website predecessor successor birth_name birth_place alongside children jr/sr party term_end office birth_date term_start spouse image article_title state name
-lsb- http://coons.senate.gov senate website -rsb- ted kaufman thomas gordon stephanie hansen paul clark paul clark christopher andrew coons greenwich , connecticut , u.s. tom carper michael united states senator democratic november 15 , 2010 january 4 , 2005 county new castle county council executive of new castle county president of the 9 september 1963 november 2 , 2001 15 , 2010 january 4 , 2005 january annie lingenfelter chris coons , official portrait , 112th congress.jpg chris coons
 delaware chris coons
chris coons

christopher andrew `` chris '' coons -lrb- born september 9 , 1963 -rrb- is the junior united states senator from delaware and a member of the democratic party .
he won a special election in 2010 to succeed ted kaufman , who had been appointed to the seat when joe biden resigned to become vice president .
previously , coons was the county executive of new castle county .
coons is the 1983 truman scholar from delaware , and the first recipient of the award to serve in the united states senate .
a native of hockessin , delaware , coons graduated from amherst college and received graduate degrees from yale divinity school and yale law school .
he went to work as a volunteer relief worker in kenya , where he had taken classes in the university of nairobi , later returning to the u.s. to work for the coalition for the homeless in new york .
he spent some time as a legal clerk in new york before returning to delaware in 1996 , where he spent eight years as in-house counsel for a materials manufacturing company .
in the interim he worked for several nonprofit organizations .
he worked on several political campaigns in his early career , including ronald reagan 's 1980 presidential campaign .
in college he switched from being a republican to a democrat , and in 1996 he became a delegate from wilmington to the democratic national convention in chicago .
his political career began in earnest on the new castle county council in 2000 , where he served as council president .
he was elected county executive in 2004 and served for six years .
there he balanced the county budget with a surplus in fiscal year 2010 by cutting spending and raising taxes , and the county maintained a aaa bond rating .
coons won the 2010 special election against the republican candidate christine o'donnell for the u.s. senate seat then held by ted kaufman , who was appointed after joe biden resigned in order to become vice president .
coons was elected to a full term in 2014 and serves on the appropriations , budget , foreign relations and judiciary committees , chairing the foreign relations subcommittee on african affairs and the judiciary subcommittee on bankruptcy and the courts .
