Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.

Lowell Palmer Weicker Jr. is an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative, U.S. senator, and the 85th Governor of Connecticut. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for president in 1980. He was known as a very liberal Republican in Congress, causing conservatives to abandon him in the 1988 Senate election where he was replaced by a Conservative Democrat. Sometime after his defeat, Weicker was sent a letter by President Barack Obama thanking him for his work on the Americans with Disabilities Act in Congress. Though a member of the Republican Party during his time in Congress, he later left the Republican Party and became one of the few third party candidates to be elected to a state governorship in the United States in recent years, doing so on the ticket of A Connecticut Party.