William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992, and as attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton became known as a New Democrat, as many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. He is the husband of Hillary Clinton, who was a U.S. senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for president in the 2016 presidential election.
James Soong Chu-yu is a Taiwanese politician. He is the founder and current Chairman of the People First Party.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), also known as the Teamsters Union, is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of the Team Drivers International Union and the Teamsters National Union, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors, totalling about 1.3 million in 2015. Formerly called the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, the IBT is a member of the Canadian Labour Congress.
Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over Republican incumbent president George H. W. Bush and independent businessman Ross Perot in 1992. Four years later, in 1996, he defeated Perot again and Republican nominee Bob Dole, to win re-election; Clinton was succeeded by Republican George W. Bush, who won the 2000 presidential election.
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as the McCain–Feingold Act or BCRA, is a United States federal law that amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which regulates the financing of political campaigns. Its chief sponsors were senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ). The law became effective on 6 November 2002, and the new legal limits became effective on January 1, 2003.
Dirk Arthur Kempthorne is an American politician who served as the 49th United States Secretary of the Interior from 2006 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a United States Senator from Idaho from 1993 to 1999 and the 30th governor of Idaho from 1999 to 2006.
James Phillip Hoffa is an American labor leader and attorney who was the tenth General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He is the son of Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was first elected in 1998, and subsequently re-elected in 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016 to five-year terms. In 2018, Hoffa was elected chair of the Road Transport Section of the International Transport Workers' Federation at its quadrennial Congress in Singapore. Hoffa is the second-longest serving General President of the Teamsters Union, after Dan Tobin, who served from 1907 to 1952. Hoffa's final term as General President ended in 2022.
Ronald Harmon Brown was an American politician. He served as the United States Secretary of Commerce during the first term of President Bill Clinton. Prior to this he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He was the first African American to hold these positions. He was killed, along with 34 others, in a 1996 plane crash in Croatia.
Common Cause is a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., with chapters in 35 states. It was founded in 1970 by John W. Gardner, a Republican, who was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson as well as chair of the National Urban Coalition, an advocacy group for minorities and the working poor in urban areas. In its early days, Common Cause focused its efforts on ending the Vietnam War and lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.
Judicial Watch (JW) is an American conservative activist group that files Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits to investigate claimed misconduct by government officials. Founded in 1994, JW has primarily targeted Democrats, in particular Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and the administration of Barack Obama. It was founded by attorney Larry Klayman, and has been led by Tom Fitton since 2003.
Pay-to-play, sometimes pay-for-play or P2P, is a phrase used for a variety of situations in which money is exchanged for services or the privilege to engage in certain activities. The common denominator of all forms of pay-to-play is that one must pay to "get in the game", with the sports analogy frequently arising.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) and nonpartisan U.S. government ethics and accountability watchdog organization. Founded in 2003 as a counterweight to conservative government watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch, CREW works to expose ethics violations and corruption by government officials and institutions and to reduce the role of money in politics.
The financing of electoral campaigns in the United States happens at the federal, state, and local levels by contributions from individuals, corporations, political action committees, and sometimes the government. Campaign spending has risen steadily at least since 1990.
Richard Louis Trumka was an American attorney and organized labor leader. He served as president of the United Mine Workers from 1982 to 1995, and then was secretary-general of the AFL–CIO from 1995 to 2009. He was elected president of the AFL–CIO on September 16, 2009, at the federation's convention in Pittsburgh, and served in that position until his death.
Ronald Robert Carey was an American labor leader who served as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1991 to 1997. He was the first Teamster General President elected by a direct vote of the membership. He ran for re-election in 1996 and won, but in 1997 federal investigators discovered that the Carey campaign had engaged in an illegal donation kickback scheme to raise more than $700,000 for the 1996 re-election effort. His re-election was overturned, Carey was disqualified from running for Teamsters president again, and he was subsequently expelled from the union for life. Although a federal jury ultimately cleared him of all wrongdoing in the scandal, the lifetime ban remained in place until his death.
Kenneth T. Paff is one of the founders and current National Organizer of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a rank-and-file union democracy movement organizing to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), or Teamsters.
Citizen Action was a national liberal consumer and public activist group that was active in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. State-level affiliates have continued on in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The affiliates of Citizen Action are part of the People's Action national network.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance laws and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court held 5–4 that the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.
Corruption in the United States is the act of government officials abusing their political powers for private gain, typically through bribery or other methods, in the United States government. Corruption in the United States has been a perennial political issue, peaking in the Jacksonian era and the Gilded Age before declining with the reforms of the Progressive Era.
The Reagan era or Age of Reagan is a periodization of recent American history used by historians and political observers to emphasize that the conservative "Reagan Revolution" led by President Ronald Reagan in domestic and foreign policy had a lasting impact. It overlaps with what political scientists call the Sixth Party System. Definitions of the Reagan era universally include the 1980s, while more extensive definitions may also include the late 1970s, the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and even the 2020s. In his 2008 book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008, historian and journalist Sean Wilentz argues that Reagan dominated this stretch of American history in the same way that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal legacy dominated the four decades that preceded it.
