Biography:

Born in Garnett, Kan., Sam Brownback was reared on a family farm in Anderson County, and resides in Topeka, Kan. He graduated from Garnett High School in 1975 and from Kansas State University in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in agricultural economics. He was student body president in 1978.

He earned a law degree from the University of Kansas in 1982 and practiced law in Manhattan, Kan., from 1982 to 1986. He served as state agriculture secretary from 1986 to 1993, except for one year, which he spent as a White House fellow under the U.S. Trade representative.

He was elected to Congress in 1994 and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. He took the seat of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, who resigned his seat to run for president.

Brownback won a full term in the Senate in 1998 and was seeking re-election in 2004. He and his wife, Mary, have five children.

In 2002, he converted to Catholicism after having been Methodist. His sponsor for the conversion was Pennsylvania Sen. Rich Santorum.

Past Campaigns:

Sam Brownback won his first full, six-year term in 1998, in a relatively easy race against Democrat Paul Feleciano, a state senator from Wichita. Brownback received 65 percent of the vote.

Brownback entered elective state politics in 1994, running for the open 2nd District seat in the U.S. House. He won a three-way Republican primary and received 66 percent of the vote in the general election against former Democratic Gov. John Carlin.

In 1996, Bob Dole gave up his Senate seat to run as the Republican nominee for president, and Brownback jumped into the race quickly. In the GOP primary, Brownback defeated Sheila Frahm, whom Gov. Bill Graves had appointed to fill the seat before the election.

In the general election that year, Brownback received 54 percent of the vote against Democrat Jill Docking.

Brownback wasn't expected to have much trouble winning a second full term, given Kansas' Republican heritage and problems Democrats experienced in finding a serious candidate. The state hasn't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since George McGill in 1932.

At the end of the first quarter of 2004, Brownback had $1.4 million in cash on hand in his campaign fund. Meanwhile, the presumed Democratic challenger, Joan Ruff, an attorney and business executive from the Kansas City-area suburb of Mission Woods, already had dropped out, leaving her party without a candidate.

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