Senator Jamie Raskin
Raskin was born in Washington, D.C. on December 13, 1962 to a Jewish family.
He is the son of progressive activist Marcus Raskin- a former staff aide to President John F. Kennedy on the National Security Council and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies - and Barbara (née Bellman) Raskin, a journalist and novelist.
He graduated from Georgetown Day School in 1979, and received a B.A. from Harvard College (magna cum laude) in 1983 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School (magna cum laude) in 1987. He is a past editor of the Harvard Law Review.[6]
He served as general counsel for Jesse Jackson's National Rainbow Coalition from 1989 to 1990,[7] and represented Ross Perot in 1996 when Perot sued over being excluded from the Presidential Debates and Raskin also wrote a Washington Post op-ed which strongly condemned the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Presidential Debates.[8]
In November 2006, he was elected as a Maryland state senator for district 20, representing parts of Silver Spring and Takoma Park in Montgomery County.[9] In 2012, he was named the majority whip for the Senate and was the chairman of the Montgomery County Senate Delegation, chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics Reform, and a member of the Judicial Proceedings Committee.[4]
Raskin was a strong proponent of liberal issues in the Maryland Senate and worked well with Republicans and moderate Democrats.[10]
He was the sponsor of bills advocating the repeal of the death penalty in Maryland, the expansion of the state ignition interlock device program, and the establishment of the legal guidelines for benefit corporations, a type of for-profit corporation that include a material societal benefit in their bylaws and decision-making processes.[11][12][13][14]
Raskin helped lead the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland.[10]
On March 1, 2006, during a Maryland State Senate hearing regarding same-sex marriage, Raskin was noted for his response to an opposing lawmaker: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. "You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."[15][16][17][18]
Sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Raskin#Early_life