Profile · Middleton, Wisconsin
Russell Dana Feingold
Wisconsin U.S. senator (1993–2011); Janesville-born, longtime Middleton resident (not a Madison native)
$441,737
Russell Dana Feingold held a Wisconsin U.S. Senate seat for eighteen years as the co-author of McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law and the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. Middleton was the political home: after law school he bought on Donna Drive, raised his children in the local schools, and still lists the city as his residence. He was born in Janesville on March 2, 1953, graduated from Craig High in 1971, and went on to Wisconsin, Oxford, and Harvard Law. After Foley & Lardner he settled west of Madison’s Beltline. In the 1992 underdog Senate primary against two millionaires he painted five promises on the Donna Drive garage door: Wisconsin money, live in Middleton, no pay raise, a listening session in every county every year, and hire Wisconsin. Promise two was the city. He held the seat until Ron Johnson defeated him, then taught, ran again, and lost again. Janesville is the birth certificate; he left as a teenager. The garage-door contract and the long adult residence are why Middleton claims him.