page_title: James A. Guest
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: James A. Guest / Career
caption_attribution_description: CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum honored five people and groups for their exceptional contributions to consumer product safety. Pictured from left: Nancy Cowles, Kids in Danger; Gene Rider, Intertek; Kathie Morgan, ASTM ASTM Subcommittee F15.18 on cribs, toddler beds, play yards, cradles and changing tables; Chairman Tenenbaum, and Jim Guest, Consumer Reports. Not pictured: Dr. Gary Smith, Director, Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio &lt;a href="http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml12/12050.html" rel="nofollow"&gt;www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml12/12050.html&lt;/a&gt;
context_page_description: James Alfred Guest is an American lawyer, consumer advocate, and politician. From 2001 to 2014, Guest was the president and chief executive officer of Consumer Reports, a position he was appointed to after serving as Chairman of the Board of the Consumers Union from 1976 to 1994, with 21 of those 22 years as chair.
  Guest, a Democrat, unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1982 and the U.S. House of Representatives in 1988.
context_section_description: Guest served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.  
  In the early 1970s, Guest moved to Vermont, where he served as state Commissioner of Banking and Insurance for three years before becoming Secretary of State of Vermont in January 1977, and later becoming state Secretary of Commerce. 
  Guest was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 1982. He unsuccessfully sought election to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1988 election for the Vermont seat. Guest was part of a four-way primary race for the Democratic nomination, against State Representative Paul N. Poirier of Barre, state Senate President Peter Welch of Windsor County, and political newcomer Dolores Sandoval, a University of Vermont professor. Guest came in third place with 25% of the vote, behind winner Poirier and runner-up Welch.
  From 2001 to 2014, Guest was the president and chief executive officer of Consumer Reports, a position he was appointed to after serving as Chairman of the Board of the Consumers Union from 1976 to 1994, with 21 of those 22 years as chair. In 2009, as president and CEO of the Consumer Union, Guest appeared in the 72-year-old organization's first-ever television advertisement, urging Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act. NPR described Guest as a "quietly influential figure" who was mostly unknown to Americans but exercised influence through the widely read Consumer Reports magazine and website. He ranked #11 of "the 100 most powerful people in health care" compiled by the trade publication Modern Healthcare.
  Guest noted that the Consumers Union had favored health care reform since 1939, "taking the position that everybody in the country ought to have insurance coverage."
  Guest has led several advocacy and other groups, including Handgun Control Inc., the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, and Planned Parenthood of Maryland. He is also the founding executive director of the American Pain Foundation.
caption: James A. Guest (far right), shown accepting an award from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
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