opinion
Uh, Not Quite, Folks
The right says naming a new head is the president’s prerogative under a 1990s law. We knew all about that law—and that’s exactly why we wrote language to supersede it.
After graduating from Harvard in 1962, Barney Frank worked there as a teaching Fellow in government and Assistant to the Director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School. In 1968, he became Executive Assistant to Boston Mayor Kevin White. He then spent one year as Administrative Assistant to Congressman Michael Harrington.
In 1972, he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives from downtown Boston. During his time in the Mayor’s Office and the Massachusetts house, he taught part-time at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Boston University, and the Kennedy School at Harvard. In 1974, he entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1977, and passing the Massachusetts bar in 1979. In 1980, he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. His thirty-two-year career there included serving as Chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services from January 2007 to January 2011.
In 1987, he became the first Member of Congress to acknowledge voluntarily that he was gay, and 2012 he was the first Member of Congress to marry a same-sex partner while still serving.
He lives in Newton, Massachusetts and Ogunquit, Maine with his husband James Ready.