politician

Tom Foley is a highly respected business leader with over 25 years experience as a business owner and executive. Tom started from scratch and made his own way in business. He started the NTC Group in 1985 to acquire under-performing businesses and turn them around. Within ten years, NTC Group grew to employ over 6,000 people. Tom knows what it takes to meet a payroll and keep a business going. Tom believes the same expertise and problem-solving skills he used to fix problems in his businesses can be used to fix our economy and our broken government in Hartford.
Tom has an undergraduate degree in Economics from Harvard and a MBA from Harvard Business School. He has served twice in government and understands how government works. From October of 2006 until January of 2009 he was the United States Ambassador to Ireland. In 2003 and 2004, the White House asked Tom to serve in Iraq overseeing most of Iraq’s state-owned businesses and developing a plan for re-establishing a strong private sector economy. Tom earned the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award for his service in Iraq. Learn more about Tom’s service in Iraq here http://www.tomfoley2010.com/?page_id=1138
The fourth of six children, Tom learned early how to listen. He showed an early interest in fixing things and he liked to venture out. Curious about a bigger world than he was experiencing in school, Tom took a year off at seventeen to work and travel around the country. He worked a construction job and then worked on an assembly line at a can factory where he was member of the union. He zigzagged across the country from Boston to Alaska working and meeting people along the way. Tom knows a lot about what makes this country work and the views, problems, and needs of people from all over.
Tom is a lifelong Republican and has been working hard supporting Republican candidates for over 30 years. Tom believes in the Republican principles of individual freedom, limited government, lower taxes, and reliance on the private sector and free markets for economic growth. These are the principles on which his campaign and his Plan Forward for Connecticut are based. These are the same principles on which he will lead Connecticut.
Throughout Tom’s career he has been involved in charitable causes focused on improving educational opportunities for children. Tom served on the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and was a Trustee of the Kent School in Kent, CT. He was appointed to two Governor’s Commissions including the Governor’s Commission on Divorce, Custody and Children, which he co-chaired, and the Governor’s Commission on Education Finance.
Tom’s wife, Leslie, is an attorney. Tom’s son, also named Tom, is nineteen and a freshman in college.

Courtesy of http://www.tomfoley2010.com

Republican Mike Fedele has lived in Stamford since coming to Connecticut from Minturno, Italy with his parents and siblings when he was three years old. He grew up in Stamford, attended local public schools and attended Fairfield University.
In 1983, Businessman Mike Fedele founded the Stamford-based Pinnacle Group, which has grown into a national information technology firm that has created hundreds of jobs in more than 30 states.
Mike also began his public service in 1983, when he was elected to the first of two terms on Stamford’s Board of Representatives. Starting in 1992, Fedele served for ten years as State Representative from the 147th district.
As a Republican legislator, Mike was instrumental in several important job creation bills including legislation to expand the role of Connecticut’s community-technical colleges in job training and the phase-out of the succession tax. As a leader on the Insurance Committee, Mike played key roles in passing laws that banned drive-through deliveries and required insurance coverage for mastectomies and prostate cancer.
On January 3, 2007, Republican Mike Fedele was sworn-in as the 107th Lieutenant Governor of the State of Connecticut. Since becoming Lieutenant Governor, Mike Fedele has taken a lead role in state economic development issues and has met with hundreds of businesses, employers and workers across Connecticut. He has used his decades of experience as a businessman while meeting with firms in other states and countries to encourage them to create jobs in our state -- and his efforts have already brought new companies and new jobs to Connecticut.
Mike Fedele has lived in Stamford for 50 years with his wife Carol of 32 years. They have three children: Michael, Briana and Alesandra.

Courtesy of http://fedele2010.com

Ned Lamont is a businessman with a proven commitment to public service. He is running for governor of Connecticut at this critical time because he believes that while our state needs better management, we also need bold leadership with a comprehensive plan to create jobs and make government work for our families -- and the courage to make that vision a reality.

It's no surprise that Ned has chosen to take on this challenge at this moment. It's what he has done his entire life. In 2006, Ned took on the political establishment by defeating Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination for United States Senate. Ned campaigned on the message that our nation's fiscally reckless foreign policy was distracting us from pressing issues that demanded our attention at home -- including the economy, education, health care, and energy independence. In their endorsement of Ned for the general election, the New York Times wrote that Ned's "willingness to take on Mr. Lieberman when no one else dared to do it showed real courage and conviction."

In the years following his historic race for Senate, Ned has served as a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics, and as co-chairman of the Obama campaign in Connecticut. Ned has also stayed involved in many of the issues he campaigned on in 2006 by serving on the boards of Mercy Corps, which provides job training skills for disadvantaged youth in the Middle East; Conservation Services Group, the fastest growing energy efficiency company in the country; and Teach for America CT, which recruits and trains college graduates to teach in under-served school systems. In a 2007 editorial, the Stamford Advocate praised Ned for "continuing to stand up publicly for the causes he supported during his election campaign."

Bio courtesy of NedLamont.com

Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, was born and raised in Winsted, Connecticut. He graduated from Princeton University in 1955 and from Harvard Law School in 1958. Mr. Nader has been a grassroots advocate and writer for over four decades. He first came into the public's eye in 1965 with his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, which exposed the life-threatening, designed-in flaws of General Motors' Chevrolet Corvair. Thanks to his efforts, automobiles are required to have standard safety features such as seat belts and airbags. Mr. Nader has also been on the forefront of promoting consumer protection, clean air, and food and drug safety. He has also established numerous non-profit organizations such as Public Citizen and Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). Mr. Nader continues to work towards grassroots-based reform. In his latest book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us, Mr. Nader writes a humorous, fictional account of a turn of events in 2006 when Warren Buffet decides to lead a team of the wealthiest Americans to remedy the nation's ills with realistic solutions. Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us is available in stores and online. More information is available at http://onlythesuperrich.org/.

Courtesy of Ralph Nader: A Biography by Patricia Cronin Marcello, An Unreasonable Man (2006)

Denise Merrill graduated from the University of Connecticut before serving Mansfield, Storrs and Chaplin as a representative since 1992. She is currently the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. Merrill is actively involved in issues of higher and lower education, including chairing a legislative task force on education technology and spearheading the School Readiness and the Early Reading Success legislation in 1997 and 1998. For her work on these issues she was recognized by the Connecticut Library Association, the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, and the Connecticut Education Association. In 1995, she passed the "UConn 2000", a $1 billion program to refurbish and rebuild the campus of the University of Connecticut. In 2005 she was named by the National Conference of State Legislatures as Co-Chair of their Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher Education, a national panel of legislators formed to make recommendations regarding affordability and access to higher education. Representative Merrill was appointed to the National Conference of State Legislatures Executive Committee in 2006, and also serves as a Co-chair of the Appropriations Committee.