Congressman representing the 2nd District of Illinois, Southside Chicago
Member of the Progressive Caucus
Member of the Congressional Black Caucus
Voted against school vouchers for Washington, DC
Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a Democratic Member of Congress representing the gerrymandered Second District of Illinois, whose population is 62% African-American, 10.4% Hispanic, and 25.6% Caucasian.
Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina in March 1965 while his father, Rev. Jesse Jackson, was taking part in the famous Selma, Alabama civil rights march. After attending the elite and expensive St. Albans School in Washington, DC, the younger Jackson went on to earn a bachelor's degree in 1987 from his father's alma mater, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. He subsequently earned a master's degree from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1990 and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Illinois in 1993.
As a young man, Jackson worked for his father's activist organizations: He served variously as President of the Keep Hope Alive Political Action Committee (1989-90), Vice President of Operation PUSH (1991-95), and Field Director of the National Rainbow Coalition (1993-95).
Jackson first ran for public office in Illinois in 1994, after then-Second District congressman Mel Reynolds had been convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for a sexual liaison with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer. In a 1995 special election, Jackson won the Democratic primary by a nine-point margin and easily won the general election thereafter. He was re-elected in 1996, and has emerged victorious in every congressional election since then.
Jackson belongs to the Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus in the House of Representatives. Americans for Democratic Action rates his voting record as 90 to 95 percent on the left side of legislation. During his congressional career, Jackson has voted:
against a 1998 proposal to end racial preferences in college admissions;
against the development of a national missile defense system;
against allowing the U.S. government to use electronic surveillance to investigate suspected terrorist operatives;
against a bill permitting the government to combat potential terrorist threats by monitoring foreign electronic communications which are routed through the United States;
against an October 2002 joint resolution authorizing U.S. military action in Iraq;
against separate welfare reform bills designed to move people off the welfare rolls and into paying jobs;
in favor of prohibiting oil and gas exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); and
against a proposal to fund offshore oil exploration along the Outer Continental Shelf.
In 2000 Jackson was one of only 15 congressmen to vote against the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act," which provided that if an infant somehow survived an abortion procedure, he or she would acquire the human rights of a person already born. In 2003 Jackson voted against banning the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion. And in 2004 he voted against a bill imposing additional criminal penalties for harming a fetus during the commission of a crime against a pregnant woman. For these and similar votes, Jackson has garnered a 100 percent rating from the abortion-rights group NARAL.
Among Jackson's biggest campaign contributors are the American Association for Justice (formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America) and law firms whose members are wealthy tort lawyers. He has voted against every measure that would limit their profits. In 2003, for instance, Jackson opposed a bill to prohibit lawsuits against gun-makers and -sellers when a criminal misuses a firearm. In 2003 he voted "No" on bills to cap damages in medical lawsuits and to put lawsuits against HMOs under federal regulation. In 2004 he voted against limiting medical malpractice lawsuits to $250,000 in damages.
In 1999 Jackson and his father co-authored It's About the Money, an advice book on acquiring wealth. This book describes financial independence as "the fourth movement of the Freedom Symphony," without which the earlier emancipation from slavery, end of segregation, and political empowerment are incomplete.
In 2008 Jackson served as national co-chair of the Barack Obama presidential campaign.
After Obama's election victory in November 2008, Jackson emerged as a possible candidate to fill the new President's vacated seat in the U.S. Senate. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was legally authorized to appoint Obama's replacement, met with several candidates -- including Jackson on December 8, 2008. The following day, Blagojevich was arrested in a federal corruption scandal on suspicion that he was trying to sell the Illinois Senate seat in exchange for money or political favors. In a secretly recorded telephone conversation, Blagojevich asserted that emissaries for "Senate Candidate #5" (Jesse Jackson, Jr.) had offered up to $1 million in exchange for the appointment. Jackson, however, denied any knowledge of such negotiations.
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