Name Chester Atkins Education Antioch College | Party Democratic Party | |
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Role Member of the United States House of Representatives | ||
Chester Greenough Atkins (born April 14, 1948) is a former member of the United States House of Representatives. He is a Democrat from Massachusetts.
Atkins was born in Geneva, Switzerland on April 14, 1948, and graduated from Concord-Carlisle High School of Concord, Massachusetts in 1966 and Antioch College in 1970. Atkins was exposed to progressive politics on Antioch's highly politicized campus in the late-1960s and early-1970s. He was elected a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1970 to 1971 (at the time, the youngest ever elected in Massachusetts) and the Massachusetts Senate from 1972 to 1984. He was the first chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and later chaired the Senate Ways and Means Committee. He also served as chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee from 1977 to 1990.
When James Shannon decided to run for the Senate seat vacated by the ailing Paul Tsongas, Atkins ran and was elected as a Democrat to the 99th Congress in 1984. He served there for four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1985 – January 3, 1993). In his 1990 reelection bid, Atkins won by a surprisingly thin margin for the heavily Democratic 5th district, and as a result, in 1992, Democrats backed Democratic challenger Martin T. Meehan, fearing the seat could fall to the Republicans. Atkins' last campaign was riddled with accusations of check-bouncing and mismanaging his own finances. His wife Cory later ran successfully for his old state House seat. Atkins and his wife have been separated for several years. Atkins founded the ADS Ventures, Inc., a consulting and lobbying firm in 1993. He is a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One. He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.