10 Things You Didn't Know About Jim DeMint

June 22, 2010 RSS Feed Print

1. James W. DeMint was born in Greenville, S.C., on Sept. 2, 1951. He was raised by a single mother who operated a dance studio, the DeMint Academy of Dance and Decorum, from their home.

2. As a young man, he was a drummer for a half-white, half-black, rock-and-roll cover band called Salt and Pepper.

3. He earned a B.S. in 1973 from the University of Tennessee and an M.B.A. in 1981 from Clemson University.

4. He owned a marketing research firm, the DeMint Group, until 1998, when he won a U.S. House seat representing South Carolina's Fourth District. He served three two-year terms.

5. On April 15, 2000, while a freshman House member, he hosted a "Toss the Tax Code" rally in his hometown, during which he threw pages of the Internal Revenue Service code from a hot-air balloon.

6. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He currently serves on four committees: Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Foreign Relations; and Joint Economic.

7. In July 2009, he published a book, Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America's Slide Into Socialism, which warns of the perils of the growing federal government role.

8. Last year, DeMint was rated by the National Journal as the second most-conservative U.S. senator, following James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

9. He founded and chairs the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee that works to elect "strong conservatives" to the Senate.

10. He and his wife, Debbie, live in Greenville. They have four married children and a grandchild.