Master and Commander of ConformitySam Brownback is the senior U.S. senator from Kansas and possible Republican candidate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Sam Brownback was born Samuel Dale Brownback to a farming family in Parker, Kansas.
As a student, Brownback was a member and leader of the national youth organization, Future Farmers of America, advancing as state president to national vice president of the organization. While studying agricultural economics at Kansas State University, Brownback was student body president and member of the fraternity, Alpha Gamma Rho, affiliated with life and agricultural sciences. He went on to study law at the University of Kansas and earned his law degree in 1982.
In 1986 he became the youngest Secretary of Agriculture for the state of Kansas and served until 1993. During this time he also served one year at the White House as a White House Fellow for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
In 1994 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and after one term he entered the special Senatorial election in 1996 to replace Bob Dole. He won the primary and general election gaining a full term in the Senate in 1998. He was reelected in 2004 winning 69% of the vote. He will not run for the 2010 election in accordance with term limits.
Other leading roles for Brownback include, member of the Judiciary Committee, chair of the Washington, D.C. subcommittee to the Senate Appropriations Committee, member of the Joint Economic Committee and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Brownback is also a member of Opus Dei, a secretive fundamentalist Catholic organization founded in Spain, and Promise Keepers, a Colorado founded men's-only Christian organization.
The self-identified social conservative believes in tight fiscal policy. His views on social legislation are in keeping with the likes of Rick Santorum. He is in favor of teaching intelligent design along with evolution and has expressed his pro-life sentiments referring to the number of abortions in the U.S. as "a holocaust". Brownback not only wants to ban same-sex marriage but civil unions as well. He supports capital punishment but believes it should be used with restraint.
He is active in pursuing U.S. efforts to resolve the genocidal conflict in Darfur and is endorser of the Genocide Intervention Network.
Brownback is a supporter of the flat income tax. He would like to see it used in Washington, D.C. as a springboard for nationwide application.
He was raised Methodist but converted to Roman Catholicism in 2002.
Brownback married Mary Stauffer, heiress to Stauffer Communications which sold for $275 million in 1995. The couple have five children: Abby, Andy, Elizabeth, Mark, and Jenna; two are adopted. | 
