Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia served as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee was so important to military contractors that Northrop built a missile systems plant in his hometown and Boeing erected billboards touting their defense systems. Nunn retired from politics in 1996.
Samuel Augustus Nunn Jr. (born September 8, 1938) is an American lawyer and politician. Currently the co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a charitable organization working to prevent catastrophic attacks with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Nunn served for 24 years as a United States Senator from Georgia (1972 until 1997) as a member of the Democratic Party. His political experience and credentials on national defense reportedly made him a potential running mate for Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry (2004) and Barack Obama (2008). The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program deactivated more than 7,600 nuclear warheads. He was supposedly a top choice to be Secretary of Defense or State in 1992 and 1996 and in a prospective Gore cabinet in 2000.[citation needed] Overall, Nunn was a moderate-to-conservative Democrat[9] who often broke with his party on a host of social and economic issues. He opposed the budget bill of 1993, which included provisions to raise taxes in order to reduce the budget deficit. He neither supported nor opposed Hillary Clinton's attempt to nationalize health care, though he spoke out very strongly against the proposed insurance mandate.[citation needed] Nunn actively worked to block President Bill Clinton's proposal to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military.[10][11] In 2008, Nunn endorsed a new Pentagon study to examine the issue of homosexuals serving openly in the military: “I think [when] 15 years go by on any personnel policy, it’s appropriate to take another look at it—see how it’s working, ask the hard questions, hear from the military. Start with a Pentagon study.”[12] According to , Sam Nunn received about $ million during his 1989-1994 political career. His main contributors were the finance/insurance/real estate sector (totaling $411,665; $46,660 was received from Goldman, Sachs & Co), the defense industry, lawyers and lobbyists.
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