Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Public Policy Advisor in Alston & Bird’s Washington, D.C. office, and is a member of the Legislative and Public Policy Group. As a non-attorney, Senator Daschle focuses his services on advising the firm’s clients on issues related to all aspects of public policy with a particular emphasis on issues related to financial services, health care, energy, telecommunications and taxes. In addition, he advises on trade and international matters. He spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.

With more than 25 years of service in the House of Representatives and the Senate and 10 years as Senate Democratic Leader, Senator Daschle has played an instrumental role in the development of U.S. legislative and regulatory policy.

Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, Senator Daschle attended South Dakota State University and graduated in 1969. Following college, he served for three years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force Strategic Command. After military service, he spent five years as an aide to South Dakota Senator James Abourezk.

In 1978, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving eight years. He is one of the first Members of Congress to serve in a Democratic Leadership position in his first term of office as a Regional Whip.

In 1986, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and two years later, became the first Co-Chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and the first South Dakotan to be elected to a leadership position in the U.S. Congress. In 1994, Senator Daschle was elected by his colleagues as their Democratic Leader. Senator Daschle is one of the longest serving Senate Democratic Leaders in history and the only one to serve twice as both Majority and Minority Leader. During his tenure as Leader, Senator Daschle co-managed only the second impeachment trial of a U.S. President, led the Senate in response to the attacks of September 11th, and the anthrax attack on his office one month later.

In 2007, he joined with former Majority Leaders George Mitchell, Bob Dole and Howard Baker to create the Bipartisan Policy Center, an organization dedicated to finding common ground on some of the pressing public policy challenges of our time. He is also Co-Chair of the ONE Vote ’08 Campaign, along with former Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, to address health and poverty in the developing world in a more aggressive and successful way. He serves as a member of the Genocide Prevention Task Force formed by the United States Institute of Peace, the American Academy of Diplomacy and the United States Holocaust Museum, to generate recommendations to enhance the US government’s capacity to respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities.

Senator Daschle serves on the Advisory Boards of Intermedia Partners and Cell Block Telecommunications, as well as on the BP America Inc. External Advisory Council. He also serves on the boards of CB Richard Ellis, Mascoma Corporation, Prime BioSolutions, The Freedom Forum, the Mayo Clinic, the Center for American Progress, the LBJ Foundation the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Green Energy Acquisition Company, and the Laborers’ Charitable Foundation. He is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the US Global Leadership Campaign Advisory Council and the Continuity of Government Commission.

He has published articles in numerous newspapers and periodicals, and is the author of the books Critical: What We Can Do About The Health-Care Crisis and Like No Other Time. He holds a number of honorary doctorate degrees.

He is married to Linda Hall Daschle and has three children and four grandchildren.