Joseph Lieberman, United States Senator from Connecticut, is one of the most frequently mentioned Democratic presidential candidates for 2004. He first gained national prominence when he ran as his party's nominee for Vice President in 2000, but he has a lifetime of public service behind him, and he has a wide base of admirers among Democrats and Republicans alike.

Joe Lieberman was born in Stamford, Connecticut where he attended public school until he enrolled as a student at Yale, and he received a bachelor's degree in 1964. He went on to Yale Law School for a law degree in 1967. He showed an early interest in politics, and ran for Connecticut's State Senate in 1970. There he served for 10 years before becoming Connecticut's Attorney General. Lieberman won a narrow victory over his Republican challenger for the U.S. Senate in 1988, but he came back six years later to win the biggest landslide victory ever for a Connecticut Senate seat, garnering 67 percent of the vote.

In 2000, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore chose him as his running mate, making Lieberman the first Jewish-American to be nominated for the vice presidency. He was widely praised for his tireless campaigning, and easy, personable style, and for his success in the vice-presidential debate with Republican Dick Cheney. Although Al Gore and he received more respective votes for President and Vice President than any Democrats in history, they lost the election, and Lieberman returned to the U.S. Senate.

Although he lost his chairmanship of the influential Governmental Affairs Committee in the Republican recapture of the Senate in 2002, Senator Lieberman remains as the highest-ranking Democrat on the committee. He is also a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the Small Business Committee. He has co-authored many pieces of legislation, including the Gulf War Resolution, education reform bills, a V-chip law, and an important crime bill. He most recently wrote the major campaign finance reform law that will govern the 2004 election campaigns.

Lieberman is the author of five books, with the latest one being In Praise of Public Life (2000), a defense of public service based on his own personal experience. He currently splits his time between his homes in New Haven, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. He and his wife, Hadassah, have four children and two grandchildren.