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Bill Bradley This article is about the basketball player and politician. See also Bill Bradley (cricketer) and Bill Bradley (baseball player). (born July 28, 1943 in Crystal City, MissouriBill Bradley is an American former star basketball player who later became a well-known U.S. Senator and presidential candidate.

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The son of Warren Bradley and Susie Crowe, Bill Bradley began playing basketball in fourth grade. He was a basketball star at Crystal City High School, scoring 3,068 points in his scholastic career and twice being named an All-American. With stellar academic credentials as well, he received 75 scholarship offers.

Bradley chose Princeton University, even though Ivy League colleges could not offer athletic scholarships. There he again excelled in academics and became a Rhodes Scholar at Worcester College, Oxford University. In basketball, the 6' 5" (1.96 m) Bradley was a three-time All-American and led Princeton to Ivy League championships in all three of his varsity years, scoring 2,503 points over his career for an average of 30.2 points per game. In 1965 he was named College Player of the Year as he unexpectedly led the Princeton team to the NCAA basketball tournament Final Four. In the process he acquired considerable fame as he set a number of NCAA tournament scoring records; those for most points in a five-games-played tournament (177) and most points in a Final Four game (58, in the third-place consolation game) still stand.

"John McPhee's A Sense of Where You Are (1965Bill Bradley is a book-length profile of Bradley at age 21."

Bradley also served as captain of the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic basketball team in 1964. He received the James E. Sullivan Award, presented to the United States' top amateur athlete, in 1965.

After graduating from Princeton in 1965, completing his studies at Oxford, and playing professional basketball briefly in Italy for Olimpia Milano, where he won a European Champions Cup (the most important trophy for European teams), he was recruited with considerable fanfare by the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association.

In the NBA, Bradley was not the major scoring threat he had been in college. Over ten years playing small forward for the Knicks, "Dollar Bill," as he was nicknamed, scored a total of 9,217 points for an average of 12.4 points per game, with his seasonal best being 16.1 points per game. Nevertheless, Bradley's unselfish fit in well with coach Red Holzman's "hit the open man" philosophy, and this classic Knicks team (which featured Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere, Walt Frazier, and others) won two NBA championships, in 1970 and 1973. Bradley's most remembered personal duels were against the Eastern Conference rival Baltimore Bullets' small forward Jack Marin, as each would race and contest to find open spots on the floor.

Bradley retired from basketball in 1977. In 1982, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 1984 the Knicks retired his number 24 jersey.

Bradley had harbored political ambitions for years, and in 1978 decided to run for United States Senate in New Jersey, for a seat held by liberal Republican and four-term incumbent Clifford P. Case. Case lost his primary to anti-tax conservative Jeff Bell, and Bradley won the seat in the general election with 55% of the vote.

In the Senate, Bradley acquired a reputation for being somewhat aloof and a definite policy wonk, specializing in complex reform initiatives. The best known of these was the 1986 overhaul of the federal tax code, which reduced the tax rate schedule to just two brackets, 15% and 28%, and eliminated many kinds of deductions. Although always known for his preoccupation with social justice and political reform, he sometimes broke ranks with his own caucus to support the Reagan administration (initially supporting, for instance, Reagan's policy of aiding the Contras in Nicaragua).

Bradley cruised to re-election in 1984 with 64% of the vote, and was widely expected to do the same in 1990. While Bradley did not have much political charisma, he still retained popularity in New Jersey from his Knicks days and from practices such as his annual Labor Day talk-to-citizens stroll along Jersey Shore beaches. Then a controversy over a state income tax increase, which he refused to take a position on, turned his once-obscure challenger Christine Todd Whitman into a viable candidate. He eventually won by less than three percent of the vote (50%), despite outspending Whitman by eight-to-one. Over time he grew increasingly frustrated with the Senate and in 1996 he opted not to run for re-election, publicly declaring American politics "broken."

Bradley had been talked about as a presidential contender as early as the 1988 election. He finally decided to make a run in the 2000 primaries, challenging incumbent Vice President Al Gore for his party's nomination. Bradley campaigned as the liberal alternative to Gore, taking positions to the left of Gore on a number of issues.

On the issue of universal health care, he promised to replace Medicaid with a series of scaled subsidies for families making less than $50,000 a year to use in buying health insurance. He promised to open the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program to everyone, allowing people to buy coverage at much lower rates than they could from private companies. To ensure that all children under 18 would be covered, he proposed a law requiring parents to buy insurance for their children.

On the issue of gun politics, Bradley proposed strict laws banning Saturday night specials and assault weapons and requiring that every handgun in the United States be put on a national registry. Going even further, Bradley pledged that he would move to require trigger locks on all firearms, limit gun owners to one purchase per month, and restrict gun shops from operating in residential neighborhoods.

When it came to campaign finance reform, Bradley, who had once made national headlines by raising $6 million for a single Senate race, did an about face. He proposed banning soft money , abolishing political action committees, passing a national Clean Elections law, providing free television time to political candidates, making Election Day a national holiday, and exploring the possibility of online voting.

On the issue of taxes, Bradley trumpeted his sponsorship of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which had significantly cut tax rates, while simultaneously abolishing dozens of loopholes with which wealthy Americans had been paying fewer taxes. He voiced his belief that that the best possible tax code would be one with low rates and no loopholes, but he refused to rule out the idea of raising taxes to pay for his health care program.

On public education, Bradley reversed his previous support of school vouchers, declaring them to be a failure. He proposed to make over $2 billion in block grants available to each state every year to be used for education. He further promised to bring 60,000 new teachers into the education system annually by offering college scholarships to anyone who agreed to become a teacher after graduating.

Bradley's primary issue in the campaign, however, was child poverty. At the time, 14 million American children were living in poverty, a condition that Bradley promised to reverse by the end of his second term as president. Having voted against the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which, he said, would result in even higher poverty levels, he promised to repeal it as president. He pledged to make the minimum wage a living wage, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, allow single parents on welfare to keep their child support payments, make the Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable, build support homes for pregnant teenagers, enroll 400,000 more children in Head Start, and increase the availability of food stamps.

Although Gore was considered the favorite of the establishment and, therefore, received the lion's share of endorsements from party officials, Bradley did receive a few high-profile endorsements. He was supported by Senators Paul Wellstone, Bob Kerrey, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan; former Senators John Durkin and Adlai Stevenson III; Governor John Kitzhaber; former Governors Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (a former Republican), Mario Cuomo, Ray Mabus, Brendan Byrne, Robert W. Scott, Neil Goldschmidt, Phil Noel, Tony Earl, and Patrick Lucey; Congressmen Luis Gutierrez and Jim McDermott; former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; former New York City Mayor Ed Koch; former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker; and Harvard Professor Cornel West.

Bradley made a significant issue of Al Gore's receipt of corporate , although the revealed Bradley received the lowest number of small of any candidate from either party.[1] Gore made significant attacks on Bradley during the primary fight accusing him of disloyalty to the Democratic Party, disinterest in farmers – epitomized by the appearance of Corn Man – and accused Bradley:

dl"I did not walk away from the fight when Newt Gingrich took over the Congress. I did not walk away from the fight when Reaganomics was put up for a vote on the floor. I did not walk away from the fight when farmers needed farm credit."

Despite strong , strong early showing in opinion polls, and a surprisingly close New Hampshire primary finish (46% to Gore's 50%), Bradley's campaign ultimately floundered, in part because it was overshadowed by Senator John McCain's far more attention-gaining, but ultimately unsuccessful, campaign for the Republican nomination, and in part because it was not able to match Gore's organization once the multiple-primary Super Tuesdays began.

Bradley recently joined Jim Manzi and others on the board of directors for gather.com (http:www.gather.com). Gather's January 18, 2005 press release reads: "Gather.com™, the place to find and share the best user-generated content online, today announced it has named Bill Bradley, former United States Senator and currently a managing director of Allen Company, to its board of directors. The board appointment follows a Gather.com $6.0 million second round of financing. Senator Bradley will join Jim Manzi [former CEO of Lotus] on the Gather.com board of directors."

Bradley's personal page on gather.com (http:billbradley.gather.com) offers a location where the former Senator can join in common interest with others around the world.

Bradley has mostly stayed out of the limelight since his failed presidential campaign, working mainly as a corporate consultant and investment banker.

Despite some speculation about a second presidential run, he did not run in 2004 and has shown no interest in returning to political office. In 2002, he reportedly turned down a last-minute offer from New Jersey Democrats to replace Robert Torricelli on the ballot for his old Senate seat (Frank Lautenberg accepted it instead). On January 6, 2004, Bradley endorsed Howard Dean for President in 2004, joining his old rival, Al Gore, in making that move—the endorsement, however, did not have any apparent effect on Dean's unsuccessful campaign.

Bradley is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.

Gather.com, the free user-generated content publishing site of which Bill Bradley sits on the board of directors.