratic Representative Stephen L. Neal and lost. He ran again in 1994 after Neal chose not to seek re-election, and was elected to Congress during a landslide year for Republicans. He ran on a platform that advocated accountability for the federal government, lower health care costs, economic development, and strong school systems. Burr was elected to the legislature by increasingly large margins during his term in the House, especially because of growing Republican trends within his district.
Senate careerIn July 2004, Burr won the Republican primary to seek the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat John Edwards, who launched a presidential campaign. He faced Democratic party nominee Erskine Bowles and Libertarian Tom Bailey.
Burr won the election by five percentage points. His and Bowles' combined campaign expenditures totaled over $26 million, making it one of the most expensive Senate races in the country. Burr raised more money from political action committees, $2.8 million, than any other Senate candidate in 2004, primarily from the business community.
In 2007, Burr ran for the leadership post of Republican Conference chairman but lost to Sen. Lamar Alexander by a vote of 31 to 16.
Committee assignmentsCommittee on Armed Services
Subcommittee on Airland
Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support (Ranking Member)
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Energy
Subcommittee on National Parks (Ranking Member)
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety
Subcommittee on Retirement and Aging (Ranking Member)
Committee on Veterans' Affairs (Ranking Member)
Select Committee on Intelligence
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
2008 banking crisisIn the fall of 2008, Burr described his response to problems in the U.S. financial system:
On Friday night, I called my wife and I said, "Brooke, I am not coming home this weekend. I will call you on Monday. Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take. And I want you to go tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday." I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine [sic] the last thing you were going to get was cash.
This statement attracted considerable attention from the national press when an April 2009 story in the News and Observer made it more widely known. In late April, Burr told WFAE, a public radio station in North Carolina, "Absolutely I'd do it [again]." He said that "The exact situation we were faced with was a freeze bank to bank. And as I stated, my attempt was to make sure my wife had enough cash at home to make it through the next week." Burr also said that "It was not an attempt to run a bank," and "Nor was it a bank that was even considered then or now to be in trouble."
In a campaign debate on June 26, 2010, Burr responded to a question asking if "the government should take a more active role or a lesser role in regulating large corporations" in light of "the Wall Street meltdown and now the BP oil spill". His response focused on the banking and credit crisis:
Whatever we craft to stop people from cheating, we're just not smart enough to stop cheaters. When Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson...brought us the bad news, he talked about something 90% of congress didn't know what it was, a credit default swap. And when he talked about the exposure he talked about it from a standpoint of hundreds of trillions of dollars and nobody knew where they were. We should have regulated that product...
Burr voted against the financial reform bill Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, which regulates credit default swaps and other derivatives (Senate vote 162 on May 20, 2010). In the June 26 debate he stated:
"I fear we're headed down a path that will be too overburdensome, too duplicative, it will raise the cost of credit....The balance that we've got to have is more focus on the products that we didn't regulate....more so than government playing a bigger role with a stronger hand".
Political positions
Gun rights, marriage and human-animal hybridsBurr is pro-life, supports second amendment gun rights and the death penalty, and favors a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He also co-sponsored a bill prohibiting the creation of human-animal hybrids.
Iraq War and Congressional pay raiseIn May 2007, Burr was one of 14 Senators to vote against an Iraq War funding bill despite his strong support of the war, due to his opposition to the clauses of the bill that provided for an increase in domestic spending. In February 2009, he added an amendment to the proposed economic stimulus package that would end the automatic pay increases of Congress. Burr wrote on his Senate blog: "As the law is currently written, Congress has to hold a vote to disapprove an automatic pay raise. As you can guess, these votes don't happen too often."
EnergyBurr is a member of the Subcommittee on Energy, which has responsibility to oversee regulators of the petroleum industry, and he is one of the top US Senate recipients of campaign contributions from that industry in 2010. In a Senate campaign debate on June 26, 2010, he defended deepwater oil and gas drilling following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and suggested that oil companies are forced into risky deepwater drilling by excessive regulation:
Thirty percent of the oil we use in this country comes from the Gulf of Mexico....Why are they drilling in deepwater? Because we chased them off of the shore. We chased them off the land, we put them in shallow water, we chased them out of shallow water, now they're in deep water. It comes with a greater risk.
Burr's statement conflicts with official statistics maintained by the US Energy Information Administration: in 2009, oil extraction from US offshore wells in the Gulf of Mexico was 8.4% of oil consumed in the US; more than twice as much oil was extracted from US wells on land.
EnvironmentBurr has generally received low ratings from environmental-protection organizations. In 2007-2008, for example, he received a rating of 0% from Environment America, 12% from the League of Conservation Voters, and 29% from Republicans for Environmental Protection.
Burr was one of 21 senators who voted against the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. Supporters of this measure did so to protect millions of acres of wild land, stating that its provisions enjoyed bipartisan backing in Congress and strong local support in the areas affected. Opponents said that it was laden with expensive earmarks, and noted that it precluded oil and gas production on large tracts of federal land, and said that it would harm rural economies.
The American Land Rights Association, a property-rights group generally opposed to the expansion of national parks and in favor of less restrictions on public lands, gave him a rating of 70 in 2007.
ImmigrationOn June 26, 2007, Burr voted in favor of cloture for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. Two days later, he voted against cloture.
TobaccoBurr opposes the regulation of the tobacco industry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). During the 108th Congress, Burr proposed the National Uniformity for Food Act, which would have banned states from forcing manufacturers to include labels other than those that are required by the Food and Drug Administration on consumables and health and beauty products. The Consumers Union opposed the bill, since it would have lowered safety regulations that are more stringent in certain states. A similar bill passed the House, but it died in the more politically balanced Senate.
Biodefence and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug DevelopmentBurr was the sponsor of Senate bill 1873, the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005, nicknamed "Bioshield Two", which he says will give the Department of Health and Human Services "additional authority and resources to partner with the private sector to rapidly develop drugs and vaccines." Portions of Senate Bill 1873 were eventually included in Senate Bill 3678 (the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act), which was signed into law in December 2006.
Opposition to Health Care OverhaulSenator Burr is a vocal opponent of President Obama's Healthcare Reform bill, claiming that the President's health care proposal ignores demands of the American people and will result in a Government takeover of your healthcare decisions, raise your taxes, and lead to rationed care. Critics note that he was ranked second for senators to receive contributions to their campaign committees and leadership PACs between January and September from health and accident insurers and ranked first for funding from pharmaceuticals companies. According to the OpenSecrets.org server, Burr was the top recipient of money from the Big Pharma in 2009–2010. During that period, Burr has received $227,119.
Controversies
Uranium Enrichment and MDS NordianAs a representative, Burr co-sponsored, with Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) an amendment to the Energy Policy Act of 2003 relaxing restrictions on the exports of specific types of enriched uranium, first enacted in the Schumer Amendment to the Energy Policy Act of 1992. The original Schumer amendment placed increased controls on U.S. civilian exports of weapons grade highly-enriched uranium (HEU) to encourage foreign users to switch to reactor grade low-enriched uranium (LEU) for isotope production. HEU is attractive to terrorists because it can be used to create a simple nuclear weapon, while LEU cannot be used directly to make nuclear weapons.
The primary agent in the weakening of the Schumer amendment was a Canadian company MDS Nordian, which lobbied Burr to relax the previous restrictions on enrichment of HEU, due to the additional costs conversion to LEU would levy on their medical isotope production. In general, Burr received $66,500 in campaign contributions for his previous congressional campaign from the nuclear industry, “making him the 7th highest recipient from the industry among all 435 members of the House of Representatives”.
2010 Senate campaignBurr has been listed as one of the Senate incumbents most likely to face a difficult re-election race in 2010. No incumbent has won re-election to North Carolina's Class 3 Senate seat since 1968. A poll in June 2009 found that only 29 percent of North Carolina voters supported Burr for another term, while 49 percent preferred that he be replaced. A May 2010 Public Policy Polling report showed Burr in a statistical dead heat with Elaine Marshall, with 43 percent compared with 42 percent for North Carolina's Secretary of State. Polling in June and early July was more favorable to Burr, who had a lead of 10.6 percent in the RCP average of polls.
Burr easily defeated North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall (D) on November 2nd, 2010 with 55% of the vote. He is the first Republican since Jesse Helms to be re-elected to the United States Senate from North Carolina and garnered the largest percentage of votes than any other Republican candidate for US Senate in North Carolina history. He also broke "the curse" that his seat held, being the first person re-elected since 1968.
