Brad Carson

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Brad Rogers Carson (born March 11, 1967) is an American lawyer and politician.

Contents 1 Background 2 Election to Congress 3 The 2004 U.S. Senate Race 4 Post-Congressional Work

[edit] Background

Carson's father worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the family moved around reservations in Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Kansas.

Carson was a top student at Jenks High School and won a National Merit Scholarship to attend Baylor University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to become the first student at Baylor to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 75 years. As a Rhodes Scholar, Carson went to the University of Oxford and earned a second B.A. in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. He later attended the University of Oklahoma Law School, graduating at the top of his class in 1994.

After graduation, Carson took a job at a prestigious Oklahoma law firm, Crowe & Dunlevy. In 1996, his firm was awarded the Exceptional Contribution to Legal Services Award by Legal Services of Eastern Oklahoma.

[edit] Election to Congress

In 1997 Carson was selected as a White House Fellow, where he was assigned to The Pentagon as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.

An enrolled tribal member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, he was elected, as a Democrat, to the United States House of Representatives in 2000 from Oklahoma representing the 2nd Congressional District, winning 55% of the vote. He was reelected in 2002 with 75 percent of the vote.

During his tenure as a U.S. Representative, Brad Carson was generally seen as a moderate Democrat, having served as a member of the conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition.

[edit] The 2004 U.S. Senate Race

In 2004, the popular two term U.S. Rep.Carson decided to seek the open U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Don Nickles. Although he easily won the Democratic nomination, he faced a tough general election contest with former Republican congressman Tom Coburn, who had won the nomination by an unexpectedly large margin. Carson described himself as a conservative Democrat. However, he never made clear positions on the hot button issue of abortion. Carson had the unfortunate position of having to distance himself from the national Democratic party on most public policy matters. He portrayed himself as more moderate than his Republican opponent. Coburn, by contrast was one of the "true believers" in the 1995 Republican House freshman class (see United States Congressional election, 1994 and Contract With America). This race was considered one of a handful of competitive races for the U.S. Senate in 2004.

According to some accounts, the Cherokee Nation attempted to assist Carson in his race for Senate by releasing information that they claimed demonstrated that Coburn was racist. This move was controversial even among Cherokee Nation tribal members.^{[citation needed]}

By many accounts, the 2004 U.S. Senate campaign between Carson and Coburn was one of the most partisan races of that year. Coburn and Carson both presented themselves as supporting the traditional definition of marriage as "a union of one man and one woman." (see gay marriage) Carson also attempted to distance himself from the "liberal" label by appearing in a commercial, sitting with his wife at the kitchen table, and describing how awful he thinks being considered "liberal" is. Although registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Oklahoma by almost 2 to 1, most Oklahoma Democrats are quite conservative by national standards.

Despite Carson's attempts to paint himself as a moderate, Coburn claimed that a vote for Carson was a vote for Democrats such as Tom Daschle, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy. Carson was also hampered by George W. Bush's tremendous popularity in the state (the John Kerry campaign made virtually no effort in the state). In the November election, Coburn defeated Carson by a surprisingly large margin, 53 percent to 42 percent. While Carson trounced Coburn in the 2nd District, Coburn swamped Carson in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area and the closer-in Tulsa suburbs. Coburn won the state's two largest counties, Tulsa and Oklahoma, by a combined 86,000 votes — more than half of his overall margin of 166,000 votes.

[edit] Post-Congressional Work

After the 2004 Senate race, Carson's term in the United States Congress expired on January 3, 2005 (Carson was succeeded by Democratic Representative Dan Boren of Seminole, Oklahoma). Carson indicated that he had no immediate plans to seek political office. In January, 2005, he accepted a semester-long teaching fellowship specializing in U.S. politics at Harvard University. He now works for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in Catoosa, Oklahoma.