Peter R. Deutsch (born April 1, 1957) is an

American politician The politics of the United States function within a framework of a constitutional federal republic and presidential system, with three distinct branches that share powers. These are: the U.S. Congress which forms the legislative branch, a bi ...

from the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. Deutsch was a Democratic

Representative Representative may refer to: Politics * Representative democracy, type of democracy in which elected officials represent a group of people * House of Representatives, legislative body in various countries or sub-national entities * Legislator, som ...

from

Florida's 20th congressional district Florida's 20th congressional district is a U.S. congressional district in Southeast Florida. It is currently held by Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who was elected in a January 2022 special election, following the death of Alcee Hasti ...

from 1993 until 2005.

Background

Deutsch was born in the

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle A ...

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

in New York City in 1957. He graduated from the

Horace Mann School , motto_translation = Great is the truth and it prevails , address = 231 West 246th Street , city = The Bronx , state = New York , zipcode = 10471 , countr ...

in 1975 and attended Swarthmore College, graduating with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

degree in 1979. In college, he worked as an

intern An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organization for a limited period of time. Once confined to medical graduates, internship is used practice for a wide range of placements in businesses, non-profit organizations and gove ...

for the

Senate Judiciary Committee The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, informally the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of 22 U.S. senators whose role is to oversee the Department of Justice (DOJ), consider executive and judicial nominations ...

. Deutsch graduated from

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...

with a Juris Doctor in 1982. After graduating from Yale, Deutsch moved to

Broward County, Florida Broward County ( , ) is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's second-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with over 1.94 m ...

, where he was a lawyer in private practice. He founded the nonprofit Medicare Information Program of Broward County, while working to help Medicare recipients in the area, and served as the group's director during 1982. In 1982, Deutsch was elected for the first of five two-year terms in the Florida House of Representatives, where he wrote legislation protecting seniors from illegal

nursing home A nursing home is a facility for the residential care of elderly or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as skilled nursing facility (SNF) or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms have slightly different meanings to i ...

evictions. In the 1992 House election Deutsch was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He was reelected in

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson ...

, 1996,

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

, and 2002. Several times, including in 2000 and 2002, he ran for reelection unopposed. In the House he became the

ranking member In United States politics, a ranking member is the most senior member of a congressional or state legislative committee from the minority party. On many committees the ranking minority member, along with the Chair, serve as '' ex officio'' member ...

of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which investigated amongst other things the Enron scandal, the

Firestone Tire Firestone Tire and Rubber Company is a tire company founded by Harvey Firestone (1868–1938) in 1900 initially to supply solid rubber side-wire tires for fire apparatus, and later, pneumatic tires for wagons, buggies, and other forms of wheele ...

issue,

NIH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

Conflicts and

Martha Stewart Martha Helen Stewart (, ; born August 3, 1941) is an American retail businesswoman, writer, and television personality. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing pu ...

’s

ImClone stock trading case A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Attorney probe of trading in the shares of ImClone Systems resulted in a widely publicized criminal case, which resulted in prison terms for businesswoman and television personality Martha Stewart, ...

. Deutsch served from January 3, 1993, to January 3, 2005. During the

Florida election recount The 2000 United States presidential election recount in Florida was a period of vote recounting in Florida that occurred during the weeks after Election Day in the 2000 United States presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Go ...

after the 2000 presidential election, Deutsch led many of the recount efforts in Broward County and brought the motion to the floor of the Senate to contest the results of the 2000 election, an effort that had been seconded by

Alcee Hastings Alcee Lamar Hastings ( ; September 5, 1936 – April 6, 2021) was an American politician and judge from the state of Florida. Hastings was nominated to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida by President Jimmy Cart ...

U.S. Senate race, 2004

In 2004, Deutsch declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat being vacated in 2005 by retiring Democratic Senator Bob Graham. Although Deutsch consistently led

opinion poll An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinion ...

s in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, and had the largest amount of cash on hand for most of the race, he lagged in statewide opinion polls behind rival

Betty Castor Elizabeth Castor (née Bowe; born May 11, 1941) is an American educator and former politician. Castor was elected to the Florida Senate and as Florida Education Commissioner, and she subsequently served as the President of the University of So ...

, whose fundraising dramatically accelerated during the summer of 2004 with the help of

EMILY's List EMILY's List is an American political action committee (PAC) that aims to help elect Democratic female candidates in favor of abortion rights to office. It was founded by Ellen Malcolm in 1985. The group's name is an acronym for "Early Money ...

, which contributed close to $4.5 million in television and advertising dollars. The Castor campaign was accused of inappropriate coordination with EMILY's List, and a lawsuit was filed with the

Federal Elections Commission The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency of the United States whose purpose is to enforce campaign finance law in United States federal elections. Created in 1974 through amendments to the Federal Election Cam ...

. In May 2004, Deutsch hired Roy Teicher, a former television writer, newspaper reporter and editor, as his communications director. In June 2004, he hired Sanford Dickert, CTO for the John Kerry for President Campaign, as his Director of Internet Strategy. In June, he came under heavy criticism from the Castor campaign after American Democracy Project, a

527 group A 527 organization or 527 group is a type of U.S. tax-exempt organization organized under Section 527 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code (). A 527 group is created primarily to influence the selection, nomination, election, appointment or defea ...

run by Bernie Friedman, began attacking Castor's handling of the

Sami al-Arian Sami Amin Al-Arian ( ar, سامي أمين العريان; born January 14, 1958) is a Kuwaiti-born Islamist and political activist of unverified Palestinian origin who was a computer engineering professor at University of South Florida. Durin ...

incident. On March 2, 2006, Al-Arian entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to help the

Palestinian Islamic Jihad The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine ( ar, حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين, ''Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn''), known in the West simply as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is a Palestinian Islamist pa ...

, a " specially designated terrorist" organization. He was sentenced to 57 months in prison, and ordered deported following his prison term.MegLaughlin
In his plea deal, what did Sami Al-Arian admit to?
St. Petersburg Times, April 23, 2006. Deutsch denied any involvement in the ADP efforts and denounced their tactics in public. Later in the campaign, Senator Bob Graham and Florida’s other senator

Bill Nelson Clarence William Nelson II (born September 29, 1942) is an American politician and attorney serving as the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Nelson previously served as a United States Senator from Flo ...

proposed a pledge between Castor, Deutsch, and

Alex Penelas Alexander Penelas (born December 18, 1961) is an American attorney who is the former mayor of Miami-Dade County, Florida. Education and personal life Penelas, an American of Cuban descent, attended St. Thomas University and graduated in 1981 ...

to refrain from

negative campaigning Negative campaigning is the process of deliberately spreading negative information about someone or something to worsen the public image of the described. A colloquial, and somewhat more derogatory, term for the practice is mudslinging. Delibe ...

; Deutsch agreed to the pledge, but added a clause allowing him to raise "legitimate" electability issues. Deutsch released an ad questioning the veracity of Castor's statements on the investigation and suspension of al-Arian. Deutsch was defeated by Castor in the Democratic primary on August 31, winning only three counties (

Miami-Dade Miami-Dade County is a county located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida. The county had a population of 2,701,767 as of the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Florida and the seventh-most populous county in ...

, Broward, and Monroe). Castor went on to lose the Senate election to

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

nominee Mel Martinez. Deutsch was unable to run for reelection to the House because of his Senate campaign, and was succeeded by the new Democratic candidate,

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Deborah Wasserman Schultz (née Wasserman; born September 27, 1966) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative from , first elected to Congress in 2004. A member of the Democratic Party, she is a former chair of the Democrat ...

Personal life

Deutsch currently resides in

Ra'anana Ra'anana ( he, רַעֲנָנָּה, lit. "Fresh") is a city in the southern Sharon Plain of the Central District of Israel. It was founded in 1922 as an American-Jewish settlement, 1 km south of the village of Tabsur, where an important ...

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

, with his family. However, he has not taken Israeli citizenship, does not speak

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, and frequently visits Florida. He also founded Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood, Florida. Deutsch and his wife Lori have two children, Jonathan and Danielle.

Electoral history

Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 2000, write-ins received 187 votes. **According to Florida law, no totals need be submitted when there is no opposition.

References

External links

Profile
from the '' Biographical Directory of the United States Congress''
Profile
from the Jewish Virtual Library
U.S. Senate campaign official website
��archive from the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...