Chris Coons

Who is Chris Coons?

Christopher Andrew "Chris" Coons is the junior United States Senator from Delaware and a member of the Democratic Party. He won a special election in 2010 to succeed Joe Biden, who had 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.