Chris Coons (Democratic Party) is a member of the U.S. Senate from Delaware. He assumed office on November 15, 2010. His current term ends on January 3, 2027.
Coons (Democratic Party) ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate to represent Delaware. He won in the general election on November 3, 2020.
Coons was first elected to the Senate in a 2010 special election to replace retiring incumbent Ted Kaufman (D). Kaufman was appointed to replace Joe Biden (D) in 2009 after Biden, a senator from Delaware since 1973, assumed the vice presidency alongside President Barack Obama (D). Coons defeated Christine O'Donnell (R) in the general election by nearly 17 percentage points after O'Donnell defeated Mike Castle (R) in the Republican primary. Coons was elected to his first full term in the Senate in 2014.
Before entering the Senate, Coons served as president of the New Castle County Council from 2004 to 2010 and the executive of New Castle County from 2000 to 2004.
Coons was appointed to the Appropriations Committee in June 2013, becoming the first Delawarean to serve on the committee in 40 years. In 2017, Coons became vice chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee.
As of a 2014 analysis of multiple outside rankings, Coons is an average Democratic member of Congress, meaning he will vote with the Democratic Party on the majority of bills.
Reporting from Politico and USA Today in 2018 presented Coons as a deal-maker willing to work with both parties on issues like immigration, financial regulation, Supreme Court nominations, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Coons (b. September 9, 1963, in Greenwich, CT) grew up in Hockessin, DE. He graduated from the Tower Hill School and then Amherst College in 1985 with a B.A. in chemistry and political science. In 1983, Chris Coons was awarded the Truman Scholarship. During his junior year of college, Coons studied abroad at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. He earned an M.A.R. from Yale Divinity School and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
