Former US Senator and vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman has died at 82.
The cause was complications from a fall, according to a family statement obtained by CBS News, The BBC’s US partner.
The centrist represented the state of Connecticut in the Senate for nearly a quarter of a century.
Mr Lieberman became the first Jewish person to join a major party US presidential ticket in 2000 when Al Gore selected him as his running mate.
Mr Gore said he was “profoundly saddened” to learn of Mr Lieberman’s passing.
“It was an honour to stand side-by-side with him on the campaign trail,” Mr Gore said in a statement. “I’ll remain forever grateful for his tireless efforts to build a better future for America.”
The longtime politician served as the US senator from Connecticut between 1989 and 2013. He was a powerful legislator, and his support was sought after in Washington.
“Senator Lieberman’s love of God, his family, and America endured throughout his life of service in the public interest,” his family said in its statement.
A longtime Democrat, he broke from his party ranks on several issues – including its opposition to the Iraq War. He won his final term in office in 2006 as an independent.
In recent years, he was known as the founding chairman of No Labels, a centrist political group that aimed to establish a third-party presidential ticket for the general election in 2024.
“Senator Lieberman was a singular figure in American political life who always put his country before party,” the third-party political group No Labels said in a statement on Wednesday.
Mr Lieberman made that clear in a recent interview with Bloomberg TV last week.
“Thomas Jefferson once said America will need a little political rebellion every now and then, which should be as important in politics as the storms are in the natural world,” he said.
“And I think he meant to clear away the dead wood, and, boy does our political system need a good storm and a political rebellion right now.”
Mr Lieberman was born in Stamford, Connecticut in 1942, and worked his way through state politics, serving as both a state senator and the state attorney general before launching himself to the US Senate in 1989…
