James Bradley EldridgeJohns Hopkins University Commencement (Class of 1995)
/ref> (born August 11, 1973) is an American politician and lawyer. He serves as a Democratic member of the

Massachusetts Senate The Massachusetts Senate is the upper house of the Massachusetts General Court, the bicameral state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Senate comprises 40 elected members from 40 single-member senatorial districts in the ...

from the Middlesex and Worcester District. Eldridge previously served three terms in the

Massachusetts House of Representatives The Massachusetts House of Representatives is the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is composed of 160 members elected from 14 counties each divided into single-member ...

, where he sat on the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Business, the Joint Committee on Election Laws, and the Joint Committee on Public Service.

Education

Eldridge attended the Acton Public Schools and graduated from

Acton-Boxborough Regional High School Acton-Boxborough Regional High School (ABRHS) is an open-enrollment high school in Acton, Massachusetts, United States. A part of the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District, it serves the Massachusetts towns of Acton and Boxborough and has stu ...

in 1991.About Senator Eldridge
/ref> He was one of the original founders of the school's community service group, Acton Boxborough Community Outreach.Meet Jamie
/ref> He attended

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, and majored in political science. As an undergraduate, he was a member of the fraternity

Sigma Alpha Mu Sigma Alpha Mu (), commonly known as Sammy, is a college fraternity founded at the City College of New York in 1909. Though initially founded as a Jewish organization, the fraternity dropped its religious affiliation and became open to men of a ...

,LinkedIn Profile
/ref> and volunteered in the 1992 Presidential Election, and was elected student body president.Eldridge, Jamie
/ref> During his time at Johns Hopkins, he interned for Congressman

Marty Meehan Martin Thomas Meehan (born December 30, 1956) is an American academic administrator, politician, and attorney. Since July 2015, Meehan has served as the President of the University of Massachusetts after serving as Chancellor of the University of ...

. He started studies at

Boston College Law School Boston College Law School (BC Law) is the law school of Boston College. It is situated on a wooded campus in Newton, Massachusetts, about 1.5 miles from the university's main campus in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. With approximately 800 studen ...

in 1997 and graduated in 2000.Martindale-Hubbell Law Profile
/ref>

Career

In his second year of law school, Eldridge managed then-State Representative

Pam Resor Pamela P. Resor (born 1942) is an American politician who was the Massachusetts State Senator for the Middlesex & Worcester District from her election in 1999 to her retirement in 2009. Resor attended Smith College in the 1960s. In 1978 she was ...

’s successful re-election campaign in 1998. During this campaign, he worked on the historic Massachusetts

Clean Elections A publicly funded election is an election funded with money collected through income tax donations or taxes as opposed to private or corporate funded campaigns. It is a policy initially instituted after Nixon for candidates to opt into publicly f ...

bill, which provided public financing to political candidates willing to accept campaign spending limits and the prohibition of accepting of special interest and large financial contributions. After the bill passed by voter referendum, Jamie was appointed as the Middlesex and Worcester Senate District Coordinator. From 1995 to 1997 he was a paralegal litigation associate with Hale and Dorr (now

WilmerHale Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, also known as Hale & Dorr and WilmerHale, is an international law firm with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. It is co-headquartered in Washington, D.C. and Boston. It was formed in 2004 thr ...

).James Eldridge's Biography
/ref> From 2001 to 2003 he served on the Acton Housing Authority and the Acton Planning Board. In the same year, he also became vice-president of the re-energized Acton Conservation Trust. He completed a summer internship as a student prosecutor for the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office. He worked as a prosecutor in the towns of Natick and Framingham, and assisted on the district attorney's community-based justice program in the City of Lowell. In his final year of law school, Eldridge was elected chair of the Acton Democratic Town Committee. Eldridge worked for Merrimack Valley Legal Services in Lowell, a non-profit organization that provides free legal services to the poor and the elderly. He worked as a public interest lawyer in the fields of housing, Social Security disability, and unemployment law.Massachusetts General Court – State Senator James B. Eldridge
/ref> He received the National Association for Public Interest Law Equal Justice Fellowship; a national two-year fellowship that allows recent law graduates to create their dream public interest project to help the less fortunate. The fellowship allowed him to create the Community Development Justice Project , which allowed him to practice

community economic development Community economic development (CED) is a field of study that actively elicits community involvement when working with government, and private sectors to build strong communities, industries, and markets. It includes collaborative and participatory ...

law in Lowell, to help build affordable housing, start new businesses, and create non-profits to address local problems. Eldridge left his fellowship early to devote his full energies to running for the 37th Middlesex District open seat. Anderson and eldridge in denver

Eldridge was elected to

on November 5, 2002. Upon his election, Eldridge became the first elected official in the history of Massachusetts to be elected as a Clean Elections candidate. To date, he remains the only such elected official, as the Massachusetts Clean Elections law was repealed a little over a year later. He was subsequently sworn in on January 1, 2003. The district included the towns of Boxborough,

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, Lunenburg,

Shirley Shirley may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Shirley'' (novel), an 1849 novel by Charlotte Brontë * ''Shirley'' (1922 film), a British silent film * ''Shirley'' (2020 film), an American film * ''Shirley'' (album), a 1961 album by Shirley Bas ...

, and portions of

Acton Acton may refer to: Places Antarctica * Mount Acton Australia * Acton, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb of Canberra * Acton, Tasmania, a suburb of Burnie * Acton Park, Tasmania, a suburb of Hobart, Tasmania, formerly known as Acton Canada ...

and Lancaster. In 2007, Eldridge was a candidate in the Democratic primary for a

special election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-larges ...

to replace

United States Congressman The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they c ...

for

Massachusetts's 5th congressional district Massachusetts's 5th congressional district is a congressional district in eastern Massachusetts. The district is represented by Katherine Clark. Massachusetts congressional redistricting after the 2010 census has changed the borders of the distri ...

. He lost the five-way Democratic primary to

Niki Tsongas Nicola Dickson "Niki" Sauvage Tsongas (; born April 26, 1946) is an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts from 2007 to 2019. She held the seat formerly held by her husband, the late Paul Tsongas, for the dis ...

, whom he then endorsed. The ''

Lowell Sun ''The Sun'', also known as ''The Lowell Sun'', is a daily newspaper based in Lowell, Massachusetts, United States, serving towns in Massachusetts around the Greater Lowell area and beyond. As of 2011, its average daily circulation was about 42,9 ...

'' called Eldridge's third-place finish a "sign of a bright future". Eldridge had endorsed

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

for president, and was elected to be a pledged delegate for Obama at the

2008 Democratic National Convention The 2008 Democratic National Convention was a quadrennial presidential nominating convention of the Democratic Party where it adopted its national platform and officially nominated its candidates for president and vice president. The conventi ...

. Eldridge assumed the

seat formerly held by

Election Stats
/ref> (District of

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...

and

Worcester Worcester may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England ** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament * Worcester Park, London, Englan ...

) on January 7, 2009. Eldrige won re-election to the state senate by 57% to 43% on November 2, 2010. Eldridge has proposed a variety of legislation on the environment, economic justice, and a variety of other issues in his legislative career. He was the lead sponsor of bullying-prevention legislation, a version of which was passed by the legislature and signed into law in 2010. In his current term in the state senate, Senator Eldridge has promised to fight for

single-payer healthcare Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare in which the costs of essential healthcare for all residents are covered by a single public system (hence "single-payer"). Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from ...

. On February 28, 2014, Eldridge endorsed

Don Berwick Donald M. Berwick (born September 9, 1946) is a former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Prior to his work in the administration, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Healthcare Im ...

for governor in the

Massachusetts gubernatorial election, 2014 The 2014 Massachusetts gubernatorial election took place on November 4, 2014, to elect the Governor of Massachusetts, concurrently with the election of Massachusetts' Class II U.S. Senate seat, and other elections to the United States Senate i ...

In January 2016, Eldridge formally endorsed

Bernie Sanders Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States senator from Vermont since 2007. He was the U.S. representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007 ...

in the

Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016 Presidential primaries and caucuses were organized by the Democratic Party to select the 4,051 delegates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention held July 25–28 and determine the nominee for president in the 2016 United States presidential e ...

. He later served as a delegate for Sanders at the

2016 Democratic National Convention The 2016 Democratic National Convention was a presidential nominating convention, held at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from July 25 to 28, 2016. The convention gathered delegates of the Democratic Party, the majo ...

. On August 9, 2017, Eldridge announced that he was considering running for congress in the 2018 election in

Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district is located in northeastern and central Massachusetts. Massachusetts congressional redistricting after the 2010 census has greatly changed the borders of this congressional district, largely dividing it ...

after Congresswoman

announced that she would retire at the end of her current term. He later decided not to run for congress and stay in the state senate. He won re-election on November 6, 2018 defeating Republican challenger Margaret Busse and Independent challenger Terra Friedrichs. In 2020, he endorsed Bernie Sanders in the

Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2020 Presidential primaries and caucuses were organized by the Democratic Party to select the 3,979 pledged delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention held on August 17–20 to determine the party's nominee for president in the 2020 Unit ...

and later served on his campaign as state co-chair.Bernie Sanders campaign ramps up Massachusetts efforts ahead of Super Tuesday
/ref>

Personal life

Eldridge is an

Acton, Massachusetts Acton is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, approximately west-northwest of Boston along Massachusetts Route 2 west of Concord and about southwest of Lowell. The population was 24,021 in April 2020, according to the Unite ...

, native and the son of a public school kindergarten teacher and electrical engineer.

References

External links

State Senator James Eldridge
– Official Website
James B. Eldridge bio - Telegram.com (2016)Massachusetts General Court – State Senator James B. Eldridge
– Official MA Senate Website
Project Vote Smart – Representative James B. Eldridge (MA)
– Profile *''Follow the Money'' – James B Eldridge
200620042002
campaign contributions {{DEFAULTSORT:Eldridge, Jamie 1973 births Living people Democratic Party members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Johns Hopkins University alumni Boston College Law School alumni Democratic Party Massachusetts state senators 21st-century American politicians People from Acton, Massachusetts 20th-century American lawyers 21st-century American lawyers Massachusetts lawyers

Education

Career

Personal life

See also

References

External links