One of the progressive voices in the US Senate, Paul Sarbanes was born in Salisbury, MD in 1933 to Greek immigrant parents. He attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School all on scholarships. He met his future wife while in England on a Rhodes Scholarship.

He was an associate at a Baltimore law firm and served in the Maryland House of Delegates before being elected to the US Senate in 1976 and being re-elected in 1982, 1988, 1994, and 2000. He is among a few senators who reliably receive perfect or near perfect ratings from progressive policy groups. Others include Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone.