Peter Fitzgerald

Known as a maverick for his willingness to break party lines, Fitzgerald retired from the Senate in 2005 and was succeeded by Barack Obama. After retiring from politics, he and his wife moved to McLean, Virginia. The son of millionaire banking magnate Gerald Francis Fitzgerald, Peter founded Chain Bridge Bank in 2007.

Fitzgerald had two major moments in the spotlight in the Senate, the first in 2000 when he filibustered a massive federal spending bill because it included funds for the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield. He accused Republican governor George Ryan, who later served a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence on a corruption conviction, of opposing competitive bidding so he could dole money to political allies, saying "I want Illinois to get a $150 million (Abraham Lincoln) library, not a $50 million library that just happens to cost $150 million." His second major moment was following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when Congress quickly passed a massive bailout measure for most of the major airlines, which were in trouble financially. Standing alone out of all members of the U.S. Senate, Fitzgerald delivered a speech, "Who will bail out the American taxpayer", arguing that the airlines would simply go through the money and remain financially unstable. The bill passed 96–1.

Fitzgerald announced his intention to challenge one-term Democratic incumbent U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun in the 1998 election. He faced Illinois Comptroller Loleta Didrickson in the Republican primary. Didrickson had the support of the state Republican party, including Governor Jim Edgar and former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, who served as her national campaign chairman. A hard-fought primary ensued, and Fitzgerald narrowly defeated the establishment candidate, becoming the Republican nominee.

He was the first Republican in Illinois to win a U.S. Senate race in 20 years and the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent Democratic senator in the 1998 election cycle.

Fitzgerald challenged long-time incumbent Republican congressman Phil Crane in the 1994 Republican primary for the 8th Illinois congressional district. In a multi-candidate field, Fitzgerald lost by the margin of 40% for Crane and 33% for Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald was first elected to the state Senate in 1992. He was a member of a group of conservative state senators elected in 1992. They often challenged the leadership of the Illinois Republican Party and were dubbed the "Fab Five." The group also included Steve Rauschenberger, Dave Syverson, Patrick O'Malley and Chris Lauzen.

He graduated from Portsmouth Abbey School, a Catholic boarding school in 1978, and from Dartmouth College in 1982. He completed his post-graduate studies as a Rotary Scholar at Aristotelian University in Greece, and earned his J.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1986. His family has been continuously involved in commercial banking since the mid-1940s. His father built Suburban Bancorp, a chain of suburban banks, by aggressively founding and buying banks around the Chicago suburbs, which he sold in 1994 to a subsidiary of the Bank of Montreal for $246 million.

Peter Gosselin Fitzgerald (born October 20, 1960) is a former United States Senator from Illinois. A Republican, he served from 1999 until his retirement in 2005. Fitzgerald defeated Democratic incumbent Carol Moseley Braun in 1998, becoming the first Republican to win a U.S. Senate race in Illinois since Charles Percy twenty years earlier. He had previously served in the Illinois State Senate from 1992 to 1998.