Nominee's Background:
Richard Andrew Gephardt (born January 31, 1941) is a U.S. Representative from Missouri.
Gephardt was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from South West High School in 1958. He earned his B.S. at Northwestern University in 1962 and earned his J.D. at the University of Michigan Law School in 1965.
In 1965, he was admitted to the Missouri bar. He then entered the Missouri Air National Guard, where he served until 1971. He was Democratic committeeman in St. Louis between 1968 and 1971, moving up to alderman 1971-1976. He was elected as a Democrat to the 95th succeeding Congress, and was repeatedly re-elected until he chose to not to run for re-election in 2004.
He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. He was majority leader from 1989 to 1994 (101st through 103rd Congresses) and minority leader from 1995 to 2003 (104th through 107th Congresses).
He announced his second run for President on January 5, 2003, dropping out a year later after his fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucus.
Although he dropped out of the running for President, Gephardt was mentioned as a possible running mate for John Kerry. On March 7, 2004 New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, seen as a strong possibility for the position himself, endorsed Gephardt for the Vice Presidency. "I think he's the best candidate," Richardson said of Gephardt in an interview with The Associated Press. "There's a good regional balance with Kerry and Gephardt." Nevertheless, Kerry announced that he had chosen John Edwards as his running mate on July 6, 2004. (Although on that same day the New York Post published an incorrect headline stating that Gephardt had become Kerry's running mate.) Shortly after this false story broke, the headline was compared to the 1948 "Dewey defeats Truman" front page of the Chicago Tribune, which falsely reported the presidential election results of that year.
Nominating Speech:
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Progressive Criteria:
The Department of Commerce will:
Promote commerce to enhance citizens' lives, not simply to enrich investors;
Promote decent, well-paying, environmentally sustainable jobs;
Take the initiative in developing a Genuine Progress Indicator to replace GDP which does not adequately distinguish between good growth and destructive trends; Work to provide new guarantees for pension security;
Support very small businesses, minority and women-owned businesses;
Direct and manage the patent and trademark system to promote the common good by promoting valuable inventions, research and intellectual exchangee, as a higher priority than protecting corporate profits.
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