Warren Rudman - Senate Career

Senate Career

Rudman defeated incumbent John Durkin in the 1980 election, riding the wave of Ronald Reagan's landslide victory. Durkin resigned and the Governor appointed Rudman to fill the vacancy in late December 1980. Rudman served on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Ethics Committee. His best-known legislative effort was the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act.

Rudman, along with John H. Sununu, were key players in the appointment of Rudman's personal friend, Supreme Court Justice David Souter, to both the federal circuit and the Supreme Court. The Wall Street Journal later editorialized about the appointment, saying: "Mr. Rudman, the man who helped put liberal jurist David Souter on the high court" and who in his "Yankee Republican liberalism" took "pride in recounting how he sold Mr. Souter to gullible White House chief of staff John Sununu as a confirmable conservative. Then they both sold the judge to President Bush, who wanted above all else to avoid a confirmation battle." Rudman wrote in his memoir that he had "suspected all along" that Souter would not "overturn activist liberal precedents." Sununu later said, "In spite of it all, he's a good friend. But I've always known that he was more liberal than he liked the world to think he was."