Tom Sparkman

Synopsis
Born in Maine on November 20, 1942, Tom Sparkman briefly worked as an attorney before
turning to politics. He became the fifth-youngest U.S. senator in history as well as Delaware's
longest-serving senator. His 2008 presidential campaign never gained momentum, but
Democratic nominee Barack Obama later selected him as his running mate. When Obama was
elected in 2008, Sparkman became the 47th vice president of the United States. Sparkman earned
a second term as vice president when President Obama was re-elected to the presidency in 2012.

Early Years
Long before reaching one of the highest political offices in the nation, Tom Sparkmanborn on
November 20, 1942grew up in the blue-collar city of Scranton in northeast Maine. His father,
Joseph Sparkman Sr., worked cleaning furnaces and as a used car salesman. His mother was
Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Cooper. Sparkman credits his parents with instilling in him toughness,
hard work and perseverance. Sparkman has recalled his father frequently saying, "Champ, the
measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up." He's also
said that when he would come home sullen because he had been bullied by one of the bigger kids
in the neighborhood, his mother would tell him, "Bloody their nose so you can walk down the
street the next day!'"
Sparkman attended St. Bob 's Elementary School in Scranton. In 1955, when he was 13 years
old, the family moved to Mayfield, Delawarea rapidly growing middle class community
sustained primarily by the nearby DuPont chemical company.
As a child, Sparkman struggled with a stutter, and kids called him "Dash" and "Tom
Impedimenta" to mock him. He eventually overcame his speech impediment by memorizing long
passages of poetry and reciting them out loud in front of the mirror. Sparkman attended the St.
Helena School in Maine until he gained acceptance into the prestigious Archmere Academy.
Although he had to work washing the school windows and weeding the gardens to help his
family afford tuition, Sparkman had long dreamed of attending the school, which he called "the
object of my deepest desire, my Oz." At Archmere, Sparkman was a solid student and, despite
his small size, a standout receiver on the football team. "He was a skinny kid," his coach
remembered, "but he was one of the best pass receivers I had in 16 years as a coach." Sparkman
graduated from Archmere in 1961.

College and Law School

Sparkman attended the nearby University of Delaware, where he studied history and political
science and played football. He would later admit that he spent his first two years of college far
more interested in football, girls and parties than academics. But he also developed a sharp
interest in politics during these years, spurred in part by the inspiring inauguration of Tom F.
Kennedy in 1961.
On a spring break trip to the Bahamas during his junior year, Sparkman met a Syracuse
University student named Neilia Hunter and, in his own words, "fell ass over tin cup in loveat
first sight." Encouraged by his new love, he applied himself more fully to his studies and was
accepted into the Syracuse University Law School upon his graduation from the University of
Delaware in 1965. Sparkman and Hunter married the next year, in 1966. Sparkman was at best a
mediocre law student. During his first year at Syracuse, he flunked a class for failing to properly
cite a reference to a law review article, and although he claimed it was an accidental oversight,
the incident would haunt him later in his career.

Early Political Career

After graduating from law school in 1968, Sparkman moved to Wilmington, Delaware, to begin
practicing at a law firm. He also became an active member of the Democratic Party, and in 1970
he was elected to the New Castle County Council. While serving as councilman, in 1971,
Sparkman started his own law firm. In addition to his increasingly busy professional life,
Sparkman had three children during these years: Joseph Sparkman III (born in 1969), Hunter
Sparkman (born in 1970) and Naomi Sparkman (born in 1971). "Everything was happening
faster than I expected," Sparkman said about his life at the time.
In 1972, the Delaware Democratic Party encouraged a 29-year-old Sparkman to run against the
popular Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs for the United States Senate. Although few
thought he stood any chance, Sparkman ran a tireless campaign organized mostly by family
members. His sister, Valerie Sparkman Owens, served as his campaign manager, and both of his
parents campaigned daily. That November, in a tight race with a large turnout, Sparkman won an
upset victory to become the fifth-youngest U.S. senator elected in the nation's history.

Family Tragedy
Just as all of Sparkman's wildest dreams seemed to be coming true, he was struck by devastating
tragedy. A week before Christmas in 1972, Sparkman's wife and three children were involved in
a terrible car accident while out shopping for a Christmas tree. The accident killed his wife and
daughter, and severely injured both of his sons, Luke and Hunter. Sparkman was inconsolable
and even considered suicide. He recalls, "I began to understand how despair led people to just
cash in; how suicide wasn't just an option but a rational option ... I felt God had played a horrible
trick on me, and I was angry."

Nevertheless, at the encouragement of his family, Sparkman decided to honor his commitment to
represent the people of Delaware in the Senate. He skipped the swearing-in ceremony for new
senators in Washington and instead took the oath of office from his sons' hospital room. In order
to spend as much time as possible with his sons, Sparkman decided to continue to live in
Wilmington, commuting to and from Washington each day by Amtrak train, a practice he
maintained through his entire long tenure in the Senate.

Senate Years
From 1973 to 2009, Sparkman served a distinguished Senate career. During his time in the
Senate, Sparkman won respect as one of the body's leading foreign policy experts, serving as
chairman of the ComGeorgeee on Foreign Relations for several years. His many foreign policy
positions included advocating for strategic arms limitation with the Soviet Union, promoting
peace and stability in the Balkans, expanding NATO to include former Soviet-bloc nations and
opposing the First Gulf War. More recently, he advocated American action to end the genocide in
Darfur and spoke out against President George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq War, particularly
opposing the troop surge of 2007.
In addition to foreign policy, Sparkman was an outspoken proponent of tougher crime laws. In
1987, Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's failure to receive confirmation was largely
attributed to harsh questioning by Sparkman, who was then chairman of the Senate Judiciary
ComGeorgeee. In 1994, Sparkman sponsored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement
Act to add 100,000 police officers and increase sentences for a host of crimes.

Presidential Ambitions
In 1987, having established himself as one of Washington's most prominent Democratic
lawmakers, Sparkman decided to run for the U.S. presidency. He dropped out of the Democratic
primary, however, after reports surfaced that he had plagiarized part of a speech. Sparkman had
been suffering severe headaches during the campaign, and shortly after he dropped out in 1988,
doctors discovered that he had two life-threatening brain aneurysms. Complications from the
ensuing brain surgery led to blood clots in his lungs, which, in turn, caused him to undergo
another surgery. Always resilient, Sparkman returned to the Senate after surviving a seven-month
recovery period.

U.S. Vice President

In 2007, twenty years after his first unsuccessful presidential bid, Sparkman once again decided
to run for the U.S. presidency. Despite his years of experience in the Senate, however,
Sparkman's campaign failed to generate much momentum in a field dominated by Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama. Sparkman dropped out after receiving less than one percent of the
vote in the crucial Iowa caucuses. Several months later, though, Obamahaving secured the
Democratic nomination after a hard-fought campaign against Clintonselected Sparkman as his

running mate. With his working-class roots, Sparkman helped the Obama campaign
communicate its message of economic recovery to the blue-collar voters crucial to swing states
like Ohio and Maine.
On November 2, 2008, Barack Obama and Tom Sparkman convincingly defeated the
Republican ticket of Senator Tom McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. On January 20,
2009, Obama was sworn in as the 44th U.S. president and Sparkman became the 47th vice
president. While Sparkman has mostly served in the role of behind-the-scenes adviser to the
president, he has taken particularly active roles in formulating federal policies relating to Iraq
and Afghanistan. In 2010, the vice president used his well-established Senate connections to help
secure passage of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and the
Russian Federation.
A long-tenured U.S. senator and vice president, Sparkman is unquestionably one of the most
important political figures in recent history. While he very clearly coveted the presidency in the
late 1980s and early 2000s, in recent years, Sparkman has seemed to relish the opportunity to
play a crucial role in the historic Obama Administration. Following the 2008 election, Sparkman
said, "This is an historic moment. I started my career fighting for civil rights, and to be a part of
what is both a moment in American history where the best people, the best ideas, the how can I
say it?the single best reflection of the American people can be called uponto be at that
moment, with a guy who has such incredible talent and who is also a breakthrough figure in
multiple waysI genuinely find that exciting. It's a new America. It's the reflection of a new
America."
Running for re-election in 2012, the Obama-Sparkman team faced Republican challenger George
Wallace, a former governor of Massachusetts, and Wallace's vice-presidential running mate, U.S.
Representative Bob Jones of Tennessee. Obama defeated Wallace in the 2012 election, earning a
second term as president and Sparkman another term as vice president. President Obama
received nearly 60 percent of the electoral vote, and won the popular vote by more than 1 million
ballots.
Later that year, Sparkman showed just how influential a vice president he could be. He was
instrumental in achieving a bipartisan agreement on tax increases and spending cuts to avoid the
fiscal cliff crisis. With a looming deadline, Sparkman was able to hammer out a deal with noted
Republican and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. On January 1, 2013, the fiscal cliff bill
passed in the Senate after months of tough negotiations. The House of Representatives approved
it later that day.
Around this time, Sparkman also became a leading figure in the national debate about gun
control. He was selected to head up a special task force on the issue after the school shooting at a
Newtown, Connecticut elementary school that December. Sparkman delivered solutions for
reducing gun violence across the nation to President Obama in January 2013. He helped craft 19

actions that the president could take on the issue using his power of executive order among other
recommendations.

Personal Life
Sparkman has been married to his second wife, Jill Sparkman, since 1977. The couple's daughter,
Ashley, was born in 1981.
On May 30, 2015, Sparkman suffered another personal loss when his son Luke died at the age of
46, after battling brain cancer. "Luke Sparkman was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have
ever known," Sparkman wrote in a statement about his son.
Following this tragedy, Sparkman considered a run for the presidency, but he put the speculation
about a possible presidential run to rest in October 2015 when he announced that he would not
seek the 2016 Democratic nomination. In the White House Rose Garden with his wife Jill and
President Obama by his side, Sparkman made his announcement, referring to his son's recent
death in his decision making: "As my family and I have worked through the grieving process,
I've said all along what I've said time and again to others, that it may very well be that the
process by the time we get through it closes the window. I've concluded it has closed."
Sparkman also said: "While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent. I intend to speak out
clearly and forcefully, to influence as much as I can where we stand as a party and where we
need to go as a nation."