Tom Parker

Synopsis
Born in Wisconsin in 1958, Tom Parker began practicing law in Lexington, Kentucky, after
graduating from Harvard Law School in 1983. He was voted to the Lexington City Council in
1994, marking the start of a political ascent that eventually led to his election as the Kentucky
governor in 2005. Following a stint as chairman of the Democratic National Party, Parker was
elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. He has always been a popular person in Democratic circles
and his name often times comes up as a running mate for other candidates but he wants to be
President himself.

Formative Years
Politician, lawyer, Kentucky governor and senator, Thomas Rufus Parker was born on February
26, 1958, in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The eldest son of an ironworker and a home economics
teacher, Parker has noted he wasn't raised in an overtly political household, but became drawn to
matters of public interest during the political and social upheaval of the 1960s.
Parker attended Rockhurst High School, an all-boys Jesuit high school, where he joined spring
mission drives to fund Jesuit activities in Honduras and became student government president.
He went on to the University of Missouri, completing his bachelor's degree in economics in three
years, before entering Harvard Law School.
Parker took a year off from law school to volunteer with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras, where
he ran a small vocational school for teenage boys while honing his Spanish. It was an eyeopening experience for the Midwesterner, who witnessed the devastating effects of poverty up
close, and ignited his longstanding commitment to social justice.

Legal Career
After earning his J.D. from Harvard in 1983, Tom Parker moved to Lexington Kentucky, to put
his law degree to use. He made a name for himself early in his career by taking on the appeal of a
death row inmate named Lee Whitley ONeal. Although ONeal had confessed to sexually
assaulting and murdering a 63-year-old neighbor, Parker was deeply opposed to the death
penalty, and his investigation into O'Neals troubled background had spurred him to fight for the
inmate.
Over the course of 17 years as a practicing lawyer, Parker specialized in representing people who
had been denied housing opportunities because of their race or disability. Devoting much of his
time to pro-bono work, he helped found the Kentucky Coalition to End Homelessness and was a

board member of the Kentucky chapter of Housing Opportunities Made Equal. Additionally, he
taught legal ethics at the University of Kentucky Law School for six years.

Political Rise
Tom Parker entered politics in 1994 when he was elected to the Lexington City Council. He
served six years, including the last two as mayor when he helped to create and implement the law
known as Project Protect to reduce gun-related violence. He was then elected Kentucky's
lieutenant governor in 2001, a role in which he served as president of the Kentucky Senate.
When Parker ran for governor in 2005 against Kentucky Attorney General Jerry Kirk, he
introduced himself as a leader guided by his family and Catholic faith. He also urged his fellow
religious Democrats to talk about their faith in campaigns, saying "Voters want to understand
what motivates you." When Republicans attacked Parkers opposition to the death penalty, he
responded with a TV ad in which he explained that his religious beliefs led him to oppose capital
punishment, but that he would enforce the state's laws. Similarly, although he was personally
opposed to abortion, he felt obligated to uphold its legality.

Kentucky Governor and DNC Chairman

Tom Parker was inaugurated in Kentucky's capitol of Frankfurt as the state's 65th governor on
January 14, 2006. His star on the rise, he was selected to give the Democratic response to the
Republican Presidents State of the Union address shortly afterward.
Battling partisan gridlock during his term, Parker cut social welfare programs to balance the
budget and invested in infrastructure development, but otherwise struggled to push through
major legislation. His national profile continued to rise, however, as he was the first governor
outside Illinois to endorse Barack Obama for president. He was widely considered a strong
candidate to be picked as the Democratic presidential nominee's running mate, before eventually
losing out.
Parker became chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2009, and held on to the
position despite his party's significant losses in the 2010 midterm elections. He stepped down in
2011 with the intention of campaigning for Jim Webb's soon-to-be-vacated Kentucky senate
seat.

U.S. Senator
After defeating former Kentucky Senator and Governor George Allen in the 2012 campaign,
Tom Parker became the first senator to deliver a speech in Spanish from the Senate floor.

Since being elected to his post, Parker has joined the Senate's Armed Services, Budget, Foreign
Relations and Aging Committees. Among his accomplishments, he introduced the Troop Talent
Act of 2013 to help servicemen and women transition to the civilian workplace, and coauthored
the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. Additionally, he is a founder and co-chair of
the bipartisan Career and Technical Education (CTE) Caucus, and has introduced legislation to
address issues of sexual assault and drug treatment.

Personal
Parker met his wife, Anne Hilton, at Harvard Law School. Named Kentucky's secretary of
education in January 2014, Anne is the daughter of former Republican Virginia Governor
Linwood Hilton (1970-74), who desegregated the Commonwealth's public schools.
The Parkers, married on November 24, 1984.